A book that gets too sweet because it can't be salty

I am NOT in the target audience for today's book, as I am a salt fiend. (I have been known to salt pizza. Pizza!) Cooking Without a Grain of Salt (Elma W. Bagg, orig. 1964, but mine is the 1972 Bantam edition) is for people who are on a seriously restrictive low-sodium diet.

That lock on the salt shaker is no joke! The book is written for people who are trying to eat no more than 500 milligrams of sodium a day, which is a nearly impossibly-low level. One of the earliest chapters in this book actually tells the sodium content for 8 ounces of water in major cities throughout the U.S. Bad news to residents of Crandall, Texas! You better find another water source because one glass of city water will put you close to a day's limit. (Okay, the 408.0 milligrams sodium the book lists is almost certainly a typo, as the EPA says that people can taste sodium at 250 mg. per liter of water, so 180% of that in only a cup would definitely be way too salty for anyone.) In any case, readers who live in areas that are prone to snowy winters are encouraged to register with the local board of health to be notified if road salt is making the city's water too sodium-rich. My point is, this book is very serious about limiting sodium. 

Since sweet things (like fruits and straight-up sugar) have flavor without much sodium, this is a rather sweet-heavy book. There are so many main dishes flavored with fruit, like the Pork Chops with Apples and Oranges.

In addition to the titular fruits, there's plenty of pineapple juice, plus cinnamon, cloves, and a little brown sugar. 

If you'd rather have a cow, there's a Roast of Beef Cooked with Prune Juice.

With actual prunes, too, of course, so the pot roast will move right on through, hopefully before the 83 mg. of sodium can stick...

You could serve either with a side of Waikiki Rice.

With all the pineapple, sugar (brown sugar if you're naughty and can handle the extra sodium), and cloves, this might seem as if it could be intended as a dessert, but it's with other side dishes.

Perhaps to break up the monotony of all the sweetness, Bagg adds onions for a sharper bite into a lot of fruity dishes, like the Fruit-Onion Salad, which at least warns you about its intentions...

...and the Apple Salad, which doesn't.

If you'd rather cook them to mellow them out a little, there's also a recipe for Baked Onions and Apples.

But all the sugar is likely to make this just another sweet on a table full of them...

This all sounds a bit better when you consider the savory alternative, though.

Granted, it may not be terrible, but just the name "Hot Yogurt Beef Soup" makes me feel a little sick for some reason.

This book makes me realize that the sweetest thing of all is NOT being on a seriously-sodium-restricted diet. Or maybe that sweet isn't so great, and I should call things "salty" if I love them? (Or maybe I should just kick back and be glad I'm not eating some combination of apples and onions right now? That seems like the easiest takeaway.)

A story's in the title

One thing that I found quite charming about recipes in my copy of Myrtle Beach Cookin' (United Methodist Women of First United Methodist Church in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, 1977, though mine is from the 1994 fifth printing) is that some of the recipes have titles that almost tell a story. The "Men's Corner" chapter includes this recipe for Dinner for Twenty Teenagers.

I love how the title suggests that dad got talked into catering some kind of teenage get-together and wasn't sure what to do, so he just made a ton of foil packets, filled them with whatever was in the pantry, and dumped them in a coal-filled pit (mostly because he wanted an excuse to make a coal-filled pit). I'm not sure how excited teenagers are likely to get over packets of barely-seasoned potato, carrot, and onion cubes next to packets of barely-seasoned ground beef, but at least dad had an excuse to play outside. (I jut hope he dug the 3-foot-deep hole first, rather than leaving the prepared foil packs out in the sun while he prepared the pit to cook them in.)

Speaking of playing, the "Candies and Cookies" chapter offers up "Grandaughter Tea Party Quickies."

It's certainly not hard to imagine grandma realizing she doesn't have much that would make suitable refreshments for her granddaughter's impromptu tea party, so she piled whatever sweet ingredients she had on hand on top of some saltines, ran them under the broiler so they'd seem fancier, and ta-da! Sweet, delicate nibbles for the tea party were ready.

As much as I make fun of old cookbooks for having terrible recipes, I really am fascinated by them in part because of the stories they suggest. I'm just not used to the stories being quite so explicitly suggested. It's fun to get little glimpses into those long-ago lives...

Another Frigidaire collection

You might think I've already posted about Your Frigidaire Recipes (General Motors Sales Corporation, 1940), but maybe you're confusing that with Frigidaire Recipes or Frigidaire Recipe Book or that OTHER Your Frigidaire Recipes. (That one is from 1937.)

Okay, this one does have the same alarmingly basic "chili" recipe as the other booklet of the same name, but this version prints it at a jaunty angle that makes scanning the page a pain in the ass. (I know my efforts to get perfectly-level scans are minimal at best, but at least I have a better excuse for the wonky angle this time.)

The Strawberry Cheese Salad recipe is also at an annoyingly jaunty angle. I chose this in part because I always love poking fun at the idea that something that consists largely of cream cheese, whipping cream, and sugar counts as a salad as long as you chuck in some fruit.

But I also chose this because this booklet includes color photographs, and my first thought when I saw the photo was, "Do you really need a recipe to throw chunks of canned ham on lettuce?"

Surprise! The canned ham is actually strawberries and cream cheese. I'd much rather have the latter, but it would still be a shock to encounter one when you were expecting the other.

This booklet also explains the wonders of ice cubes. It's hard for me to imagine that anyone ever had to have the potential benefits of ice cubes spelled out for them, but just in case you're wondering, ice can cool beverages, keep cold foods cold, and be "wrapped in a fine cloth... [to] be used for massaging the face."

This information is so important that Frigidaire felt compelled to print it on the level rather than at that annoying angle. Also important enough to be printed on the level: a somewhat confusing recipe for Frigidaire Pie.

I love that the instructions go straight from filling a pre-baked pie shell with ice cream and fresh fruit to placing the concoction in a 500-degree oven "until meringue is golden brown." Of course, is no actual instruction to put the meringue on the pie! It would be really hard to get the meringue brown in the oven if it were still sitting on the counter. Recipe writers had so much trust in their readers (and so few recipe testers) back then.

I guess Frigidaire just wanted to make sure it had enough books on the market to sell home cooks on the idea of owning a refrigerator. They weren't as invested in writing eye-catching titles or creating fool-proof recipes or thinking too hard about how the illustrations might look...

An awkward family photo and exciting news from Robin

I got a copy of Kitchen-Klatter Magazine from near the end of their run-- July 1983. (You can see the whole series here.) I love the fabulously awkward photo that graces the cover.

I don't think anybody wanted to be there, but Elizabeth is the only one young enough to be honest about it. (Unrelated, but it's also good to know that the recipient received her copy on June 28.)

This little magazine consists of lengthy letters from various people who (maybe?) meant something to the original readers, articles with titles like "Save the Handkerchief," "Brief Encounter with a Wagon Train," and "The Sunday School Corner." (Hot tip: Most of the songs (like "This Little Light of Mine") should be geared to the pre-schoolers, but you can throw in one of the more difficult songs like "How Great Thou Art" to try to keep the older kids engaged.)

It also includes four pages of recipes. I learned that before Ben & Jerry's was popular, the idea of lemon-cheesecake ice cream was very different from what it is now. 

No tiny chunks of actual cheesecake or graham-cracker-crust swirls! Just some cottage cheese added to the lemony ice cream mixture to give it a little extra tang.

I also learned that watermelon was sometimes whipped up into a chiffon (even if I'm more familiar with chocolate, pumpkin, or orange varieties).

But there was one main thing I learned from these four little pages of recipes.

ROBIN

GOT

A MICROWAVE

AND

WANTS

EVERYBODY TO KNOW!

So, congrats on the microwave, Robin! I hope the bran muffins were not nearly as rubbery as I imagine they were. And I don't really understand using dry non-dairy creamer in the carrots and broccoli, but you do you!

Cooking with an enthusiastic Aloha

Aloha! I picked up Cooking with Aloha (Joyce Mondoy for Hawaii Foodbank, Inc., undated) mostly because I was enchanted with Brett K. Waipa's illustrations of Aloha.

From the big, dopey grin to the hole in the middle (Must be helpful on days with a lot of recipe testing! There's always room for more.) to the stumpy little legs, the dude is pretty endearing. So for this booklet, we will check out Aloha's appearance on the title page for a chapter and then go over one or two of the most Hawaiian-seeming recipes from the section. 

The book, fittingly enough, starts out with a chapter on salads and pupus.

Aloha is taking "tossed salads" very literally! My favorite thing about this might just be that it's easy to forget he's supposed to be the letters A-L-O-H-A stacked on top of each other (since a big chunk of his body is covered by the jersey). This makes his legs especially puzzling. I can't imagine him running two steps without falling over. I am no sports expert, but I still can't help but think this would be a severe disadvantage in football...

The most interesting recipe in this chapter just might be the Papaya Seed Dressing.

Being a Midwesterner with very limited exposure to tropical fruits, I had no idea papaya seeds were even edible, but apparently they are! Easier to eat when they're ground down to "the size of ground pepper," though.

And if you wondered whether Hawaiians had the same fondness for Jell-O based salads as mainlanders, fear not! This chapter also features an Avocado and Gelatin Salad.

I'm pretty sure I'd prefer the Avocado and Lime Pie from the Pieathalon to this, though! Cream cheese sounds way better than mayonnaise in this mixture.

Next up is the breads chapter.

Aloha is so entertained by his "rolling in the dough" joke that he doesn't seem concerned that the rolling pin and oven seem to be wildly out of scale with each other, or that everything is just about to fall on his head. 

What kind of bread might you make in Hawaii? While there are the old standbys like bran muffins and zucchini bread, I was most interested by Avocado Bread.

I thought it might be pretty similar to zucchini bread recipes, but this has no cinnamon, salt, or vanilla, so I wonder if it would be rather bland... (I'm sure it wouldn't matter to Aloha, though. He's enthusiastic about everything!)

Speaking of enthusiasm, he's fully in 8-year-old "sharing" mode for the chapter on cakes.

You can have a tiny slice. Aloha will polish off the rest! I'm sure people expect a fruity, tropical cake from this chapter, so here's Hawaiian Pineapple Carrot Cake for you. 

I'm not really sure what sets this apart from the carrot cakes we bake in the Midwest. (My recipe has pineapple too!) So I'm going to include a second recipe-- one that seems much more regional to me: Cocoa Mochi.

I'm guessing that mochi would have seemed pretty exotic for a lot of mainstream Midwesterners until fairly recently (and I'd still have to go to a specialty store or order online to get mochiko!), so this seems much more unique to the island than the recipe with Hawaii in the name.

Aloha is a real fan of sweets! The cakes aren't enough, so we'll look at pies and desserts next.

One thing that the mainland and Hawaii had in common: weight jokes. (Sigh.) The scales are not too excited that Aloha is into the sugar again. I'm representing this chapter with something typically Midwestern (chiffon pie) crossed with something Hawaiian (lilikoi). 

I was really curious about what "lilikoi" might be, but it turns out it's something I have heard of! It's the Hawaiian word for passionfruit. At least that means that mainlanders can make it if we want to.

We'll top off all these (mostly) desserts with a main dish.

I'm trying to decide whether Aloha is a sloppy eater or growing a weird mustache. (Maybe both?) In any case, he just might eat his napkin too if he doesn't pay attention...

And what might he be chowing down on? Well, it's fishy, as you might expect, given that he lives on an island.

But it's salmon loaf (from canned salmon)! The thing that sets this apart from the typical Midwestern version is that this incorporates tofu and shoyu with the more common ingredients like veggies, eggs, and bread crumbs. (Plus, honestly, I couldn't resist including a recipe that starts out with the crossed-out sentence "Beat eggs; add vanilla, mushroom soup, shoyu, oil, salt." Where did the vanilla come from? And why is this recipe ALL CAPS?)

I'm sure Aloha doesn't care about the inconsistency. He's just glad to be here and to wish you aloha.

Funny Name: Fo' Jonni

I had to read this recipe title from Ground Beef Cookbook (Favorite Recipes Press, 1967) several times, and it made me laugh every time.

My guess is that Mrs. Emma Frances McCluskey wanted a recipe for Johnny Marzetti, but didn't really understand the name when she wrote it down. I swear, if this cookbook was from the early 2000s, I'd think the title was made up by a midwestern mom who really wanted her kids to like Johnny Marzetti, noticed kids were saying things like "fo' shizzle," and decided to try to make it sound cool by changing the name to "Jonni-Majarizy" (without fully understanding where "fo' shizzle" trend came from because then she definitely wouldn't have played along).

Carbin' in South Carolina

Myrtle Beach Cookin' (United Methodist Women of First United Methodist Church in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, 1977) is a bit unusual. Most of the fundraising community cookbooks I see tend to be one-and-done deals.

But this book is from the 1994 fifth printing. This must have been pretty popular!

One thing that impressed me about this collection is the devotion to carbs. Some entries introduced me to carbs I'd never heard of before, like this recipe for Stuff 'n Such Hot Dogs.

What the hell was "Uncle Ben's stuff 'n such"? Apparently, it was an early and short-lived competitor for Stove Top stuffing mix. The recipe's persistence in the collection suggests the collection was not updated for subsequent printings.

Sometimes, the recipes are very practical, intent on saving carbs from getting stale or moldy. Got too many hot dog buns? Turn them into seasoned bread sticks!

These are basically just long, skinny croutons flavored with "crazy salt," lemon pepper, curry powder, and a stick and a half of margarine so they can "keep a long time."

Some of the recipes use carbs in non-standard ways. I didn't really expect to see mashed potato flakes turned into a dessert-y pie filling...

And yet, here they are, mixed with eggs, sugar, and lemon instant pudding, along with the more standard ingredients to reconstitute potato flakes. (And this is called "Irish Potato Pie" not to suggest that it's for St. Patrick's Day, but to let people know not to expect sweet potato pie!)

There are appetizer carbs coated in a layer of carbs to superficially resemble a fancy (and carby) sweet snack.

I was not expecting the bread cubes to be coated with a "frosting" of cheese, butter, and Tabasco bound with flour, but that's exactly what these are. (I'll bet I would agree with the assessment that they are "delicious," though.)

In case you want something a little lighter, I will end this with a vegetable recipe. (Still carbs, but they're considerably watered down in veggie form!) I kind of expected Mrs. Misey's Cucumbers and Onions to be a cool, salad-y preparation, perhaps with the titular veggies marinated in an oil-and-vinegar-based dressing in the fridge for a few hours before serving. Nope!

They're sliced up, layered, and cooked in a sauce that's half Ketchup and half chili sauce. (Not really sure why one merits capitalization and the other does not, but the stylistic choice adds interest.) I'm also not really sure why anyone would want hot cucumbers and onions under a slick of hot tomato-based condiments, but again, the choices got my interest.

I guess life on the beach can really spur an appetite for carby goodness! As can life in the Midwest when you're holed up inside for the winter... So I guess my point really is just that carbs are good. (Unless they're cooked under a layer of Ketchup and chili sauce.)