I'm not sure what I was hoping for from Pillsbury's Vegetable Cook Book (1970)-- probably some casseroles with ingredients that did not seem to go together at all and/or gelatin salads brimming with artichoke hearts, broccoli, parsnip, and/or eggplant along with a can of fruit cocktail or crushed pineapple and maybe some horseradish or cocktail sauce.
The book is rather basic, though. While it goes through individual vegetables, it has a pretty standard set of tricks: creamed veggies, veggies in a sweet and sour sauce, veggies baked in cream-of-something soup and topped with bread crumbs, and/ or if they're on the sweeter end of the spectrum, veggies baked in an orange glaze with a hint of ginger. It all kind of blends together after a while.
Still, I was a little thrilled to find crushed pineapple dumped into some pork and beans.
Old cookbooks just can't get enough crushed pineapple!
I found a few super-lazy recipes, like Chilled Picnic Peas.
Take the grossest form of plain peas (canned!), add some onion and a bit of garlic salt. Chill, drain, serve, watch as everyone avoids the cold, nasty canned peas, and then throw them out at the end of the picnic. It's a great way to avoid food poisoning!
I also found a recipe with a name that took me way longer to figure out than it should have.
What's Chemiento? I initially thought it might be some cooking technique I'd never heard of before. Google results just suggested that it was a jewelry brand I was misspelling. And then I realized that it was just a portmanteau of "cheese" and "pimiento." So Chemiento Turnips are just turnips in ersatz pimento cheese.
My favorite part, though, is probably a photograph near the middle of the book. There's no explanation. It just seems like Pillsbury wanted to include a photo of a veggie-centric art installation.
At first, I thought the veggies were hanging, perhaps as an eccentric mobile. Then I realized they're actually just on skewers, being pulled out of a variety of unnamed dips. Of course, as a horror movie lover, I imagine these veggies as being impaled by their captors and repeatedly dunked headfirst into slime that will either suffocate them or transform them into embittered and angry monsters, ready to skewer some humans when they go on a rampage. (Be stalked by celery or choked by an artichoke! Watch in terror as romaine tries to leaf the city begging for mercy!)
Just keep your eyes on the mutant vegetables so you don't notice how abruptly this post ends.
Now I'm trying to remember if pineapple went into the pork and beans bar recipe that was going around for a while. Okay, I'm not really trying hard because while I never actually encountered that baked good, I'm still trying to forget its existence.
ReplyDeleteI was also relieved to see that they at least drained the peas to serve them. It's a brilliant way to never get asked to bring a side dish again. You get assigned paper plates, cups, and plastic silverware after that one.
I had not heard of pork and beans bars! My quick search suggests that canned pineapple is indeed usually an ingredient. Not that I ever plan to try making those.
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