Actual Halloween recipes from North Carolina!

Halloween did not used to be quite the draw that it is now. Old cookbooks have tons of recipes for Christmas, and plenty for Thanksgiving. Easter comes in a distant third. Hell, even Presidents' Day tends to inspire more recipes and menus than Halloween in pre-1980s cookbooks. That's why I was pretty excited to find a couple of Halloween-themed recipes in Old 'n' New Tried 'n' True (Boone Junior Woman's Club, Boone, North Carolina, 1978). 

Witch's Brew sounds from the title like it will be a beverage (maybe even adult beverage, given the word "brew").

But nope! Witch's Brew is not a drink at all, but a Cheez Whiz/ chipped beef/ cream of mushroom/ Tabasco dip, that perhaps involves pecans in some capacity? (They're in the ingredient list, then never mentioned again, which is not so unusual for this book. As my earlier post showed, the Boone women are not always overly concerned with providing clear directions.) Fritos are a tasty dipping medium, but pretzel sticks could be a fun choice so the shredded beef gunk dangling off the dipped ends could turn them into little tiny nasty brooms.

Okay, dipping something salty into a vat of processed salt is sure to create a powerful thirst, so we'll need an actual drink. It's time for Halloween Punch!

I am SOLD on the idea of serving punch from a real pumpkin shell! Rather than trying to make a fancy scalloped edge, though, I'd probably hack off the top and draw a horrified face on the front of the pumpkin to imply that everyone is drinking pumpkin brains. I would also get into a lengthy debate with myself over whether orange was the best drink mix flavor to use-- since orange would, in fact, match the pumpkin's interior and make sense in the world of this sentient pumpkin-- or whether I should go for a red drink mix and cranberry juice since people expect blood to be red and the people-- not the pumpkins-- are my audience. That's just the kind of deep thought I would put into this endeavor before remembering that I hate people and deciding to stop at drawing a horrified face on a pumpkin for my own amusement. No need for a punch bowl if it's only me anyway.

Now I will disappear back into the inky shadows, only to trip on a stack of cookbooks as I go. So much for stealth! Happy Halloweekend! 

Some Sheboygan fun with crackers and canned goods

I learned a few things about Sheboygan from Sheboygan Memorial Medical Center Volunteer Cookbook (undated, but looks 1970s-ish). 

First and foremost, I learned that Sheboygan is in Wisconsin. I always assumed it was in Michigan for some reason. You're here for the recipes, though-- not the revelations about how ignorant I am of geography. (Well, maybe you are here for the revelations about how ignorant I am! That does seem to be a major theme here...)

I learned that if you want a snack in Sheboygan, it comes on crackers. You just better not ask what the snack actually is (aside from the crackers). 

You just might find out that "snack" is Sheboyganese for "random mixture of condiments."

I learned that chili is definitively NOT spicy in Sheboygan. It's got no seasoning unless you count onions, whatever flavors are in Campbell's tomato soup, and...

...whatever seasonings are in canned Franco American spaghetti (in tomato sauce with cheese). In short, Sheboygan chili tastes like sweet, bland, mushy canned spaghetti. With kidney beans.

And speaking of sweet, the final thing I learned about Sheboygan is that they really like sweet salads. Or maybe I mean they like really sweet salads. I'm used to the basic Jell-O, Cool/Dream Whip, dairy fat "salads" that can claim the title because somebody threw a bit of canned fruit in there. In Sheboygan, though, they will turn an old-fashioned Halloween treat into a salad:

Simple Taffy Apple Salad features brown sugar, mini marshmallows, and Cool Whip. And it's still not as sweet as the Super Orange Salad!

I love that this mixes already-sweet frozen orange juice concentrate with syrupy-thick sweetened condensed milk. I think the airiness of the Cool Whip may actually tame the sweetness a little! At least the Ritz-crackers-and-butter crust should also help counterbalance the sweet, this time with a pop of salt. (The presence of a crust should also make people wonder whether this is actually a pie, but hey-- this is a salad! It says so right in the title! That means there's still space for dessert.) It looks like dessert and salad may have been the only bright spots in Sheboygan menus anyway....

Peachy Jack!

I don't run into Halloween recipes nearly enough, so I was excited to see Jack-o-Lantern Salad in Recipes on Parade: Salads Including Appetizers (Military Officers' Wives Clubs, 1966). Even better this isn't like the previously posted Jack-o-Lantern salad of carved-up oranges stuffed with their own guts.

Are apples, celery, and nuts moistened with salad dressing anything that I would have been willing to taste as a kid? Hell, no! (And I have not budged on that point.) I might have made my way through the peach half jack-o-lantern before I realized it hid that slop underneath, though.

And what do you think of mixing pimento and whole cloves for the face? It seems like the mixed media would look pretty odd and I'd rather go with all cloves, giving it a more dried-out and dead appearance. But maybe the bright red pimento lips would suggest it's a vampire jack-o-lantern that just finished feeding and you better eat it before it tries to eat you? Okay, maybe I'm sold on the lips after all...

With a name like Smucker's, it's got to be... Smuckered

I love stuff that was self-consciously old-timey even when it was new, and that's why I picked up Smucker's Cookbook (J. M. Smucker Company, 1976). 

I mean, just look at it! Big wooden utensils! Milk in a glass bottle! Peanuts on a balance scale! The little embossing dough wheel that I can't find a good name for even though I tried to Google it! So, yes, I had to get this book for the cover alone. Well, that and the promise of getting recipes with Smucker's products where they don't belong.

You know, like putting caramel on the parsnips.

I knew this book would be a major source of the fruit-and-meat concoctions that seem popular with much of the rest of humanity, even if I can't stand them. I found a lot of the usual suspects: pork with apple jelly, ham with pineapple preserves, etc. I expected to run into some odder options too because Smuckers had a whole book to fill, but I didn't expect to see variety meats. Usually, product-specific books try to cram products that don't really belong into recipes that are already popular. They don't bother with stuff that's not that popular to start with. To my surprise, the book has not just one recipe for beef tongue...

...but two!

Whether you prefer your tongue with currants or with blackberry sauce, Smucker's is ready to deliver!

The book still had weird recipes for more popular dishes too, like meatballs. Cheese Hide-a-Ways may sound like pretty run-of-the-mill cheese-stuffed meatballs, but remember-- they're from Smucker's.

That means the meatball has to be seasoned with orange marmalade and served in an American cheese, sour cream, brown sugar, and marmalade sauce. Yep-- double orange marmalade and double cheese-- both inside and out!

The weirdest recipe, though, just might be for burgers, or to be more specific, the unsettlingly-named Crusty Grape Burgers.

The burgers aren't really burgers-- more like mini-meatloaves since the meat mixture is full of the bread crumbs, egg, and condiments typical of a meatloaf and pressed into custard cups for a little pre-baking. Then the partially-cooked burgers/ loaves get glazed with grape jelly and baked under a layer of corn muffin batter. That's where the "crusty" comes from (not, say, crispy edges from being smashed on a hot griddle). So, if you like grape jelly on your corn muffins and always wondered whether that would be a good base for a meatloaf sandwich, this is the recipe for you! Smucker's suspected somebody somewhere might be asking for this. Meanwhile, I kind of wonder if there was actually more of a constituency for fruity beef tongues or parsnips with sundae topping. 

Funny Name: Not Halloween Edition

I am kind of embarrassed admitting how long I tried to figure out the Halloween connection for this recipe from Our Favorite Recipes (publications classes at Miller High School in Hemlock, Ohio, ca. late 1970s).

What makes this Gooly Cake? Did they mean Ghoulie Cake in the days before spell check? How is a Duncan Hines Cake mix topped with a cheesecake-like layer related to malevolent supernatural Halloween-y forces?

And then I finally realized that I'm an idiot and this is probably just a typo for gooey cake. Even Google knows that. Not that I needed a Google search to help figure it out.

In which a magazine tries to sell you on fiber and bran

Oh, yeah! It's that time again. 🎆 Time for some 1970s health food! 🎆

Today we have The Abridged Edition of the Saturday Evening Post Fiber & Bran Better Health Cookbook (Cory SerVaas, M.D., Charlotte Turgeon, and Fred Birmingham, 1977). The fact that The Saturday Evening Post made cookbooks somehow escaped me until I cam across this apparently lesser-known volume. (A quick Google search suggests that their All-American and Family cookbooks were more popular, but I have never been popular, so I guess it's fitting I have a more obscure entry. I'm sure it's more interesting anyway!)

How about a nice fiber and branful dinner menu? To show that this "health" cookbook isn't afraid of salt or sugar, we'll start off with a main dish of Raisin Ham Loaf.

I think the title is a missed opportunity. After all, this recipe also has bran cereal in it, so why not Raisin Bran Ham Loaf? If you consider that it's also got the mandatory '70s healthy recipe ingredient of nonfat dry milk, you might even consider this the precursor to current milk 'n cereal bars that kids grab for breakfast under the pretense that they're not actually candy bars. It's just that this version also has ham.

We'll need a salad to go with that Raisin Bran Ham. How about some of that perennial favorite, Sunshine Salad?

Ha! If you thought this would be the usual sweet carrot-and-pineapple goodness, you were wrong. In fact, even if you thought it was the weird Lutheran off-brand, you were wrong. This one doesn't even have gelatin! It's just a very health-foody mixture of bulgur, sprouts, and sunflower seeds in a vinaigrette. Whee.

Let's just move on to the dessert. How about a hunk of something green that's frozen solid?

I imagine avocado with lemon and honey isn't too bad, but a lightly sweet avocado ice cube is not exactly what most people hope for when they hear "dessert." It just seems like a recipe to make two things that people usually like-- avocados and dessert-- disappointing.

If all else fails, you can sneak a snack. The cookbook recommends keeping Super Seed Mixture in the fridge for whenever you need a little something to keep you from getting hangry at everyone within a 10-block radius.

I don't know, though. If the choice is between yelling at everybody who crosses your path and eating a spoonful or two of damp seeds, buckwheat, and rice out of the fridge, well... I'm not entirely sure which would be more satisfying. Fiber and bran might be good for what we politely call digestive health, but we might want to think about the impact on emotional and social health too...

The one word Roanoke cooks take very seriously

Remember how I suggested that The Junior League of Roanoke Valley, Virginia, creators of Of Pots and Pipkins (1971) might not even know what pipkins are? Well, there are a lot of words with meanings the Junior Leaguers can ignore! Do you expect the recipe for Moose to contain, well, moose?

Ha, ha! You fool! Moose is just a lasagna-adjacent casserole made with hamburger, noodles, tomato sauce, and lots of dairy (because the Junior Leaguers of Roanoke definitely believe in dairy above all else!).

What kinds of things might you expect to find in a Tutti Frutti Cake? If you think it should have fruits since "tutti frutti" is Italian for "all fruits," well, you don't understand how the Roanoke Valley Junior Leaguers operate.

To them, "tutti frutti" obviously means "chocolate and nuts." (I had a tough time deciding to post this one because I was convinced I must be missing something. No fruit in the cake? Must be in the filling. Nope! Maybe in the frosting? Nope! Maybe I didn't read the instructions carefully enough, and the fruit is surreptitiously sneaked into the narrative without being included in the ingredient lists? Not that I can tell...)

The one word the Roanoke Junior League seems to take seriously is "easy." 

Note that this is not Easy Green Bean Casserole, but "Easy" Green Bean Casserole. I think Mrs. Robert Clement (Dorothy Young) had to use the scare quotes because the cook actually has to make a sauce rather than just dumping a can of cream-of-something soup onto the beans and calling it a day. It's not really easy if you have to make your own sauce, so you can't just throw the word "easy" around unless you indicate that it's being used ironically.  Words like "moose" and "tutti frutti," who cares? They can mean anything. But do not tempt a cook with the promise of a recipe being easy unless it is really goddamn easy!