Vegging out in 1950

There's nothing like a look back at old cookbooks to remind me that now there are way more vegetarian options than there used to be. If you're the type to spend hours on a dish, starting with dried beans and raw whole grains, an internet search will provide hundreds of recipes to suit any palate. If you're lazy like me, you can throw some Gardein chunks into the stir-fry and call it good. If you're the drive-thru type, Burger King is happy to present you with an Impossible Whopper.

Back in 1950, on the other hand, well.... Mirro Cook Book reminds us just how exciting and inspirational those old vegetarian dishes were.

Yay! Plain rice packed into a ring shape, with peas dumped over squash in the middle and a ring of beets around the outside. At least there's cheese sauce if the cook feels ambitious.

Maybe the Vegetable Luncheon will be more exciting than the Vegetarian Platter.

Well, I guess there's some heft from the kidney beans, but carrots, kidney beans, green pepper (two whole tablespoons!), onion, a can of tomatoes, a sprinkle of rice, and a few mushrooms, all seasoned only with a bit of parsley and divided by six doesn't exactly inspire mouth-watering anticipation.

Maybe the incidentally vegetarian dishes-- the ones that don't explicitly call out veggies in the title-- will be better. There's the Three-in-One Platter.

Apparently platter was Mirro's code word for a ring of plain starches filled with some kind of veggie and rimmed by beets. Yum.

A lot of people are eating less meat right now just because meat's so expensive. Maybe we should look at an economy dish.

Yep. It's named Economy Dish. Basically macaroni (or potatoes!) and cheese with hard-cooked eggs for added protein, this may be the most exciting meal of the lot. So... yeah. I can see why the veggie life was not very popular in 1950 (and likely to show up only around Lent in Catholic families).

Now I'm off to celebrate the fact that I don't have to surround every plate of food I make with a sentry of beets.