Today, we're looking at one of the less-exciting titles in my collection: Dietary Control of Cholesterol (Fleishmann's Margarine, 1969).
Since it's from a margarine company, it obviously tries to push margarine. There's actually a two-page spread trying to convince readers that margarine can easily be transformed into a lovely "sauce."
"Sauce" is code for simply melting the margarine and adding some kind of flavoring. This "sauce" looks kind of like it's filled with lawn clippings.
But at least it's flavored with fresh parsley. Other recipes call for using dried herbs. Dried herbs are fine in other applications that cook for a little while, but I can't help but think that margarine full of dried oregano would be kind of overwhelming in an unpleasant way (and probably musty tasting, considering how slowly people back then tended to go through their herbs...).
And it would be even worse with dried rosemary.
No matter how "crushed" it is, you're going to wind up with a piece stuck in a molar and making everything taste strongly of rosemary for hours.
I was surprised to find a few recipes that didn't call for margarine at all-- perhaps as a counterbalance to those "sauces"? Or maybe they just had to fulfill the quota for weird gelatin recipes and (thank goodness!) couldn't figure out a way to work margarine into them?
This one almost sounds good at first. I am honestly a fan of fruity gelatin with cottage cheese-- it has a low-rent cheesecake vibe. But why would you throw in horseradish, mayo, and chopped onion?
If you can't resist the seafood-and-Jell-O combo (which, apparently, few people could do back then, for reasons that remain a mystery), there's a Cucumber-Salmon Ring.
Again, margarine-free! (You might notice that both recipes call for Royal gelatin, though. The same company sold Royal and Fleischmann's, so it's not like the recipe developers forgot their mission to sell the company's products.)
The booklet also includes another of my favorite recipe genres: sandwiches with seemingly-random fillings. The Fresh Garden Sandwiches focus, unsurprisingly, on fresh veggies.
I'm just not sure anyone ever looked forward to a slice of bread slathered with margarine, then topped with watercress-flavored cottage cheese and thin slices of radish...
And while I've seen peanut butter paired with a lot of things, I'm not sure tomato is its best companion.
Still, I didn't think the combination by itself was that weird. I personally wouldn't want peanut butter and tomato, but I don't like raw tomatoes. Maybe somebody who likes raw tomatoes would find the combo more interesting than the typical sugary PB&J? I almost didn't feature this recipe until I actually read through it. The peanut butter is combined with margarine for some reason, and each sandwich gets a heaping three tablespoons of the mixture. Then after the tomato, there's an additional thick smear of margarine mixed with oregano. (WHY?) In the end, this massive load of peanut butter and margarine is less than 50 calories away from a quarter pounder with cheese, though it definitely has less cholesterol. But is it worth the trade-off, especially since you're likely to experience dusty old oregano?
In short, "cholesterol control" is about as appetizing and exciting as the title suggests it will be. This one is not a surprise.
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