Food! from the USDA

The imaginatively-named Food is a magazine-ish publication of the UDSA from 1979. 

This booklet was "the first of a new series of USDA publications designed to give you up-to-date, reliable information about food and nutrition issues and suggestions on how to apply this information to your food decisions." The series doesn't seem to have gotten very far-- three issues, as far as I can tell. 

As the cover suggests, this one focuses mainly on breakfasts and snacks, and the recipes are, to some degree, what I would expect. Healthy snacks? I would have bet money on this having a recipe for a cottage-cheese-based dip. 

And I was right in betting on the type of recipe included, but I was mistaken in using the singular (dip). There are in fact TWO cottage-cheese-based dips.

And of course, there would be a healthy-ish popsicle.

I was impressed that this one is made with plain gelatin-- not strawberry!-- and plain yogurt, too... so even if the frozen strawberries had some added sugar, this would still have been a less sugary treat than a lot of midwestern-style Jell-O "salads."

The booklet also highlights economical meals, so you know it will have a meatless dinner option that's basically a brick of veggies, nuts, wheat germ, eggs, and dairy trying to masquerade as meatloaf.

This version is dressed up with a home-made onion sauce rather than cream-of-mushroom soup or ketchup. 

There were a few surprises, though, like the "Open-Faced Submarine Sandwiches."

Sorry, USDA, but calling an English-muffin-half topped with a little salami, (broiled!) lettuce and other veggies, and American cheese a "submarine sandwich" is such a misuse of the term that I am physically incapable of writing it without scare quotes.

And then there are the French Toasted Tuna Sandwiches.

I tried to keep an open mind, even though, admittedly, I hate tuna salad and am not particularly fond of French toast either. I thought, "Well, if you like tuna salad and use a savory rather than sweet custard for the French toast, you'd probably think this was fine." And then I saw the vanilla in the recipe. Does anybody really want vanilla and tuna salad?

Apparently the USDA thought so. And the more I gaze upon these recipes, the more surprised I am that this series made it all the way up to three issues....

Spooooooky Sandwiches!

Halloween recipes tend to be somewhat rare in my old cookbooks, but I love Halloween and want to put it in whenever I can, so today's recipes from Multi-Power Microwave Miracles from Sanyo (1977) seemed Halloween-ish enough for me to say they could fit the part.

My inspiration was the Witches' Brew Heroes, since the witchy aspect made them an obvious Halloween choice. I was also amused that "witches' brew" part of the name suggests it will be some kind of a beverage (or at least a soup or stew that could be cooked up in a big kettle over an open fire under a full moon). Nope! These are sandwiches.

Basically a very mild, bean-free chili on "hero rolls." So I guess it's at least close to a stew, now that I think about it. And maybe the green from the green pepper makes it extra witchy? (I don't know, but I'd add a "spider web" of shredded cheese to the tops of these.

Apparently, Sanyo really liked the idea of something chili-adjacent on a bun, as the Paul Bunyans are pretty similar-- just have some olives added in and they're served on hamburger buns.

Paul Bunyan is a Halloween-appropriate costume, and the added olives could be passed off as chopped-up eyeballs if you want to make it seem even spookier, so I'm calling this a Halloween recipe too.

And if you don't want basically thick chili on a bun, but you still want a sandwich with a spooky-ish name for Halloween, there's Old Mystic.

Granted, the mixture of crab, shrimp, cream cheese, white wine, and horseradish seems a bit too grownup for the kiddies on Halloween night, so it might be best to save Old Mystic for the adults. 

Of course, the scariest part of all these recipes is just trying to clean out the microwave after you've made them! (And airing out all that microwaved seafood smell from Old Mystic.) But "You know, it's Halloween. I guess everyone's entitled to one good scare, huh?" 

Well, they are creations involving chicken, anyway...

Chicken Delicious Creations (Favorite Brand Name Recipes) is from 1994, but it showed up in my collection with some other older stuff, so it's making an appearance here despite its relatively recent publication date.

This is one of those cookbooks that tries to include recipes from various cultures, but doesn't try very hard because it's got to include whatever brand names it's trying to sell. The Chicken and Shrimp Gumbo, for instance, looks more like a succotash with extra veggies and proteins dumped in than an actual gumbo.

No roux for thickening. No holy trinity-- just the green peppers. Plenty of canned Del Monte vegetables, though.

When I saw a whole can of Carnation evaporated milk went into the recipe for Chicken with Snow Peas and Walnuts, I told myself that maybe the recipe developers weren't trying for a Chinese-ish item (even though that's what the inclusion of snow peas generally meant back then).

But then I saw the picture-- complete with chopsticks and rice noodles. I guess we're just ignoring that actual Chinese dishes don't use much in the way of dairy so Carnation can move some product.

There's also yet another reminder that back in the day, "risotto" mostly just meant that rice was involved somehow (at least, that's what it meant when the term was used in an American cookbook).

I think if you promised risotto and then actually served instant brown rice cooked with chicken, onion, horseradish, sugar, black beans, and bell peppers, topped at the end with just a sprinkle of Parmesan, diners today would have a hard time forcing their faces into a look of delight (and keeping their clenched fists hidden under the table, rather than swinging in your direction).

Of course, since this booklet is sponsored by both Dole and Del Monte, there are so many chicken and pineapple recipes. When I saw "Sweet and" in the title for this one, I expected "Sweet and Sour," but this recipe actually foresaw the "swicy" craze of the future.

Not that any of our current sweet-and-spicy foods are likely to include canned pineapple, canned green beans, and crushed red pepper flakes, though. (Plus, this still includes sweet and sour sauce, so it's not like my initial guess was wrong.)

The weirdest pineapple recipe, though, might be the one for Hawaiian Chicken Salad. Not because it combines the chicken with pineapple, apple, celery, onion, green pepper, and mayonnaise. Not because it is served hot.

But because it is topped with a coating of buttered (or margarined) Honey Almond Delight cereal before being baked (or microwaved, in case this wasn't sufficiently weird already).

I hope the book's original owner didn't consider these brands to be favorites before they acquired this collection, because it seems like the recipes could have ruined that affinity pretty quickly. I'd certainly think differently of Honey Almond Delight if hot chicken salad came to mind every time I saw it.

Funny Name: NSFW? Edition

From my possible-originally-a-calendar-but-not-dated-on-the-pages-I-own "Betty Baker Tested" pages, here's a recipe title that made me do a double-take.

No matter where your mind might go when you see "Zesty Frank Poke," though, it's just a recipe for hot dogs with a cream cheese filling, served in a bun slathered with mustardy butter. (Although the more I think about that description, the dirtier it sounds....)

Ready, aim, eat!

I've posted plenty of appliance cookbooks: microwave, refrigerator, blender, pressure cooker, slow cooker... But The Ready Aim Cookbook (Jo-ann Schoenfeld, 1976) is a new one for me.

This unusually specific book is a collection of "recipes for the electric foodgun." If you're not sure what an electric foodgun is, it's also called a cookie press. My internet buddy at A Book of Cookrye has a non-electric version that she's used to make plenty of cookies. Well, this book thinks that limiting the appliance to cookies is a mistake, so it has recipes to use the foodgun for every part of the meal. 

We'll start out with an appetizer.

With Roquefort Gardens, the headnote observes, "You can smell the flowers!" Whether you want to smell them is a different question, but at least the foodgun makes the cheesy flowers on a pumpernickel backdrop cute.

Next, we will need a salad. How about this beautiful goblet full of salad?

It looks so pretty and inviting with the orange slices and the whipped cream... So pretty that it is easy to miss the fact that this also contains big slices of onion.

I can easily imagine the shock of thinking you're digging into a light and dessert-y fruit salad and ending up with a big bite of red onion drenched in vegetable oil... Probably best to move on and get to the main course.

A LOT of the recipes in this book mainly qualify as foodgun-prepared because they're finished off with a sprayed-on dairy topping of some sort, but the appliance actually plays a more central role in the recipe for Spinach and Ricotta Gnocchi.

It's used to shape the gnocchi! Part of me thinks this seems like a stroke of genius-- making a potentially tedious task faster and easier-- and part of me knows I've never actually made gnocchi from scratch and suspects that people who have would seriously question my assumption. At least the foodgun seems less superfluous here than it does in a lot of the other recipes. And here is the Basic Tomato Sauce the gnocchi are supposed to go with.

I assume the oregano is supposed to be dried given the tiny amount and the unlikeliness that '70s cooks would have fresh on hand, so I'm not sure why it's added for the last five minutes. Dried herbs are usually better added near the beginning of cooking. At least this has more seasoning than just salt and pepper!

And now that we've prepared an entire meal using the foodgun, it's time for dessert! Not cookies, since that would be too obvious. Instead, let's go for a fresh Mint Chip Mousse to help counteract the smell of all those onions.

Okay, I picked this mostly because I have sooo many recipes for gelatin with weird things in it, but I think this is my first one for gelatin with cut-up mint patties in it. The foodgun really doesn't have much of a role here, just shooting on some whipped cream as a garnish at the end of the process. (Much easier to just buy a can of Reddi-wip!)

So if you have an electric foodgun hiding out somewhere and it's feeling lonely, now you know how to give it a real workout. (It's probably still easier than trying to sell it on eBay, even if that would be the more practical solution.)

Funny Name: Horror Edition

What's your favorite kind of cobbler? Peach? Apple? Blueberry? Cherry? Well, Easy Homemade Desserts That Say You Care (Thank You brand pie filling, ca. 1980s) thinks you may have a dark side and prefer this version:

I mean, I know some people didn't approve of women taking jobs outside the home back then, but this is taking it to extremes.

(And just to be clear, that's a thought bubble! Of course he's not SAYING anything.)

Feeding a crowd with white sauce and "instant breakfast drink"

Feeding a Crowd: The Main Course (General Foods Kitchens, 1965) is the kind of cook-booklet that mid-20th-century churches probably kept in their kitchens so the "ladies" would have some kinds of guidelines for whipping up food for father-son banquets, post-funeral dinners, fundraising feasts, and whatever other occasions required feeding groups of people. At least, that's who I imagine as its main audience.

That makes the lobster on the cover seem pretty out of place to me, as I can't picture the midwestern churches I was coerced into attending serving lobster, but maybe that was a thing on the east coast? Or in rich churches? Or maybe the reach was wider than just churches? In any case, lobster doesn't actually make much of an appearance in the booklet (showing up as just one of the options that could be added to a "Seafood Newburg" recipe), so maybe it's just there to make the booklet look swanky.

A lot of the recipes are clearly of the budget-stretching variety. I remember making a version of this chicken 'n biscuits dinner when I was a student worker in my college cafeteria.

We never bothered to put the chicken gravy in the oven, and the servers poured the gravy over the biscuits when it was served, but the basic "pot pie filling with a biscuit instead of a crust" formulation is a quick and easy way to serve a lot of people pretty cheaply.

There's even an EXTREMELY '60s vegetarian white-sauce-based dinner.

I mean, hard-cooked eggs, mushrooms, and pimientos in a white sauce? Can't get much more '60s than that (unless you used canned mushrooms rather than the fresh ones. And baked the rice into a ring before serving it. So I guess you could get more '60s than the recipe as written... but I'll leave this here anyway for comic effect.)

Sometimes things get a little fancier, like the beef stroganoff.

I have my doubts about a sauce featuring red wine, instant coffee, and sour cream, though.

A few recipes made me wonder why General Foods even bothered.

Did any of the church ladies really need to be told that they could heat several pounds of hot dogs in hot water? My theory is that this was mostly included so General Foods could try to convince people to serve Good Seasons Open Pit Barbecue Sauce as a condiment for hot dogs.

The booklet mostly consists of main dishes, but there are a few sides, too. One serves as our periodic reminder that most mainstream Americans had no real clue what "risotto" meant back then-- only a vague sense that rice was somehow involved.

Hint: baked Minute Rice ≠ risotto.

And finally, I learned what "piquant" meant in the 1960s.

Apparently, it means "in a Tang and nutmeg sauce."

I don't really miss the days when I had to spend time in churches, but this booklet still lit up a weird little nostalgia corner of my brain. Maybe it was the cute drawings of kitchen utensils.