Like many community cookbooks of the time, this one prints chirpy, encouraging adages in the margins like "Problems are only opportunities in work clothes" or "Success consists in getting up just one more time than you fall." I was amused to see these contrasted with the poem at the very beginning of the book.
Despite the group's attempts to seem happy to keep busy with whatever tasks got thrown their way, this poem suggests that Laides' Aid was pretty sick of taking care of everyone else's burdens, and happy to use the first few pages of the book to passive-aggressively complain about it. That is the true midwestern spirit.
Also in the midwestern spirit is this recipe for spaghetti sauce. While I have seen hundreds of recipes for spaghetti sauce, few outside of the midwest call for a cup of tomato soup...
...and I don't think I've seen any others that also call for a cup of mushroom soup! Maybe it needs something creamy to help cut down on the heat from the chili powder and Tabasco sauce. (I was kind of shocked that this called for a half teaspoon of Tabasco, considering most recipes from the time call for a few drops, but this does specify that using less is fine.)
The spaghetti sauce is likely spicier than the chili, actually, which has no Tabasco and an unspecified amount of chili powder. (I imagine many midwestern cooks venturing for a single, tentative shake of the chili powder directly into their hands, so they wouldn't accidentally put too much directly into the chili, and then they would hold their barely-chili-dusted hands upside down over the pot and let whatever grains were not stuck waft down into the pot.)
And while chili is often served with spaghetti in the midwest, this one has the spaghetti cooked right in. Of course, it's precooked, and then simmered for 2 hours in the chili, so it's probably more of a thickener than actual pasta by the time dinner is served.
A few recipes feature surprise ingredients. I'm used to seeing baked beans recipes sweetened with molasses and/or brown sugar, but Ruth Krumrey fortifies their sweetness with something I haven't seen before.
Dates! The only way I'm used to consuming dates is in Lärabars, so now I'm imagining a very weird limited edition baked bean flavor that I would definitely not try. (Only six ingredients: dates, almonds, beans, onions, salt, and horror!)
Other recipes were more surprising for their technique. When I saw a recipe for Carrot-Raisin Bread, for instance, I assumed it was going to be basically carrot cake baked in a loaf pan. However...
This is a yeasted bread! Not what I expected at all. And despite yeasted breads being way more complicated to make than quick breads, this is the full extent of the recipe. That's right-- no directions at all! You better have enough experience baking yeast bread to be able to guess how to mix, knead, proof, shape, and bake this, because Grace Zimmer isn't giving even the slightest hint.
I was amused to see an over-explained recipe to contrast this under-explained one. Our final recipe is for homemade(ish) pizza. Granted, one might expect some pretty involved instructions for pizza, what with having to make a yeasted crust and a long-simmered, perfectly-seasoned sauce. Dick Menzel's "recipe" is probably not what you're thinking, though.
Yep. He's walking readers through how to make a Chef Boy-Ar-Dee pizza mix. The recipe starts out by telling cooks to "Mix the dough according to the directions on the package" and ends by telling them to "Bake according to directions of package." Yes, the stuff in the middle explains adding one's own toppings, but do people really need to be told that pepperoni, canned mushrooms, tomatoes, and olives can be put on top? (And do the toppings really need to be placed with precision rather than sprinkled haphazardly?) This recipe is the opposite of the Carrot-Raisin Bread.
I like a cookbook that goes to extremes: over-explaining, under-explaining, boiling spaghetti until it's only a loose collection of dissolved starch molecules.... This book has got it all. (And it will complain if you ask it to do too much more!)
I'm glad you liked the book. I didn't see the poem at the beginning of the book. It rolls so many of the things you love into one. Of course that may not be your preferred type of poetry, but it did come from a church in the Midwest, so you better not expect too much.
ReplyDeleteThanks again! The books are a lot of fun.
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