The Book of Wholly Bland Meals

I love me some leaden vintage vegetarian recipes-- resplendent with their brown rice and wheat bran and lentils, so I'm pretending that 1983's The Book of Whole Foods (Annemarie Colbin) is older than it is. It's certainly in the style of the 1960s and '70s hippie cookbooks.

It's arranged by season, too, so I briefly considered using this as my beginning-of-the-month feature next year. However, there are only a few menus per season-- not even a full week's worth-- so I decided since it's still summer, I'll just show a bit of the summer section now and get around to the other seasons as they come.

The most striking thing about the recipes is how overwhelmingly bland they sound. I was excited to see empanadas, for example, thinking back to the vegan restaurant (Unfortunately shut down years ago!) that made dessert empanadas with such a meltingly delicious deep fried crust that I swore I would even eat them if they were filled with lawn clippings. I bet those lawn-clipping pies would have given these empanadas a run for their money.

The dough is a whole-wheat-and-vegetable-oil concoction (on the previous page that I was too lazy to scan, but trust me, it's unremarkable). And it's filled with corn, peas, and carrots, seasoned up with a bit of shoyu and in a delectable sauce made of thickened water. (Kuzu is just a thickener with no real flavor.) And if you think I might be hiding the fact that the leftover corn, peas, and carrots were seasoned when they were served at the previous meal, you've got me! The previous night's recipe for corn, peas, and carrots did also call for a bit of salt and corn oil. So yes, these are likely to world's heaviest and most flavorless empanadas.

At least as part of the summer menu, the recipe calls for summer veggies like corn and peas. Another summer dinner menu features a Fancy Barley Loaf that just doesn't seem summery at all. 

Barley and lentils seem more wintery to me, and while I guess sunflower seeds do grow in the summer, they're always available. I don't really think of them as seasonal. In any case, baking this into a brick, seasoned with a bit of salt and a bay leaf, is not my idea of summer fun. Will the Green Sauce topping save it?

Annemarie Colbin really loves her water-thickened-with-kuzu sauces, with just a hint of shoyu for flavor. I guess if you really like scallions, they and the handful of parsley might be enough to save the loaf, but  that seems overly optimistic to me...

It seems that even Colbin occasionally realizes her recipes might seem too wintery for the summer section where they appear. When she wanted to add that winter classic split pea soup to the summer section, she thought of a new way to serve it.

Ta-da! Split Pea Aspic! Perfect for the hot days when you wish split pea soup were just cold and jiggly, but don't mind simmering something in your sweltering kitchen for an hour-and-a-half beforehand! (At least this recipe promises a bit of flavor with the fresh ginger.) So what do we think about this?

Yeah, that seems about right.... 

Now just get ready for another wave of heavy, bland madness, coming this fall to a vintage cookbook blog near you.