Picture the foods of the '50s. Or maybe don't.

I wasn't that surprised to find a Rawleigh cookbook in my late grandma's belongings. As I have noted before, my family got caught up in that MLM bullshit. What did surprise me was that grandma's copy of Rawleigh's Picture Treasury of Good Cooking was from 1959. I don't think our family got into Rawleigh sales until the 1980s. Now I'm wondering whether we were in it for longer than that and I just wasn't really aware of it until then, or whether grandma encountered Rawleigh salespeople decades before she got involved in the scheme herself. Or maybe our dealer just gave grandma an old cookbook for some reason. Who knows? (Not me.)

My favorite thing about the collection is the pictures, which often do not sell the recipes as well as Rawleigh probably hoped. I mean, I'm not exactly dying to try mud-covered chicken.

More specifically, the topping looks like the thinned-out clay called "slip" that we used in ceramics class to help glue pieces together. Can't say I ever had any desire to taste it.

The fact that this is seasoned with cloves does nothing to make me more excited about this recipe.

I was briefly alarmed by this next picture, thinking that perhaps I was seeing whipped potatoes served on a sea of guacamole and garnished with mushrooms.

This is actually just that old (and usually pretty tasty if you ask me) standby, chicken tetrazzini.

I guess the editors just wanted to show off that the cookbook had full color pictures and didn't stop to think about what green noodles would actually look like in the photograph.

A few of the pictures seem like they could be illustrations in some intro to biology textbook. This first one reminds me of a diagram of a cell: some kind of a membrane enclosing a bunch of tiny organelles you'll have to label on the exam. Maybe the lettuce represents algae in the pond where this single-celled organism lives? Or maybe it's a series of extensions from the membrane to help with locomotion or nutrient absorption?

Nothing that interesting, of course. It's just gelled-up cottage cheese concoction enclosing a salad of canned or previously-frozen vegetables marinated in an oil-and-vinegar dressing.

There's also a protozoa of some sort (or alternatively, an implausibly squishy trilobite?) rowing its way down the dinner table.

This is (also quite implausibly) supposed to be jambalaya.

I realize there are a lot of ways people make jambalaya and that I am NOT by any stretch of the imagination an authority on the subject of Creole cooking, but I'm pretty sure the absence of sausage, the missing celery from the holy trinity, the fact that the rice is cooked separately and not seasoned, and the addition of fried bananas would make many wonder whether this could reasonably be called any variety of jambalaya at all. Then again, it was much easier to get away with calling a recipe whatever you wanted in the 1950s.

The picture that really got me, though, was the one that immediately brought to mind the popular childhood insult "Is that your head, or did your neck throw up?"

Sorry, fish. Looks like your neck threw up. Maybe this is not the best thing to make when someone catches you a delicious bass. 

And just because I am so upset by that photo, I won't end on it. We will end with this recipe for fried fish fillets from the opposite page.

And it's not just because fried foods tend to be delicious. It's also because I think the fishy dishware is just so cute.

I love the balloon-with-eyes look of the fish serving platter and the contemplative-but-also-maybe-a-little-horrified look of the fish serving dish above it. They're kind of disturbing in their own right, but still appealing in a hard-to-identify way-- a good ending note for a blog like this.

Jonesing for June

It's almost June, which according to Home Gardener's Cookbook (Marjorie Page Blanchard, 1974) "is the first month when the gardener is eyed with envy." Blanchard is seriously underestimating my laziness and overestimating my ability to discern the difference between produce from a home garden and that from a grocery store, but it is true that June is the time (at least in the more northerly states) that gardeners finally have some real variety from their gardens.

Spinach is apparently plentiful in June, so the spinach artichoke roll is an option.

I like that this imagines so many possibilities for the roll: serving it filled with herb cheese as hors d'oeuvres, with creamed mushrooms and Hollandaise as a side, or with curried chicken salad for a picnic. (Not that I can really imagine trying to transport this to a picnic, but June is a month for being a little impractically dreamy.)

My very favorite vegetables--beets!-- (heavy sarcasm there) are just coming into season, and the book recommends cooking them with another of my "favorites": celery.

I guess June is such a lovely month that you have to balance it out with a salad of sugared dirt and edible dental floss so you don't risk getting too accustomed to being happy. 

If you want to preserve some fresh herbs but are tired of simply drying them, there's a recipe for basil jelly.

I'm not quite sure what you'd do with such a thing, but at least making it would give the cook a sense of accomplishment. And if they gave it all away as gifts, they wouldn't have to think about how to use the stuff. Make it somebody else's problem!

And speaking of preservation and gift making, June is also the month to start a holiday gift you can work on all summer long: Tutti Frutti!

Add your strawberries and sugar to some brandy or rum now, and just keep adding fruits and sugar as the growing season progresses. By the end of the year, it should be ready to bottle and give away. (And of course, tutti frutti is always an excuse for me to link to The Devil's Rejects!)

On that happy note, I will sign off so I can walk to the grocery, buy some strawberries and fresh herbs, and pretend that they're garden fresh when I eat them in a simple salad later. That's more my speed than any of these recipes...

Grounded and not-so-grounded beef recipes

Since we've been thinking about economizing lately, let's look at Ground Beef Cookbook (Favorite Recipes Press, 1967), which opens with a reassurance that ground beef "fits into every budget and any type of meal."

And some recipes really seemed bent on economizing. (And yes, those italics are meant to suggest that the emphasis on saving money was to the detriment of the recipe.) Wash Day Soup seemed pretty sad, for example.

The soup has nothing in it aside from the meatballs (bound with eggs and graham cracker crumbs, so they're likely to have a weird, overly-sweet flavor). The meatballs aren't even browned first (maybe to save cooking fat?), so they don't get a chance to develop flavor before being dumped into lightly-salted-but-otherwise-plain water-- not even broth! I can't imagine this tastes like anything other than disappointment. Better to just ask for extra slices of toast covered with grated cheese and skip the soup altogether....

The book did offer some ways to turn cheap ingredients into something more appetizing than this soup, though. The simple addition of a flour-and-shortening crust turns plain old meat loaf into something akin to Beef Wellington.

Plus, these are individual loaves, so everybody can feel special!

Still cheap, but probably not as good unless you enjoy soggy fries is the Beef and French Fry Loaf.

It has not one, but TWO strata of fries between beef layers.

Of course, there were plenty of recipes for ground beef in a tomato sauce with pasta and often a cheese topping. These types of recipes are usually described as Italian in vintage cookbooks, but this one was a little more imaginative, describing one such dish as Chop Suey...

...and another as a Danish Casserole.

I also expected the "Polynesian" recipes to have the usual combination of pineapple and green peppers seasoned with soy sauce, but this book's Beef Polynesian went a different route.

Here, "Polynesian" adds curry powder to the soy sauce and substitutes mushrooms, raisins, peas, and mandarin oranges for the pineapple and green pepper. I never thought the pineapple-pepper combo sounded good, but this take makes it sound better by comparison!

Speaking of questionably-"ethnic" recipes, this booklet had a note from the original owner in it. Written on a scrap of a calendar from 2005, it just said "Japanese Casserole." It was on the page for (you guessed it!) Japanese Casserole, so I suspect the previous owner may have made this one.

I have zero sense of what makes this casserole Japanese. It sounds far more like a recipe from the Midwest to me, what with the meat, potatoes, carrots, and cream of mushroom soup. If anybody figures out how this name got attached to the recipe, let me know!

At least Japanese Casserole is, indeed, a casserole. This last recipe title has me even more stumped. I wasn't expecting to find kimchee in a mainstream American cookbook from the 1960s... and I'm still not convinced I actually found a kimchee recipe.

What this combination of veggies, ground beef, chili sauce, pinto beans, and bean sprouts has to do with kimchee, I have not the faintest idea. Maybe Mrs. William H. Buescher heard that "kimchee" was a Korean word that referred to vegetables and involved chili, so she assumed this could somehow fit the bill, not realizing that fermentation was a vital part of the equation?

Whatever happened, I like that there is such a variety of recipes in this book-- expected, unexpected, nasty, not so bad. It's a fun collection! And it makes me glad that "wash day" is not really a thing anymore...

Poppy plays a sandwich psychic

What's your favorite way to fix a sandwich? 

You didn't say "In the microwave," did you? 

Okay, that display of my "powers" is probably not quite enough to convince you that I'm a psychic. 

How about if I add that Sanyo is very disappointed in you? Can reading an electronics company's "mind" count toward my psychic ability?

Okay, I'll accept that you're still not convinced, but doesn't that kind of prove...?

Fine. I give up. This is just a bit anyway, meant to suggest that Multi-Power Microwave Miracles from Sanyo (1977) didn't really need a chapter on sandwiches, but I'm glad it had one.

The Hot Salad Cheesewiches recipe shows that the "just put anything you've got between slices of bread and call it a sandwich" mindset extended into the 1970s. 

Just drape tomato and pickle slices over lightly-toasted bread, heap with a Cheddar, cucumber, onion, sour cream, and seasoning mixture, and microwave the heck out of it! Be sure you make four because everybody is sure to want a tower of rubbery bread covered in hot, soggy vegetables that probably would have tasted better chilled or at room temperature.

If the cheesewiches don't seem like quite enough work for you, try the Cheese Roll-Ups. 

Yes, this is one of those recipes that starts with buying an uncut loaf of bread and cutting it into slices horizontally. Then the slices get spread with a mixture of crumbled bacon, grated American cheese, chopped-up olives, Worcestershire, and condensed cream-of mushroom soup. (I love salt more than a reasonable person should, but even I think this sounds pretty damn salty.) Roll each one up, microwave the heck out of it, and then serve with a sauce of the rest of the cream of mushroom soup (slightly diluted). The great part about this recipe is that each of the six sandwiches has to be microwaved for 1-1/2 minutes, and then everybody has to wait around for the soup topping to microwave for at least another 4 minutes. That means by the time everything is done, the first sandwich that got cooked will have had more than 10 minutes to cool off-- so by now, it's probably not only rubbery and soggy, but also cold. If you actually wanted to try this recipe for some reason, you'd probably be better off just wrapping the sandwiches in foil and warming them all at the same time in the conventional oven while the mushroom sauce heated.

And finally, we have a sandwich that can double as dessert if you want it to. (I know what you're thinking, but it's not a microwaved fluffernutter.) It's Brapples!

I guess "Brapples" is supposed to be a portmanteau of "bread" and "apples." And it's kind of like slices of bread topped with apple pie filling (sans cinnamon) and sliced cheese. To transform into a dessert, simply top "each with a tablespoon of sour cream and a sprinkling of brown sugar and nuts." (Now I kind of wonder if you can turn it into a "salad" by serving it with a lettuce leaf. Could I stretch the Jell-O based salad rules to cover this too, since it's got fruit, cheese, and nuts?)

At least I can kind of see this last recipe appealing to someone. (Not so much with the first two!) I'm not sure any of these will convert people to the idea of microwaving sandwiches though. (For the last one, maybe microwave the apple mixture on its own and then broil the assembled sandwiches in the conventional oven to brown the cheese!)

Well, I can see I'm wearing out my welcome (Are you sure I'm not psychic?), so this post is over.

Stretching food dollars with the USDA

As upset as we are over the rising price of... well... pretty much everything lately, it's not like this is the first time in history people have had to stretch their budgets, as today's featured pamphlet-- Money-Saving Main Dishes-- from 1966 attests.

So the USDA used to send out pamphlets like this to help Americans save money. (I tried to find links to similar current publications, but I kept getting forwarded to the new Dietary Guidelines for Americans no matter what I clicked, so if they exist, they are not getting promoted well enough to find easily.) It's interesting that this even came with a stamp from the district representative, as if politicians wanted people to think the government could, in fact, be helpful. Even though Latta was Republican, he was apparently on board with spending money to help make people's lives better (rather than reserving tax dollars for prisons and weapons and insisting any other spending was wasteful).

The booklet offers a lot of ways to stretch the definition of "burgers." There are Meat-potatoburgers. I'll bet you can't guess the filler!

Okay, if you didn't guess that the filler was potatoes, I'm a little worried about you. There's also a variation to use cooked meat and leftover mashed potatoes for maximum savings. Whether you want to stretch the a meager portion of ground beef or use up last night's leftovers, the book has got you covered.

I guess the Scotch meat patties aren't technically listed as burgers, but they still take on that classic shape.

Alternatively, they can be formed into meat balls and be simmered in a nearly seasoning-free tomato sauce for some super-bland spaghetti.

I thought the biggest stretch might just be the Fish-cheeseburgers.

I doubt many self-respecting kids would consider fish sticks with chili sauce and cheese on a hamburger bun to be burgers! Then I saw the "quick pizza" version listed under "For variety," and I had an even harder time imagining kids accepting split rolls topped with fish sticks, catsup, garlic powder, oregano, and a slice of cheese as "pizza."

If you want to branch out beyond burger variations, there are some ways to stretch canned fish, like the Sardine puff.

I'm guessing there is a reason I see a breakfast version of this dish (with sausage and/or bacon in place of the sardines, and which is so common and appetizing-sounding that I don't think I've ever bothered to feature it) far more often than I see this one (which is once, so far).

For the families who want to know how something like pineapple upside-down cake would translate into a fish-based main course, there's Topsy turvy tuna pie.

When it gets inverted for serving, it will have lemon or orange slices on the top, over a tuna-and-mushroom-soup custard and a cornbread crust. It should certainly be a conversation-starter. (Like, "Why couldn't you have made chili with a cornbread topper instead?")

Perhaps oddest of all for our modern "French toast is so sweet it should almost be considered a dessert" sensibilities, there is a recipe for French toast with tomato-meat sauce.

And even if you're not entirely convinced that French toast should be sweet, having a tomato-meat sauce with anything other than pasta sounds a bit weird. (Not to mention that eating the sauce on pasta would be way cheaper than making French toast, but maybe this recipe is for families with eggs and/or bread that is about to go bad?)

I can't be too hard on these recipes, though. They represent a time when there was more emphasis on the government actually making some attempt to help people out when times got tough. I'd certainly like to see more of that....

Don't eat that! (And I'm not just being picky this time.)

When I initially posted about my grandma's recipe box, I noted how few of those recipes I actually remembered her making. Today's post is kind of the same thing. I don't remember her making any of these recipes either, but today's concoctions are reminders that grandma was a farmer. She had to make do with whatever she had on hand when the family faced problems, which meant keeping plenty of "recipes" you weren't supposed to eat, right alongside the ones for zippy zucchini and cranberry salad.

Well, I don't think people were supposed to eat this first recipe. 

I initially wondered if "Catfish Bait" was a cute name for a type of cookie since I couldn't imagine grandma wasting this much vanilla and maple syrup on fish. (Plus, I don't remember grandpa ever trying to catch catfish. He mostly fished for bluegills.) But considering there's no added fat in this, there's so much vanilla that it likely hits an unpleasant concentration, and the ingredients are just mixed up and refrigerated (Grandma would never serve anything with raw flour in it!), I'm pretty sure it's literally supposed to be catfish bait.

I imagine we may have benefited from this recipe whenever we used a sink at grandma's house...

I don't remember her actually clearing sink drains with this, though. (I wonder if it would work better than the version I've tried in the past with 1 cup each of baking soda and vinegar. My guess is probably not...)

And I am SUPER glad I didn't know anything about this recipe. There's only so much you want to know about your grandparents.

Given how much grandma liked to discuss medical problems, though, I'm kind of surprised I don't remember dinnertime conversations about who was suffering from piles. (I also love the "level (scant)" notation. Should the measure be level or scant? They're not the same. Maybe grandma was so used to using rounded teaspoons of everything on the assumption that more is better that she considered "level" to be "scant" and was saying the same thing twice to encourage herself to pay attention? Who knows....)

For additional soothing power, there's a recipe for "linament" on the back of the card.

I'd spring for a store-bought liniment rather than handling an egg soaked overnight in vinegar, but I live in the age of Amazon, when I can order just about anything and have it delivered directly to my home. Someone living on a farm decades ago who considered a trip to town to be a BIG DEAL (and who apparently kept turpentine, spirit of camphor, and oil of "pepermint" on hand) surely saw this as a more practical and affordable solution than the fancy store-bought liniments.

So maybe grandma actually made these recipes? Maybe they were just things she held onto and never really used, like most of the rest of the stuff in the recipe box? Either way, I'm kind of glad I don't know too much about these particular items...

Mostly stuff grandma didn't make, and one big surprise

Today, I'm posting something very special to me. I inherited my grandma's recipe box. Here is a view of the side, which had a fruit bowl print (repeated on both sides).

Here is the front, which is pretty similar. 

Most exciting of all, this had a flip-up top that could hold a recipe card while the cook... well... cooked.

And for the maybe three readers who don't know me personally, no need for too many condolences. My grandma was 102, heartily sick of everything, and cranky AF. I loved her dearly and miss her, but she was READY to go. (And if you've ever wondered where I get my delightful personality, there's a big clue. 😆)

I wasn't really sure what to expect in the recipe box because I rarely saw grandma use a recipe. She just made stuff. (Again, kinda like me.) When I dug through the recipes, very little seemed familiar. She often had multiple copies of recipes that I don't remember her making even once, like Bisquick's Impossible Lasagna Pie (which made another appearance as "Lasagna Squares").

Or Zippy Zucchini (which had the same name for each appearance).

The Zesty Carrot Salad was stained up enough that I think she probably made it at some point, though I have no recollection of it.

I am not at all surprised to see that she had a variation for an oil-free version, though. Grandpa had heart trouble and this was from the low-fat era. Back then, subbing in Karo syrup was the "healthy" variation.

I saw multiple recipes for things she definitely made, but these are not for the actual versions she made. For instance, I found two recipes for cranberry salad, and NEITHER is the one she made for holidays. This first version doesn't even have Jell-O, and grandma's version was Jell-O based.

The next one has gelatin, but it's missing key ingredients like crushed pineapple and orange juice concentrate.

(If you want to see the recipe my grandma actually used, S.S. from A Book of Cookrye made it a few months ago. It was definitely not in this box.)

Grandma also had a couple recipes for cutout sugar cookies. She made cutouts for Christmas every year (and often randomly at other times too). I still use that same recipe every December and know it's not either of the ones from the recipe box.

I can't really imagine grandma buying cake flour or having cream on hand (well, once they stopped owning dairy cows, anyway...). Weird that she had a recipe calling for these ingredients. (And her version uses both almond extract AND vanilla. It's not a "choose one" scenario.)

Her recipe doesn't use confectioners' sugar or butter, either, so I know this isn't the origin of the cookies she actually made.

My favorite thing about this recipe is the ad on the back for "Mood Watch Ladies."

The ad notes that buyers can use Master Charge to buy this monstrosity, so that dates the recipe to sometime between 1969 and 1979.

But I did find one recipe that I remembered very well, and it kind of choked me up that it was so stained. Grandma must have used it. So you're getting the story whether you want to know it or not, just because I want to tell it.

The summer between high school and college, I moved in with grandma and grandpa. One day when I didn't have to work (I was a cook for a nursing home), they had to go somewhere in the morning and would be home around lunch time. Grandma asked me if I could have lunch ready when they got back and told me to use the ground turkey she had in the fridge. I decided to make up a recipe, and when they got home, my grandpa ate three servings at lunch. He was a man of few words (and generally preferred dessert to anything else), so that was about the highest compliment he could pay. Grandma asked me to write down the recipe so she could make it again.

If you can't read the title, it's "Guidelines for [blank]'s Casserole." (The blank is my real name. I blotted it out, but "Casserole" is nearly unreadable for some reason.) Neither grandma nor I were particularly careful about following recipes and I hadn't really measured anything when I made it anyway, so "guidelines" seemed right for the title.

I had pretty much forgotten about that day until I found this, and I can't believe how clearly I remember it decades later. It's like grandma left me one last present hidden amid all the recipes that I don't remember her making.