In which your humble writer goes (title) crazy...

One of my virtues (and/or annoying features-- take your pick!) is that I am very easily amused. You know this to be true because I spend my spare time paging through old cookbooks. Sometimes just the title of a recipe is enough to make me giggle and say, "Was there a time when that sounded good?" or "I love it!" Of course, I'm alone when I say these things, so the spiders industriously spinning cobwebs near the ceiling just pause to reflect that their roommate is losing her mind. Then I tell them I'm not crazy and idly threaten to clean the house once in a while just so they don't get too high and mighty.

The latest series of titles to make my arachnid guests question my soundness of mind is from The Service Cook Book by Mrs. Ida Bailey Allen (1933).

In the "Was there a time when that sounded good?" corner:

I will admit that my taste buds do perk up whenever they hear "cream." (How they can hear, I have no idea. I'm pretty sure taste buds don't have ears.) But cabbage cream broth? The combination of those three words suddenly sends thoughts of ice cream and cream cheese running to another corner of the mind, fearful of contamination by association. A cream broth sounds like something to be made for an ailing relative, but who wants the stink of cabbage when they're already feeling sick? This might be another restorative for malingerers....

Another word that sounds pretty good on its own: frosted. Think of a luscious chocolate frosted birthday cake or angel food frosted with delicate whipped cream. Now feel those thoughts flee:

Frosted celery (the dental floss of the vegetable world) and radishes (globes of hot, damp dirt)! At least these don't have dessert-y frosting-- it's just seasoned cream cheese thinned with a little top-cream (Top-cream! From days of fresh, un-homogenized milk!)-- but the association with frosted desserts make this sound scary.

Lastly, the title I love beyond all reason:

Green peppered bouillon! It's green peppers! In bouillon! No twist here, unless one considers a little melted butter used to saute the peppers a big surprise. The thing that makes me want to do a happy little dance for my spidery audience is the use of "green peppered" as an adjective. I love green peppers, so I may start adding this as a prefix to a good chunk of what I eat. Maybe I'll have a green peppered salad followed by some green peppered pizza. I can make green peppered rice to go with a green peppered stir fry.

As long as I stay away from a frosted green peppered birthday cake, I should be okay....