A Very Foxy Cook

It's time to get foxy!

 In this case, that means a peek into The Foxy Pot (St. Christopher's Guild of Gates Mills, Ohio, 1963).

Reynard, the fox, is apparently the mascot of St. Christopher's. (I use the present tense because an internet search shows the church is still around and that their biannual rummage sale is called Christopher Fox's Bargain Box.) Illustrator Paul Meunier's pictures of the fox to begin each chapter are so whimsical that they are my favorite part of the book.

For the vegetable chapter, Reynard waits impatiently for the garden to grow.

Good luck waiting on those sardines to sprout!

The absurdism is matched by the book's inclusion of some of Edward Lear's nonsense recipes, such as Gosky Patties.

A "recipe" that requires feeding a Pig five pounds of currants, three pounds of sugar, two pecks of peas, 18 roast chestnuts, a candle, and six bushels of turnips as often as the pig will devour them, then requires a paste of cream, Cheshire cheese, four quires of foolscap paper and a packet of black pins to be dried before beginning to beat the Pig over a series of days certainly sounds labor-intensive. All of this activity ends with waiting to see if "the whole is about to turn into Gosky Patties." And of course, there's a good chance that it won't, and the Pig should simply be let loose. Yeah-- this definitely seems as futile as the fox waiting for its anchovies to sprout.

The fox seems to be pretty clumsy, too. The dessert chapter begins with poor Reynard falling face down into the birthday cake he's carrying out of the kitchen:

Luckily, the book does have a few recipes for klutzes like Reynard and me, such as these Festive Canapés.

I don't see too many recipes calling for cooks to "Spread one side of each bread round with sardine mixture and flop, sardine side down, on a lettuce leaf...." I wouldn't mind more recipes that ask cooks to "flop" ingredients around! I can handle flopping.

Of course, the picture that will most insistently tug at the heartstrings of any devotee of old cookbooks comes from the salad chapter.

Let's all shed a tear for the gelatin that did not unmold properly!

If, however, the mold in question is Broccoli Ring, welllllllllll...

Maybe the loss of some broccoli and hard cooked eggs suspended in jelled comsommé and mayonnaise is not the greatest loss.

I hope you love Reynard, the cooking fox, just as much as I do! A big thanks to my little sister who sent this foxy book for my birthday.