Wednesday, November 28, 2018

Chiquita Banana Presents Her Fever Dreams

This week is way too cold for November, so I'm going tropical to warm up! Today we have the notorious Chiquita Banana Presents 18 Recipes from Her Minute Movies (1951), a booklet with recipes that are rock stars in vintage horror recipes circles.


Yes, it's those Ham Banana Rolls that more adventurous cooks than I have been making for years.

In case you don't remember, they're bananas baked in ham and mustard, then served with a cheese sauce.


Yeah.

Just across the page is a slightly less popular recipe, though.


The Retrochef who tried these was afraid actual scallops might be involved, but they're just supposed to look like scallops. At least that's my guess. Her take on the recipe: "Meh. If you like cornbread with warm bananas, then this is the dish for you! They might have been better with a finer cornmeal, since they had very crunchy outsides and very mushy insides."

My favorite part is the caption under the picture in this booklet:


I'm assuming this is only giving part of the movie title. The full title is "Chiquita Banana Convinces the Cannibal that He Has Made the Right Lifestyle Choice." Now he's sure he'd rather face a plateful of fried fingers than mushy hot cornmeal bananas. It's always nice to know for sure!

4 comments:

  1. OMG, you can watch the cannibal movie on YouTube (warning - this film is very racist):

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QCxVkTHHn-c

    The clip even shows you how to make the banana scallops. Now you have me morbidly interested in watching more of these rather awful movies (although I am wondering why Señorita Banana is topless) However, I have no interest in trying any of the recipes. Those black and white photos do nothing to enhance the a-"peel" of their subject! 😜🍌😜

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Wow! Wow! Wow! I'm embarrassed that I didn't think to check to see if the "movies" were still around, but I'm glad you did. I am not at all surprised by the top-notch racism. And I guess it's okay to go topless if the only curve is in your back?

      Delete
  2. I like how they specify you should use all yellow or slightly green tipped bananas. How about we don't use any bananas and forget about these recipes?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I guess there is some vague recognition that the dishes might go from plain unappetizing to nausea-inducing if they were made with overripe bananas?

      Delete