Farm Journal's Best-Ever Recipes (Ed. Elise W. Manning, 1977) resulted from the Farm Journal surveying 250,000 cookbook users on their favorite recipes, then compiling the results into a cookbook. That's why it's titled "best-ever."
The Farm Journal users apparently had pretty plain tastes, so there's not as much for me to cringe over as I might have hoped-- just lots of straightforward recipes for things like beef stew and dinner rolls and layer cakes.
The readers did branch out a little, though. The picture in the upper-left corner of the cover is their 1970s midwestern take on enchiladas.
I guess I should call them "American-Style Enchiladas." Rather than starting with tortillas, they use crepes-- and the filling mixes chili powder into spinach and spaghetti sauce, making this a kind-of fusion dish. At least it calls for a substantial amount of chili powder: more than two tablespoons! (Of course, it's spread among 30 enchiladas...) I love the touching testimonial in the headnote that "This dish looks so elegant I can't believe I made it."
The book offers up typical midwestern "salads," from the brightly-colored and shiny hunk of gelatin with vegetables...
(and topped with a cheese-horseradish dressing)...
...to the frozen salad that's so sweet the title admits that it's kind of a dessert.
Well, the headnote claims that "The youngsters like it as an after-school snack-- it's not too sweet," but kids aren't exactly known for being afraid of sweets! You better hope the concoction of heavy cream, mayonnaise, marshmallows, crystalized ginger, pecans, and fruit, fruit, and more fruit is well-liked by someone, though, as the recipe makes NINE QUARTS of frozen fruit-salad dessert.
At least the slices look pretty in cross-section.
And finally, to tie together the mid-century midwest's shaky grasp of the meaning of "pizza" with its love of apple pie with cheese, there's an Apple Pie Pizza.
Nope-- the cheese isn't used as a topping, though having melted cheese on the top might be a reasonable expectation, given the recipe title. It's part of the crust. The crumb topping is more like part of an apple coffee cake, with powdered non-dairy creamer as part of the crumble, so I guess it's vaguely cheese-ish? Pair that with using a pizza pan as the vessel, and I guess that's all you needed to declare this a pizza. Nobody who is coming in for a meal after a day running the combine is going to argue with what you call it.
In any case, it's difficult to be too much of a grump with these recipes, as they come with such glowing recommendations in the headnotes. Somebody loved these recipes. Hell, even I kind of love them in my weird, roundabout grudging way.
As I was reading the 3 row garden salad recipe, I though that orange and carrot goes together okay. Then I wondered why I thought that. Was it just that they got paired together so much? Then I kept reading. Lime and cabbage, lemon with vinegar and beets. If I had to take any of it, I would definitely go for oranges and carrots.
ReplyDeleteThen there's the question of who needs 72 servings of a frozen fruit salad? I imagine it turning out like those giant cases of tube popsicles people buy, only to find out that they are absolutely disgusting.
Carrots are sweet, so they go with citrus Jell-O pretty well. Sunshine salad usually puts them in with orange or lemon Jell-O, and that's pretty good. I also see recipes for hot glazed carrots that call for orange juice concentrate as part of the glaze. Carrots and citrus are kind of classic. Can't say as I'd be enthused about cabbage or beets in Jell-O, though.
DeleteThe huge frozen fruit salad comes with a mention of using it for a church Christmas party, and the size does make it seem more like a party dish (maybe for people you don't like much!) than a family one (unless you've got ten kids who need after-school snacks).