The lambs go silent...

Happy March! It's a new month, so you know what that means: more recipes from Glamour Magazine's New After 5 Cookbook. How were 1960s "working girl" cooks to celebrate the promise of spring?

By eating the symbol of spring, of course! If the indignity of being turned into a meal isn't enough for the lamb, try heaping on indignity in the form of prunes....

The "Spanish Salad" continues the book's proud tradition of throwing random place names into recipes to make them sound more exciting. How Bermuda onions + French dressing = Spain is anyone's guess.

I'm on board with the maple yogurt, though. March is when the fresh crop of maple syrup starts coming out, so some real maple + shredded almonds + yogurt = yummy!

March seems really focused on lamb, though. Another Monday has diners eating getting more exotic than the common chops:

This time it's Mustard [Lamb] Kidneys on Rice! At least it's an organ meat recipe more creative than "cook it for a long time with some onions." The kidneys are in a mushroom, bouillon, sour cream, and mustard sauce, over the old standby, precooked rice.

Plus there's canned pea soup with a beaten egg yolk in it for some reason, and canned carrots with a little thyme and cream. This book really believes in what my grandma called "doctoring up" prepared stuff from the grocery store.

This dinner for a Wednesday night mostly sounds pretty good, but I wonder about the side:

Okay, undiluted cream of mushroom soup as gravy isn't exactly a thrill, but at least the broiler with sage stuffing sounds reasonable enough. It's the Broccoli w. Grapes that I really wonder about. I love broccoli with cheese... or butter... or tofu and soy sauce... but I can imagine ever having the desire to toss it with halved seedless grapes!

The real head-scratcher comes on a Friday, though:

It sounds promising enough: lasagna! But then you notice that the yummily-seasoned tomato sauce is replaced with overly-sweet condensed tomato soup with a little oregano and basil thrown in.... And then you notice the cottage cheese standing in for ricotta.... And then you see that canned tuna is going in there too.... And then, if you're like me, you lose all interest.

At least there will be tropical fruit with curacao or kirsch to look forward to if you can choke down the main dish.

Lessons from March's menus:

1. The new baby lambs better watch their backs!
2. Feel free to throw prunes or grapes in with whatever.
3. French dressing goes with most salads, even the titularly Spanish ones.
4. If the main course is bad enough, dessert better damn well have alcohol in it.
5. The authors HAD TO HAVE stock in Campbell's. I mean, seriously. The majority of menus call for at least one can of soup and/or bouillon in at least some capacity.  

Happy March! Winter is on the way out!