I know Workbasket isn't a cookbook, but the February 1970 issue magically appeared in a huge pile of vintage cookbooks, and it does have a few recipes in it, so today we're working with Workbasket.
I love that readers could aspire to knit a suit to match their harvest gold fridge and oven. They'll be kitchen chameleons!
This month features chafing dish and fondue cooking. For those who hope their new knitted suit will inspire an intimate dinner, the magazine offers Chicken for Two.
Hopefully he'll be turned on by chicken strips in bouillon with celery, green onion, canned pineapple, pimiento, and avocado! Unfortunately, there is no recipe for a dessert, but a nearby ad does suggest that "exotic Pepper Cake" may be the key to his heart.
Back in the day, you'd have to send away for the recipe, though. (Now, you can just click here! You won't get a free sample of M-K pure black pepper from the website, though.)
If things are decidedly less romantic, you could cook some Sloppy Mop-Ups.
I expected this to be sloppy-joes-esque, and I have never been a fan of sloppy joes, and when the slightly-altered recipe name makes me wonder if the ingredients include cleaning supplies... well, it doesn't help. To my surprise, though, this sounds better than sloppy joes. It's essentially just an open-faced meatball sandwich that throws in cocktail franks, for some reason.
Or, if the cook is feeling really indecisive and also kinda lazy, there's the "Cook-Your-Food-Your-Own-Damn-Self" option.
Sorry, I mean "Cook-Your-Own-Appetizer Fondue," which involves thawing out various frozen appetizers and providing the hot oil so diners can fry them-- and then dip them in cocktail or tartar sauce. (I'm not really sure how many people are up for pizza rolls dipped in tartar sauce, but the '70s were a crazy time.)
All those fried apps can be followed by a round of "Bring-a-Premade-Dessert-to-Share" and "Help-with-the-Dishes." It's a very easy party to host.
Bonus 1: The page with the two previous recipes also advertised a book that would allow buyers to make their own zodiac "conversation piece" from foil pans, and that was too amazing for me not to show it.
I love how startled the sun looks. Reassuringly, "No artistic ability [is] needed" to make this decoration. (Sadly, I haven't found the instructions online.)
Bonus 2: Tatting instructions just for Lace maker.
I assume they mean something that I am not equipped to understand, and I am sure this requires some artistic ability.
It's fun to be a tiny obscure blog with three readers tops, so I can get away with shit like this. I hope today you too can get away with something fun, dear reader(s)!
Ha! You knew that I was wondering if it had a tatting pattern in it. They're a little hit and miss for including them. Yes, the instructions do make sense to me.
ReplyDeleteI'm always amazed by how casual they were about just knitting yourself an entire new suit. Nobody has that kind of time these days. It seems like their recipes were a bit more practical with the required oddness of the 70s built in. Serving frozen appetizers would free up more time for knitting.
Yes-- I can't imagine it would take me any less than 157 years to knit a suit, and it would still look like crap and probably fall apart within a week when I finally got it done.
DeleteNow I'm thinking of all the times that various children's cartoons show someone clicking their knitting needles three times and a sweater falls off.
DeleteThat pepper cake looks better than I thought it would. I made a different pepper cake once that was just a white cake with black pepper in it. I thought it might be an interesting and unusual flavor that I never would have thought of. It was not.
ReplyDeleteIt definitely seems more likely that pepper would work in a spice cake than in a plain old white cake. Pepper would probably add a little extra kick to the other spices in a spice cake and round out the flavor. In a plain white cake, it would probably just make people who tried it wonder if the cook was getting senile and forgetting what should (and should NOT) go in a cake.
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