The National Live Stock and Meat Board kind of forgot what it was doing...

TV Meat Time (National Live Stock and Meat Board, undated, but given that TV seems like a novelty and TV dinners started being sold in 1953, probably the mid-1950s) is kind of a head-scratcher.

What is "TV Meat" and was there ever a popular show featuring pen-and-ink illustrations of cuts of meat? If you pick up the pamphlet hoping to get any kind of answer, you will be sorely disappointed, as the cover is the only place where TV gets mentioned. I guess TVs are just on the cover to get people's attention.

The recipes are mostly pretty standard, telling how to make a basic beef stew or broil a porterhouse steak. There are a few surprises, though like the recipe to shake up the usual meatloaf routine by making Individual Liver Loaves.

I doubt too many kids were thrilled to get an individual custard cup of liver loaf seasoned with nutmeg, so maybe the cover was meant to suggest the family would be more likely to mindlessly consume whatever you cooked if they were distracted by a TV show.

This booklet also offers an interesting insight into the pre-fast-food conception of the breakfast sandwich.

This is clearly from the days before it was common to eat in the car, as the sandwiches are open-faced and on a floppy slice of bread rather than a sturdier biscuit or English muffin. Portability was not a concern! While the pairing of sausage and American cheese will seem familiar, the jellied cranberry sauce between those layers might come as a surprise, especially if this is served in any month other than November.

The recipe that most puzzled me, though, was the recipe for Cherry Nut Pie.

I mean, I already figured out that the National Live Stock and Meat Board was not really committed to the "TV" part of the title, but I expected them to at least be committed to the "Meat" part. Not so much, though. I guess the recipe is supposed to count because it comes with a crust recipe that calls for lard.

Still, that seems like a real stretch, especially in a booklet that only has 15-or-so recipes in it (depending on whether you count the pie filling and crust as one recipe or separate recipes, whether the instructions on turning drippings into gravy count as a separate recipe, whether an explanation of broiling really counts as a recipe, etc.). That's a pretty high proportion of non-meat recipes for a meat-centric booklet! I'm impressed that the National Live Stock and Meat Board could so thoroughly ignore their own premise, but hey, they did get my attention!