Happy August! It's the month when I try to enjoy the last leisurely bits of summer before being plunged directly into the absolute busiest quarter of the year. The 1953 cooks who used Rawleigh's Good Health Guide Almanac Cook Book were probably already starting their chaotic end-of-summer rush, canning peaches and tomatoes, making jelly and jam, pickling the cucumbers and peppers, and just generally doing whatever they could to get ready for the leaner winter months. Let's see what else Rawleigh thought should be on their "to cook" lists.
Rawleigh actually seems to have put together a list that's appropriate for August! This menu is heavy on the fresh produce that would likely be in season, including two tomato recipes, one corn recipe, and one corn and tomato recipe! The Tomato Delight Salad is basically a veggie-heavy egg salad stuffed into a tomato, so your level of delight will probably hinge on your feelings about egg salad. The Broiled-Soufflé Tomatoes are one of those weird mid-century concoctions that makes a kind of mayonnaise-meringue to broil on top of an unsuspecting veggie. The Escalloped Corn with Frankfurters marries two summer favorites with the ever-popular white sauce, though it would probably be more summer-friendly if the cook adapted it to a stovetop prep rather than baking it for an hour. (And everybody would probably enjoy it more if the franks and corn were grilled and served with buns and butter, respectively, instead of being coated in white sauce, but the mid-century moms seemed to be convinced that only time-consuming recipes and copious amounts of white sauce could properly demonstrate love for their families.) The Corn and Tomatoes is pretty straightforwardly just that-- baked with some bread crumbs and butter, I guess to help meet the casserole requirement that was nearly as stringent as the white sauce requirement in mainstream 1950s America.
The horoscope suggests that Leos "are capable of the highest devotion to those [they] love," so I wonder what that meant to this booklet's readers. I imagine them thinking that Leos could turn anything (Fruit cocktail! Tiny canned shrimp! Chicken livers!) into a delicious white-sauce-based casserole while simultaneously canning 10 bushels of peaches and shucking a couple dozen ears of corn.
The Rawleigh product-of-the-month for August suggests that it's okay to "cut down" on one's work, though, so maybe work wasn't always supposed to equate to love?
What kinds of helpers do you imagine? Maybe detergents that won't leave a buildup to clean out of the washing machine, or, even better, will gain sentience and tell the kids they're old enough to wash their own damn clothes now? Okay, probably not. The booklet offers the exciting Non-Rubbing Liquid Wax...
...for those occasions when the family desperately needs to laugh about Spot skidding across the kitchen floor, I guess.
There's also the very exciting Rawleigh's Scented Starch...
...which doesn't so much cut down on the work as make the work (that seems totally unnecessary to modern readers who are used to synthetic fabrics) a little bit smellier.
So, yes, Rawleigh, I really question the "cut down on your work" premise on this one. A 21st-century smartass is not in their target market, though, so my opinion counts for jack shit. Oh, well. Time for me to shut up about Rawleigh until our September installment, when I will be dreaming about a labor-saving device that makes essays sentient so they can accurately grade themselves.
I was also amazed by their heavy use of seasonal produce. It took over half a year to figure out that menus should reflect the time of year.
ReplyDeleteI was also amused by how each menu had to have bread of some sort even if it could count as dessert (looking at you cinnamon rolls with peach pie).
It's funny when someone asks a craft group about starch these days. People either use watered down white glue or hairspray, and it's NOT for their laundry. Everyone wonders why the person inquiring would want to use something as outdated as starch.
I'm kind of surprised not to have a memory of grandma serving something like cinnamon rolls and peach pie together. She wouldn't have even bothered to try pretending the cinnamon rolls (or rough equivalent) counted as the necessary bread component for the meal. She and grandpa loved desserts enough that there was no shame in serving a few together.
DeleteThat is a good point. I think that making a dessert style bread was probably too much fussing around, and buying something equivalent would have cost more. Otherwise I could totally see them being served up with the many other sweets at a meal.
DeleteIn true Leo fashion, I've been waiting and waiting for us to get to my horoscope! 😂 And it doesn't disappoint.
ReplyDeleteThe menu, on the other hand...I am not a tomato fan unless the little bastards have been processed beyond all recognition, though I've tried on and off over the years to be less of a baby about them. All these tomato-forward dishes would have made me an unhappy camper.
Happy birthday-ish time! I 100% agree with you on wanting tomatoes to be heavily processed. They're fine with me as long as they've been canned or dried, but fresh or only lightly cooked? No thank you!
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