Preparing for the First of May

It's almost May! Finally my Home Gardener's Cookbook (Marjorie Page Blanchard, 1974) has more than advice on what to plant in the future accompanied by two or three recipes for whatever random things may be available in a mostly-barren landscape. The chapter starts with asparagus recipes. Blanchard is enchanted by how quickly the vegetable can grow, noting, "One day we see an inch of purple top showing. Two days later we pick enough to fill an omelet. And soon there is enough for the first real meal, with the name 'Spring' on it...." The book makes various recommendations that don't merit a full recipe (such as "The stalks are handsome on pieces of anchovy-buttered toast sprinkled with lemon butter and a bit of sieved egg yolk"), but I wanted to include a full recipe, so here is Asparagus Pudding. (I kind of doubt this is "handsome.")

Luckily, it's not a sweet pudding (though I do have a recipe for asparagus cake if that's your thing). Instead, it's a savory custard filled with asparagus and butter-browned breadcrumbs, topped with a few chives.

Rhubarb is also sneaking up into the world by May, so the book offers a fairly standard rhubarb and strawberry pie. I thought I would go with this more unusual offering, though.

Blanchard claims to have made up this recipe in a year when she was "especially flooded with rhubarb"-- I guess with more than she could fit into a multitude of desserts. If you're the type who likes fruit-and-meat combos, maybe this sounds good-- like a riff on orange chicken?

And of course, herbs start popping up in the spring too! One of the best ways to use them up might be in Tabbouli.

I'd sub in another fresh herb (maybe cilantro) for the onion and use canned tomato in place of the fresh (because I am contrary, if nothing else!), but I love that this is a more herb-heavy variation than the bulgur-heavy kind Americans often make. It definitely says spring is here! And it's a more family-friendly way of greeting spring than singing "First of May." (But hey, if you see the lady who sells ice cream or the man with the tan Shar Pei, tell them I'm over here if they're interested.)

Egging on Asparagus

Spring often puts me in the mood to post some asparagus recipes, so today we're getting them from The Unabridged Vegetable Cookbook (Nika Hazelton, copyright 1976, but mine is from the 1980 Bantam printing). The book really thinks you should serve asparagus and eggs as a main dish, as the Asparagus Milanaise suggests.

Asparagus, butter-fried eggs, and plenty of dairy fat in the forms of browned butter and cheese? Sounds pretty good, although giving a full half-pound of asparagus to each diner might be a little over-generous. At least, it might seem that way until you see the recipe for Flemish Asparagus, supposedly a good luncheon main dish.

The four servings means that each diner is supposed to ingest a full pound of asparagus AND a quarter-cup of butter... (Never mind the weird serving instructions. Just fold up all the asparagus in a napkin and...? Who even has a napkin big enough to encase four pounds of asparagus? Is serving food out of a napkin supposed to be fancy?)

So, celebrate spring by eating a half-to-full pound of asparagus! Or don't! You might feel better if you just polished off that last Reese's peanut butter egg instead.

An exhausting 65-year-old Woman's Day

Ever wonder what the women 65 years ago were thinking about? If so, you're in luck! Today I have the April 1961 Woman's Day magazine for our perusal.

That is, if you can get past the creepy kid on the cover. Seriously, she's so translucent I worry she might be a ghost, and that old-fashioned gingham dress and white gloves and bonnet are NOT helping.

I was honestly more pulled in by the ads than the recipes in this one. One page had an actual advertisement for Catholicism! And as part of the pitch, the ad included this paragraph: "Catholic women may be tempted, at times, unlawfully to limit the number of their children to fit the family income. But the Church reminds them this is a violation of God's law. Likewise, the obligation to provide religious training for their children is not a matter of choice. It is a clear duty." So the selling point is supposed to be "This will definitely make your life even harder! Send away for a free pamphlet today, and you can be even more broke, overextended, and haunted by guilt!"? 

You're probably more interested in the food. I mean, the food stuff is ostensibly why this blog is here. Campbell's had a full page of ads with recipes to describe how to use their products in conjunction with pork chops, my favorite of which was the glazed version.

People like pork chops and applesauce, but this version just skewers an apple slice (plus an orange slice while they're at it!) on top of each chop and then douses the whole thing in cinnamon and cloves. (The soup comes in as a can of beef broth that everything has to cook in.) I can only imagine this as smelling like a potpourri packet gone horribly awry.

For those who would rather have weird meat-and-fruit combos first thing in the morning, a Swift's Premium ad offers recommendations for "Hot, Hearty, Hurry-up Breakfasts for hate-to-get-uppers," including this one for Swift's Premium Corned Beef Hash.

How will a tray full of canned corned beef hash topped with cold apricot halves affect those "hate-to-get-uppers"? My guess is that it will work as intended-- They'll try to get out of the house as quickly as possible so they're not forced to ingest this stuff. (I wouldn't be thrilled with that prospect any time of day, but just the thought of it first thing in the morning makes me a little queasy.)

The magazine itself had mostly very brief or relatively boring recipes, though I did enjoy the title for this one:

I'm not sure how socially acceptable it would be to say you wanted to eat an English thin yellow boy, but apparently it was just a name for bits of hot, seasoned hard-cooked eggs spread on toast...

And I'll close with just a few of the 101 ways to use up leftover ham:

• Serve ham slices with fruit salad. (Use fresh or canned fruit for the salad. Top with dressing made from sour cream and mayonnaise.)
• Spread ham slices with peanut butter, sprinkle with brown sugar, and broil until hot and lightly browned.
• In Stuffed Pancakes: Fill pancakes with [ground or minced] ham and pour over them hot cream-of-mushroom soup thinned with a little milk.
• Use it in Stuffed Peaches: Fill canned peach halves with ham; sprinkle with bread crumbs. Bake in moderate oven about 20 minutes.

Alternatively, just sign up for the Catholic pamphlet and if you do it right, you'll never have to worry about leftovers ever again! The mass of kids will devour every foodstuff you can ever afford to buy the second it's out of the grocery bag...

This little piggy got loafed!

One thing I can say about Americans in 1966: They loved weird pig-based loaves! Seriously! Today's post is just a fraction of the recipes for porky loaves in Favorite Recipes of America: Meats Including Seafood and Poultry. 

A lot of them are ham loaves. I expected the Idaho Stuffed Ham Loaf to be filled with potatoes, since those are Idaho's most famous crop. 

Surprisingly, no! I'm not sure I would ever have guessed "Idaho stuffed" means "filled with spaghetti and hard-cooked eggs coated in white sauce," but that's apparently the meaning.

For those with a sweet tooth, the book offers a meaty variation of a pineapple upside-down cake. 

This one can also be made into a ring and filled with hot (likely overcooked!) veggies for those tired of the loaf format.

If you like the upside-down cake style but aren't a huge fan of pineapple, there's an orangey variant:

For those with a serious sweet tooth and who object that the addition of fruit makes the ham loaf too healthy, there's straight-up Caramel Ham Loaf.

Just cook your meat with a thick layer of brown sugar...

The pork loaves aren't limited to ham, either. There's a Bologna Loaf for when bologna is on sale, I guess.

Or for when you're running low on ground beef and have enough bologna to use it as filler.

And if it's still a few days until the paycheck comes, there's Frankfurter Meat Loaf.

Hot dogs stretched out with rice and cheese? I think my childhood self would have considered this gourmet food.

And as a bonus, I'll end this post with a meat loaf that doesn't have pork in it.

I'll bet the kids were thrilled when it was Hamburger-Clam Loaf night.

I'm just happy to reserve my loaf pans for actual bread, rather than having to stuff them full of random ground meats with filler. I never would have survived all those meat loaves in the '60s!

Time Traveling with Vegetables

The Unabridged Vegetable Cookbook (Nika Hazelton, copyright 1976, but mine is from the 1980 Bantam printing) is both exactly what I expected (with a lot of relatively standard veggie preparations) and a surprise (in its introduction of dishes that were likely unfamiliar to mainstream American cooks and its occasional unexpected preparations). 

So, honestly, a lot of the book is about how to turn any random vegetable into a creamed, au gratin, or sautéed-in-olive-oil-and-garlic(-and-maybe-tomato) version of itself. Not terribly exciting. But the book does remind me that the food scene was quite different back then, as concepts that wouldn't need explanations in mainstream America now required commentary back then. It would be hard to find somebody who didn't understand the concept of salsa today, for instance, but mainstream Americans in the late '70s/ early '80s needed to be told that it was a "sauce... found on all Mexican tables" to be served "on any dishes that can stand a little livening up."

At least they called it "salsa," though. "Hummus" (something that most grocery stores dedicate many square feet of refrigerated shelf space to now) was such a foreign concept that the recipe was Americanized to "Chick Pea Appetizer," with "hummus" left as a parenthetical note.

It should also be served with "flat Arab bread" because "pita" was apparently not a common term either!

There's a recipe for something that seems to have gone mainstream significantly later than salsa or hummus, as well. (At least, it seemed like it to me... I knew about salsa and hummus long before I knew this one...)

I imagine a lot of people would argue that this quickly-made, non-fermented, "less powerful" version is not really kimchi, but I was surprised to see it mentioned at all in a mainstream cookbook this old.

And of course, it does occasionally have somewhat-oddball recipes. I expected the cabbage section to include stuffed cabbage leaves, for instance, but I figured they would be stuffed with rice and ground meat and flavored with tomato sauce. Hazelton had something else in mind, though.

These are filled with a buttery mushroom-and-bread stuffing that probably tastes like Thanksgiving.

I expected iceberg lettuce to be cut into wedges and slathered in dressing...

...but not hollowed out, stuffed with a cream-cheese-based filling, chilled to solidify, and served as cheese-stuffed wedges.

I'll admit I wasn't really expecting a potato pizza at all, but the title made me imagine a crust topped with thinly-sliced potatoes and maybe an oily, rosemary-heavy sauce with plenty of cheese.

I was only sort of right. We've got the cheese and rosemary, but the potatoes are mixed into the crust! I could almost see somebody replacing the flour with a gluten-free flour (and/or maybe some eggs?) to make a gluten-free crust today. 

And while I was generally unsurprised to see so many vegetables get au-gratined, I'll have to admit I wasn't quite prepared for this one.

I primarily think of bean sprouts as an Asian ingredient, so the idea of layering them with a bunch of cream sauce and cheese had not really occurred to me...

The Unabridged Vegetable Cookbook is a great little time capsule, with a lot of recipes that remind me of the past (when everything was served creamed), many that look to our more multiculturally-aware future, plus a few little blips to remind me that the late '70s was a weird time.

Surprise! Casseroles!

If there's one thing home ec teachers and I have in common, it's love of a casserole. (Of course, theirs is genuine and mine is often-but-not-always ironic, but we don't have to tell them that.) That's why today, we're checking out a few casseroles from Quick and Easy Dishes (Favorite Recipes of Home Economics Teachers, 1978 edition). 

Anything with the word "surprise" in the title should be suspect, and Ground Beef Surprise is no exception.

The surprise? A sogged-out layer of French fries between a layer of greasy (apparently not pre-cooked and drained) ground beef and a slick of canned soups. Yay. 🎉

These casseroles tend to use a LOT of canned ingredients, as it was easy to keep canned food on hand. (Couldn't easily or cheaply order groceries delivered to your door back in 1978!) I'm not (that) snobby about canned foods. I'd rather have canned than fresh tomatoes. I go through cans and cans of tomatoes, beans, pumpkin, and even cream of mushroom soup. Still, I wonder about the '70s combinations, like in Quickie Supper Casserole.

Vegetarian vegetable soup with canned spaghetti and chow mein noodles? I mean-- dry spaghetti is already shelf stable. You don't need the mushy metallic canned version if you want to keep spaghetti on hand. (And I'm not sure why anyone would need spaghetti with chow mein noodles!)

But canned spaghetti was pretty popular, for some reason.

If you're not into serving it over chow mein noodles, layer it up with cheese, onions, corn chips, and pork and beans! 

You might hope that the Quick Chinese Supper breaks the overly-reliant-on-cans streak and doesn't even belong in the casserole section, as it should be a stir fry of a few fresh vegetables with a thinly-cut protein (and en casserole was originally a French cooking method anyway!). If so, then you don't really understand vintage "Chinese" recipes, where the term generally means "I dumped in a can of chow mein noodles."

And in this case, it also means "I dumped chow mein noodles, cashews, and canned mandarin oranges into tuna casserole to make it 'Chinese!'" Let that sink in for a moment. (Or don't! I'm trying not to think too hard about it.)

I promise, some casserole recipes are good. Just not these....

Stay slim the vintage way, with iceberg lettuce, canned peaches, and low-cal pudding mix!

Swimsuit season is just around the corner! And back when women were required by law to care about such nonsense, they might have pulled out Better Homes and Gardens Eat and Stay Slim (copyright 1968, but mine is from the 1974 9th printing and originally belonged to my best friend's mom). (Also, my friend is very happy that her mom never made any of the recipes from this collection as far as she remembers.)

Despite the appearance of the cover, the recipes are not all super-plain: pile of plain lettuce, plain roast with a pile of cooked but otherwise very plain mushrooms. Let's see how interesting it could get with another Menu of Mayhem!

Notably, dieters were allowed to start with an appetizer (though most of said appetizers, admittedly, are just small drinks). This one is the prettiest.

So what is in this Double Deck Cocktail besides the watercress garnish?

If you guessed that it's just tomato juice poured on top of pineapple juice, then congratulations! You could be a recipe writer in the 1960s. You win a box of nonfat dried milk!

Now, we'll need a salad. As I said, it's not ALL just piles of lettuce.

Sometimes, the pile of lettuce is encased in green Jell-O.

While that wobbly green ring of low-calorie lime-flavored gelatin with vinegar, shredded lettuce, and sliced green onion could be filled with tuna salad...

I'm going to be a bit more indulgent and serve a sandwich instead. I like the perky sound of "Peachy Ham Swisser."

Not only does it stack the titular ingredients (peaches, ham, and Swiss cheese) on a slice of rye bread, but it also covers them with a sauce of low-calorie mayonnaise, skim milk, chili sauce, and finely-chopped dill pickle. Sounds... confusing at best. I guess if you overwhelm your taste buds with a bunch of random ingredients, maybe they will shut up for a while because they're scared of what you might try next?

But if you insist upon dessert, try a Ribbon Fudge* Parfait. 

*Contains no fudge-- just low-calorie chocolate pudding from a mix combined with instant coffee and fluffed up with whipped egg whites. Then layered with even MORE air... I mean, low-calorie dessert topping.

This collection also has the distinction of ending with eight pages of exercises to help with the slimming! This may be my only cookbook that ends with pictures of people doing stretches.

And the editors of the book must have really needed some extra pages. The exercise section could easily have been half as long because the exercises are divided by gender, but there are almost no differences between them other than whether the picture shows a woman or a man demonstrating the exercise. The one difference I could spot was in the push-ups.

And yes, the book did recommend different reps of each exercise for women and men, but the recommendations were just in the headnotes, which could easily have been combined...

Oh, well. At least the editor got to 93 pages somehow! And that's all that matters (because we know dieting is largely a scam anyway, and it's not like my friend's mom really needed more recipes that she had no intention of making...)