Scary dairy

Super Bowl Sunday is coming up! So to demonstrate that I could not care less about the upcoming festivities, I will completely ignore the Football Cheese Ball in 250 Healthful Dairy Dishes (Culinary Arts Institute, 1970).

I won't even mention that "Gridiron heroes of all ages will enjoy the he-man tang" of this dish because I'm too interested in the daintier recipe on the opposing page:

Okay, maybe it looks less dainty and more like a cinder block garnished with lemon and tomato, but this was once the darling of ladies' luncheons.

I've seen sandwich loaves in many books, although I don't think I've ever really featured them here. Sandwich loaves were whole loaves of bread sliced lengthwise, stuffed with various layers of disgusting salads, and then "iced" with cream cheese-based concoctions so they would look like cakes. They were so cute and clever that their appearance at a ladies' luncheon apparently moistened a bunch of granny panties back in the day.

This recipe is rather restrained because even though it does call for two types of bread, it only features two layers of heave-worthy filling.

The first filling starts out sounding okay. I haven't had pimiento cheese spread, but I imagine it's pretty good. Throwing some almonds into it would probably add a welcome crunch, and I can even see the carrots as being an acceptable addition... but once you add dates, that is too much! It will tip filling #1 into cloying territory.

Filling #2 rivals filling #1 in its indecision about what, precisely, it is meant to be. It's mostly bland-sounding (cottage cheese, cooked potatoes, and celery tops) tipping into sweet with canned crushed pineapple and weird with garlic powder, mustard, and Worcestershire sauce.

I think I'd prefer to lick off the "icing" of cream cheese with a bit of lemon and parsley, then quietly try to feed the rest of my slice to the dog. Or hide it under the nearest rug if the host didn't have a dog handy.

Since the sandwich loaf is so retro it makes me want to make a macrame holder for my paint-by-numbers masterpiece, I decided to pair it with a good old-fashioned gelatin mold.

Have you ever wanted to pair "the distinctive flavor of olives and the crunchiness of pecans"? If so, you're probably one of those bloggers who is way braver/dumber than I who actually MAKES the scary recipes rather than simply writing about them. I am happy to admire these mounds of lemon gelatin, evaporated milk, celery, green onions, and pecans with olive belly buttons (at least, I hope they're belly buttons and not anuses!) from afar.

Does staring at decades-old Molded Olive-Nut Salad make any more sense than staring at fully-grown men play a game for enormous sums of money? I'm sure it does not... but this is the way I'm spending this weekend. Enjoy yours, no matter how you spend it!