June has always meant "School's out!" for me, but it was traditionally bridal shower season in the 20th century. That means Cincinnati Celebrates: Cooking and Entertaining for All Seasons (Junior League of Cincinnati, first printing August, 1974, though mine is from the 1980 fifth printing) offers up a crafting-intensive bridal shower plan for June.
Yes, it's "a fresh, perky bridal shower with everything coming up daisies ... even dessert!"
But before we get to the dessert, we've got to make special invitations, as always. This time, of course, they're daisies since it is a DAISY Kitchen Shower.
I love that not only do the invitations have to be individual daisies, but the envelopes have to be specially crafted so they'll be round to accommodate the round invitations. I'm sure the post office will love this.
And the decoration/ gift for the bride-to-be is a hand-crafted omen of the days of cooking and cleaning that await.
If the bride-to-be can resist the urge to run screaming from her "Kitchen Lizzie" with its dead eyes staring out of a foil pie plate head, one fly swatter arm and one toilet brush arm (Sorry, it's "bathroom bowl brush," as the Junior League is too refined to say "toilet.") dangling listlessly, well... She must be ready for the rigors of marriage that await. (Either that, or she's still in shock, in which case it's best to keep things moving forward before she can react.)
At least the Cardinal Bowl means that nobody has to try to get through the shower sober.
It's got two kinds of wine and four kinds of citrus, so it's classy.
The Mushroom Consommé seems like the kind of forgettable "delicate" offering that hosts of the time felt obligated to serve.
Woo! Mushrooms in salty water. That's a party.
I suspect the Curried Eggs in Shrimp Sauce was just a way for the uptight traditional ladies to make sure that this wasn't a low-class shotgun wedding.
If the bride-to-be could smell this mess without ralphing from pregnancy hormones, she was deemed worthy. (Of course, that also meant she had to eat some of it, so there was no real way to win this particular game.)
And to round out the extra-crafty theme of this party, the Flower Pot Alaskas were listed in the craft section rather than the recipes.
This one involves buying brand new 3-to-4-inch flower pots for each attendee, sterilizing them, and then filling them up with pound cake crumbs, ice cream, meringue, and crucially, a paper straw. After the baking, cram a daisy into the straw et voilà! A sort-of baked Alaska with a daisy crammed into it!
There's nothing quite like a passive-aggressive shrimp-and-egg entrée, a flowerpot full of dessert, and a terrifying mop woman to get the soon-to-be-bride ready for the weirdness and indignities of life as a 1970s wife. This is another rite of passage I am glad to observe, but only from a great distance.
Okay, so the merengue and the cake are supposed to insulate the ice cream from the heat of the oven. Are you supposed to cover the top of the straw and open it up later? Does the straw make a good insulator? How long can they sit after baking? So many questions, like who uses a toilet brush in the kitchen anyway? I guess the honeymoon is going to end quickly.
ReplyDeleteI imagine a straw covers such a small surface area that it won't make much difference as far as insulation goes. The bigger problem-- as you rightly point out-- is how these will fit into the party. These will probably be melty if they have to set out for too long, but they'd be a good excuse for the cook to at least move to the periphery of the party for a while. Got to make the dessert!
DeleteYou'd think a dish brush would be a more appropriate second arm for Kitchen Lizzie.
Good catch! I didn't even pay enough attention to notice that the mushrooms all get strained out (obviously, given my comment)! That makes the offering even sadder. Nothing says party quite like "Have some brown water."
ReplyDeleteGood point about the potential for hazardous materials in the flower pots, too. Sterilization won't save guests from poison.
Just reading this might be enough for a night or two of nightmares, but the real thing could have been enough for years of them!
ReplyDelete