A fruity September

Summer is definitely winding down by the time September starts, but Home Gardener's Cookbook (Marjorie Page Blanchard, 1974) reassures us that some crops are still freshly coming into season. Peaches immediately catch my eye since we had peach trees at my childhood home. When we made "peach pudding," it meant that we'd thrown some home-frozen peaches into the blender and turned them into what would probably now be considered a smoothie. Blanchard's Frozen Peach Pudding is considerably more complicated (and probably more exciting).

Since it involves cutting a loaf cake into layers, it reminds me of the sandwich loaf recipes old cookbooks recommended for parties, but this one sounds a lot more palatable than most of them do. I mean, would you rather have layers of rum-and-ginger soaked cake with sliced peaches or white and wheat bread filled with a mixture of cottage cheese, potatoes, celery, and pineapple?

I always think of melons as more of a height-of-summer fruit, but they are listed in the September chapter. I was surprised to see a recipe for underripe melons, but Blanchard recommends turning them into a curry.

This doesn't specify the type of melon, so maybe it doesn't really matter if it's not ripe. It won't taste like a full-fledged melon anyway. In any case, this is recommended as "a spicy relish for plain meatloaf or chicken" (and reminds us that any added spice was all it took to get called "spicy" back in the day).

In addition to the peaches and melons, grapes are coming into season. (September is really the month for fruit!) While I've seen plenty of recipes for raisin pies, I don't usually see recipes for pies using the fresh counterpart.

Considering that you rarely find Concord grapes in the supermarket, I can see why this recipe would be reserved for home gardeners. (I'm sure that the inconvenience of having to separate the seeds, pulp, and skin also play a role in making Concord grapes an unpopular choice for home cooks.)

And honestly, September is already a pretty inconvenient month for families with anybody in school, so there's a good reason why people choose not to spend what little free time they have separating grapes into their various components or wrestling with underripe melons simply to make them taste like sautéed onions. The peaches, on the other hand... Maybe those would be worth the hassle at the end of a long, hectic week? (Who am I kidding? Throwing some frozen peaches straight into the blender is more my speed. But people in the '70s had way fewer devices beeping for their attention and way fewer choices in the grocery store that could taste just about as good as something homemade and be 100 times easier.)

A hamburger holiday

It's almost Labor Day-- a high grilling holiday! That calls for some Holiday Hamburgers! Have to admit that a pasta cookbook would not be the first place I'd look for a burger recipe, but today's entry is from Mueller's Classic Recipes (Marilyn M. Houston, 1972). (And in case you weren't aware, Mueller's is a pasta company, so this cookbook is meant to sell noodles of all sorts.)

Okay, I'm pretty sure Houston was thinking of Christmas since the noodles on which these seasoned burgers are served are spiked with green pepper and (red) pimiento, but 1. I have a feeling a lot of people would gripe about burgers served on noodles not being fancy enough for Christmas and 2. in most parts of the country, the option of grilling is not very appealing in late December. So I feel fully justified in turning this into a Labor Day recipe... even though you'd probably rather not have to make noodles if you're grilling burgers... So much easier to just serve them on buns (grilled if you're fancy!) and with a side of chips. Okay, maybe this is just a good holiday recipe if you want to be irritated on any random holiday. We all know that the potential pitfall of having to deal with your family might not be quite enough to send you over the edge. 😅 Best to have to grill burgers without burning them (Okay, fine, you could use a skillet for the burgers, but where is the holiday fun in that?) AND boil noodles without turning them to mush and then try to eat a burger patty on a slithery pile of noodles just to ensure that someone will end up having a bad day.

I think I will enjoy Labor Day by drinking some canned wine and watching Severance. (I'm sure you're thinking of the TV series, but I'm thinking of the 2006 film. Either choice is appropriate, though, so it's a solid plan.) Hopefully you have something fun and not too labor-intensive to do too (if you're lucky enough to have the day off).

Muellers makes macaroni meh

If you are ever at a loss as to what to do with macaroni (or other pasta, but this book has the most recipes for macaroni), then Mueller's Classic Recipes (Marilyn M. Houston, 1972) has some ideas.

Since it's from the '70s, of course it has its fair share of macaroni and cheese recipes and recipes that call for canned condensed soups. I expected that if it had a mac 'n cheese recipe calling for soup, the soup of choice would be cheddar cheese...

... but I was wrong. This uses cream of mushroom! It still gets copious amounts of cheese stirred in, so the mushrooms might add the right amount of umami to all that cheese. (I imagine that kids would be upset by the tiny mushroom bits, though!)

I'm always curious about what constituted "chili" in all those old cookbooks, so I was eager to see what was in the Macaroni Chili. (Funny that it was so formal! Now it's usually chili mac.)

Impressive that it has more seasoning than a lot of older chili recipes do-- two tablespoons of chili powder, plus cumin, oregano, and a bay leaf (along with the usual salt and pepper). But then I saw it also had a cup of sweet mixed pickles! I don't think I've seen a recipe calling for pickles in chili before. Sounds revolting to me, but I don't like pickles... As popular as pickle-flavored everything has been over the past year or two, I kind of expect to see a canned or fast-food version of pickle chili before too long. (Or maybe they're already here and I missed them. Or maybe, and this is a longshot, the idea really is as revolting as I think it is.)

I'd associate pickles more with macaroni salad, but the Molded Macaroni Salad doesn't have any!

At least it uses unflavored gelatin rather than a dessert-y lemon, but I'm not sure how eager anyone is to devour macaroni, celery, and shreds of American cheese suspended in gelatin and mayo... (Especially when everybody knows the best use of macaroni and cheese is macaroni and cheese!)

The Sweet and Sour Chicken Salad does include both macaroni and pickles with the chicken...

...along with pineapple, sour cream, mayo, mustard, and melon balls! There's a LOT going on here, and not much of it is good. There's maybe a decent fruit salad OR a decent chicken salad, but I'm unconvinced that they belong together.

And just so it's not all macaroni, I'll throw in a recipe for spaghetti...

...served under peppers stuffed with raisin-befouled meatloaf. (It would have been so much easier and better to just cook crumbled ground beef and diced green peppers with the tomato sauce, but what's the fun in that?)

I do have to give Mueller's credit for doing the unexpected. We're all pretty familiar with a lot of pasta dishes, so they consistently added unexpected ingredients to throw you off! From the surprise soup and pickles to the unexpected gelatin, melon, and raisins, the recipes keep you guessing! (Guessing you will just make the same thing you usually make instead of trying one of these concoctions, I'm assuming.)