Close readings of some recipes from North Carolina

I picked up Old 'n' New Tried 'n' True (Boone Junior Woman's Club (I wonder which junior woman had an entire club all to herself and how she got everyone else to participate in the cookbook.), Boone, North Carolina, 1978) partly because the picture on the cover is so awkward-looking and mostly because I'll pick up nearly any reasonably-priced community cookbook from the 1970s. 

The couple's pose here is just soooo weird. It looks kind of like the woman is falling asleep while she's trying to stir something and so a guy somehow decides that the best course of action is to give her the Heimlich maneuver. Maybe the legend "Kissin' wears out... Cookin don't!" is meant to explain the supremely awkward stance? She's sick of being kissed and just trying to cook, hoping he'll give up on... kissing her neck, I guess? Maybe he's just a really ungainly vampire? In any case, I'd feel a lot better if they would do whatever they're trying to do here further away from the hot stove and the steaming pot full of whatever.

What might the pot be full of? The book has some unusual recipes, so it could be just about anything. This one made me remember my grandma's old trick of using extra icing from another project to make me a plate full of graham cracker sandwiches.

Pearl was way more ambitious than my grandma, as her filling for the graham crackers had to be cooked. The little sandwiches even got icing on top-- separate from the filling! My grandma definitely would have called it too much "foolin' around" for a snack with premade ingredients, but it's interesting to see how much work some people would put into it.

As I read the recipes, though, I tended to get caught up in the ways they were presented. Even if there's nothing too unique or exciting about the veggie/ cream of something soup/ packaged Pepperidge dressing mix combo in squash casserole...

... there's something about the wording of "The butter would go on top of the 1/2 cup of dressing saved for the top" that catches my breath for a moment. That little slip from instructional mode into a more conversational tone, as if Gail Ford had just realized she almost forgot to tell what to do with the reserved stuffing, just gets to me. She wants to be formal, but her more friendly personality slips through.

You might also notice that there's no butter in the ingredient list. That's one thing that drove me a little crazy about this book. Soooo many cooks would partially list the ingredients at the beginning and then casually mention other additions in the narrative of the recipe. If you wanted to make a recipe, it would be hard to make a quick list of ingredients to buy before you went to the grocery store. You'd either have to slow down and read the entire recipe carefully OR get home with everything listed at the top and realize that you still didn't have everything you needed. Sometimes, even the recipe writers seemed to get confused by their own systems. Take Pepper Steak, for example. 

Do you notice any conspicuous absences? The vegetables are listed on top. Once they're browned, they should be covered by the sauce ingredients that are mentioned narratively. Apparently meat is supposed to be included in some amount at some point, as the final step before serving is "Cover and cook until meat and vegetables are done," but that's the only mention of meat--aside from the word "steak" in the recipe title.

While many recipes underexplain, a few make me tired just reading them. Homa's Special Rice must be really special because she is willing to go through so many steps.

Once the sauce is cooked and the rice is boiled, then the two have to be combined in a casserole dish and topped with three separate (narratively added) piles of ingredients: carrots, raisins, and almonds. After baking them together, then the piles are removed separately so the rice can be poured over "your favorite dish." Then the carrots need to be sprinkled on top, and then the raisins, and then the almonds. I just can't imagine going to all the trouble of combining and separating and recombining... If I were the type of person who liked raisins in rice, I'd just mix everything in the casserole dish together before baking it and then serve it straight out of the dish. Of course, then it might not be quite so special.

I'm not always sure the recipe writers know what words mean, either. I'm not talking about specialized cooking terms that isolated '70s home cooks might not use regularly, like chiffonade or romesco. In this case, I mean a really simple, common term-- one that entire restaurant chains are based on. When people say that they want to get some pizza pies, I'll bet they're not thinking of this.

How is a pie shell filled with ground beef and onions in a thickened mayonnaise/ milk/ egg/ cheese sauce in any way a pizza? I believe this dish already has a name, and it is quiche. (And why is the title plural when it only makes one? Mellie B. Long is not one for details, as her Pepper Steak recipe suggests.)

Old 'n' New Tried 'n' True drove me a little crazy, but crazy in an amusing way... not crazy like the guy who sneaks up on a cook and tries to Heimlich her for no apparent reason.