Weathering mid-winter with presidential recipes, pot roast, and plenty of cabbage

Happy(?) February! At least the average daily temperature is on the rise now (even if it will take a while to feel a real difference). The new month means a new peek into Cooking by the Calendar (edited by Marilyn Hansen, 1978).

Since Presidents' Day is in February, the book offers a number of recipes associated with various Presidential families. While you might expect of old-timey recipes attributed to frontier days, a lot of them should be very familiar to anyone who has looked at a community cookbook from the 1960s or '70s, including such common findings as Scripture Cake (attributed to Dolly Madison, in this case) and Million-Dollar Fudge.

At least there's not a recipe for Nixon's cottage cheese and ketchup. 

The February chapter has a section for recipes that take a while to cook-- presumably to help keep the house warm and cozy-- like this Bavarian Apple Pot Roast.

There's nothing like a Dutch oven full of pot roast, onion, and mealy Red Delicious apples to make you wish for spring....

And February's vegetable of the month is cabbage, so I'll leave you with Russian Sauerkraut Soup. 

I picked this recipe just because, unsurprisingly, I HATE SAUERKRAUT. But hey, if short ribs cooked in two kinds of cabbage (regular and fermented) will make your winter go faster, enjoy! It probably works better than my method of staring angrily at a calendar.

Natural?

The premise for Feasting Naturally from Your Own Recipes (Mary Ann Pickard, 1980-- mine from the June 1982 fifth printing, but feels like it's from the 1970s) is that the author will tell you how to convert the presumably unhealthy recipes you already use into more nutritious fare. 

Honestly, though, Pickard seems to lose interest in this premise pretty quickly. There are a few pages at the beginning explaining things like how to sub in honey for regular sugar or whole wheat flour for white flour, and a very few sample recipes demonstrating the techniques, but it's all pretty quickly abandoned. Most of the book is just the writer's own recipes, and sometimes it's difficult to figure out what her idea of "natural" actually is, aside from NO REGULAR REFINED SUGAR. She is very consistent about telling readers to use fructose (which is likely to horrify modern readers, and which even the author admits is not actually a natural food in its refined form), honey, pure maple syrup, date sugar, or fruit juice concentrate instead of regular granulated, powdered, or brown sugar. Otherwise, the ideology is pretty vague. 

The book often seems like it might be an old-school vegetarian book, with recipes like Lentil-Cheese Bake.

At least it's very straightforward, with nothing but the star ingredients, a bit of salt and onion, and those inescapable stars of 1970s health food, sunflower seeds.

Some of the vegetarian recipes call for ingredients that don't really seem to fit the '70s idea of health food, like this Vegetable Stew featuring canned cream of celery soup. 

Have you ever craved cream of celery with raisins in it? Me neither.

But then recipes for fish pop up, like the Creamy Tuna Surprise.

Yes, you should be skeptical of any old recipes with "surprise" in the title, as this features a commingling of canned tuna and pineapple with cream cheese, onion, two types of peas, and the inescapable sunflower seeds. Or, "for an unusual creamy soup," the cook can cut down the thickener in the recipe and serve this as a thinner mess. 

So maybe the cookbook is pescatarian? Nope-- I spot a recipe for Cheesy Chicken and Rice Casserole.

And while this casserole is filled with the health-food standbys of brown rice and broccoli, it's topped with Doritos! Pickard actually names the big brand, too-- not some health-food-wannabe company that makes snacks with "natural" ingredients to try to replicate the big names-- but actual Doritos! Although the author clearly has it in for sugar, she doesn't seem as worried about "harmful flavorings, colorings, additives, or preservatives" as the back cover would seem to suggest. I guess part of the ethos of the book is admitting we've all got to find our little pleasures somewhere... They just better not be the regular, mainstream versions of refined sugar!

Warm up with some tropical chicken!

Tired of blasts of icy wind and piles of snow and/or slush? Let's let Mary Margaret McBride's Encyclopedia of Cooking Deluxe Illustrated Edition (1959) take us away with some chicken recipes (allegedly) from warm locales, like Hawaiian Chicken Luau.

To my shock, this DOES NOT contain pineapple! "Hawaiian" was almost always mid-20th-century recipe code for "this is loaded with canned pineapple." Here, though, the spinach and onion sauce for the chicken is Hawaiian-ed up with shredded coconut.

If you want pineapple, you have to go with Chicken Mexicana...

...which is loaded up not only with the pineapple I teased, but also bananas, avocado, and grapes. I think I might have called it Chicken Braziliana, though, because the picture suggests the finished dish looks like Carmen Miranda's hat.

Think tropical thoughts, everyone! It's easier than building a weather-dominating machine or wearing a fruit-covered hat. 

Meaty Occasions

More than 50 years before Drayton Sawyer advised chili cook off contestants not to "skimp on the meat," the National Live Stock and Meat Board put out Meat for Every Occasion (1932) with essentially the same advice.

However, the Live Stock Board was advertising more traditional meat than Drayton was using, and it does not offer a chili recipe, either-- just recommendations for serving meat at any and every meal. The lunch and dinner chapters are pretty much as expected, with hash and meat in cream sauce making appearances in the lunch section and roasts and chops suggested for dinner. The breakfast items go beyond what I expected, though. Rather than pairing the eggs with bacon or ham, the booklet suggests making Sweetbreads in Egg Sauce.

In case parboiling and chopping the sweetbreads and making a sauce is an insufficient amount of work first thing in the morning, the book also notes that the sauce can be served "in cream puff shells." Have fun making those before the sun even comes up! (Or just be lazy and serve the sauce over toast.)

For those who prefer a sweet-and-savory meal, the booklet recommends Liver Baked in Apples as a breakfast treat. 

Just be sure to warn the diners that the apples hide liver among the raisins and chopped nuts in the filling! Or be prepared for some early morning gagging when people worry that something has gone terribly wrong with the raisins....

The booklet's picnic recommendations also caught my eye. They go beyond explaining how to roast a hot dog on a stick or turn a wad of raw ground meat into a charcoal briquette burger. There is an attempt to go international with Mexican Camp Sandwiches.

I'm not sure what makes this blend of bacon, shredded dried beef, grated cheese, and chili sauce particularly Mexican OR suitable for outdoor cooking. I guess the chili sauce is supposed to be the "Mexican" ingredient, though the version called for in a 1930s cookbook is likely only slightly different from ketchup. The fact that this is made in a frying pan means this could potentially be made over a fire, but there are plenty of other frying-pan recipes in the other sections of the cookbook. I kind of wonder if this one just got thrown in the picnic recommendations to fill up extra space...

Even more puzzling-- to me at least-- is the Ribbon Sandwich Loaf.

It's just a stack of ham slices with ketchup, mustard, and grated cheese in between. Why is it assembled in a baking pan? Is it supposed to be baked? I'd assume you could just use a platter if this tower was supposed to be served as-is, but there are no baking instructions. And without any heat to help cement the layers together, isn't this more of a tower than a loaf? And if it's supposed to be heated, how will that work if it's outdoors? The oven would seem to be the best bet if this stack needed to be heated up, not a campfire or grill. And how is this supposed to be served and eaten? Cut into slices and served like a layer cake? Somehow turned into a sandwich filling? I imagine someone out there knows what this is supposed to be, but I'm just mystified.

At least the title Meat for Every Occasion suggests this booklet is ready for anything. The National Live Stock and Meat Board was thinking of "every occasion" as specifically dining occasions, but the booklet is equally prepared for confounding and amusing an extremely niche blogger 90+ years in the future. It was very forward-thinking. 

Funny Name: Dry Mouth Edition

We already know that Country Cookin' (Ross Chapel Church, Bolts Fork, KY, 1977) takes some creative license with the salad names, but they can't all be as appetizing as the Cherry Salad (that's actually just a cheesecake).

The name "Sawdust Salad" just doesn't quite merit so much enthusiasm. It sounds like it would give you a sore throat! In fact, most of the actual recipe sounds fine-- hard to object too strenuously to Jell-O loaded up with bananas, pineapple, and miniature marshmallows. The name comes from the more divisive topping: a layer of grated cheese on top of the base Jell-O frosted with layers of pineapple-based custard and Dream Whip with cream cheese. 

The Lazy Editor Diet Book

As if January isn't bad enough, it's also the month that a lot of people start and try to stick to diets. That means today we're checking out Everywoman's Diet Handbook (compiled and edited by Carol Tiffany, 1980). The first thing my significant other said upon spotting this book in the pile of "treasures" we'd picked up at our favorite antique mall was, "It looks like a can of Tab!"

That cover is definitely Tab pink. Good call!

The first thing I noticed as I paged through is that this book is a very lazy project-- mostly just a compilation of various calorie, weight, exercise, and vitamin charts from various sources, along with a few recipes from 1975's The Doubleday Cookbook. The editor was so lazy that the introduction repeatedly refers to this book by that title.

The book recommends the not-particularly-realistic-or-healthy calorie limit of 1200 per day, but it doesn't go into a lot more detail than that. At least trying to figure what to eat is just a math problem and not a math-plus-complicated-logistics problem, like the diets that ask the dieter to figure out how to fit liver into every fourth meal, eat at least one grapefruit per day, and use skim milk powder in unnatural ways. So what might a dinner look like on this diet? 

There's no need to skip a small pre-meal treat! Start with an appetizer like Clam Chickee!

There's nothing like chilled clam juice mixed with chicken broth to whet the appetite. If you're feeling extravagant, you can even "top each serving with a dollop of sour cream," but then it will exceed 20 calories per serving.

We all know dieters need protein, so the main course can be the appealingly-named Economy Meat Loaf.

Mmm mmm! Tastes cheap! I'm not entirely convinced this is significantly lower in calories than most other meat loaves, though I guess using oats instead of crackers as the filler may shave off a few calories per serving, as might using skim milk instead of whole or evaporated milk. 

To counteract the low-end meat loaf, I'll go high end on the vegetable and serve Broccoli in White Wine Sauce.

Again, I'm not really sure what makes this diet-- with both butter and white wine, this seems fairly indulgent, but at least this isn't a book that recommends eating mounds and mounds of plain steamed veggies.

There's even room for dessert. People love apple-y desserts, so we will end with one.

I know what makes this diet! People love apple with fatty carbs-- think apple crisp, pie, strudel, turnovers, etc. This is basically fancy applesauce. Add a little sour cream if you like, but it's not going to make up for the missing pastry...

I guess dieters who tried this regimen were somewhat lucky in that the book offers some small luxuries-- especially ones full of butterfat. The bad news is that the serving sizes have to be pretty small (and the butterfat is often optional and needs to be skipped if you want to stay within the calorie guidelines).

The best news is that none of us ever have to seriously consider downing a glass of Clam Chickee.

Funny Name: Who Made It?

I would really love to believe that the author of this recipe from Country Cookin' (Ross Chapel Church, Bolds Fork, KY, 1977) was an early practitioner of reappropriation and happily owning her sexual autonomy.

However, given that this is a church-related fundraising cookbook from 1970s Kentucky, I'm afraid that Rose Schaffner just didn't know how to spell. 

Country Cookin' Gets Creative

Are you ready for some Country Cookin' (Ross Chapel Church, Bolts Fork, KY, 1977)? 

You might find the illustration of the be-aproned woman cooking on an old-timey cookstove to be charming, but I am worried about the cat getting tripped over or accidentally burned. My favorite thing about the cover is actually the name written across the top. I'm sure it's Peggy Kirk, but the mix of capital and lowercase letters combined with the odd shape of the "g"s makes it look like Pebby Kirk. 

Just like the "g"s in Peggy, the cooks in Bolts Fork seem a little bit tricky. If you see a dessert in an ice cream cone, for example, there's a pretty good chance it's not ice cream. It may, in fact be a pudding cone.

Or if it's a Tutti Frutti Parfait, don't expect tutti frutti ice cream. 

Nope-- a can of fruit cocktail, a cup of mini marshmallows, and a cup of sour cream are the filler-- frozen, though, so you better be prepared to bite into frozen canned fruit.

At least these cones don't claim to be ice cream. Some recipes just blatantly lie, like the Sourdough Pancakes.

No sourdough in sight! Just pancake mix with added yeast, and certainly not aged long enough to turn into an actual sourdough...

Or look at Nine Cup Salad.

I initially thought it was only five cups since I saw five ingredients. Then I realized there are three cups of marshmallows, which would get it up to seven cups. There's no specification for the size of the can of fruit cocktail, but to get it up to nine cups, you'd need a 24-ounce can, which is not really a common size. My guess is that this was to go with the two-cup size, which would mean this is only an eight cup salad. (Or maybe there's a forgotten ingredient, like a cup of crushed pineapple or sour cream?)

My favorite blatant lie, though, is the Cherry Salad.

Graham cracker crust on the bottom, cream cheese in the middle, and cherry pie filling on top? This is a straight-up cheesecake! Putting it into a square pan does not make this a salad! 

Still, I can't blame the good people of Bolts Fork for wanting an excuse to eat cheesecake as a side dish and still have room for dessert. Somebody's gotta eat the pudding cones.

Some post-Christmas sweets

I'm not sure whether Christmas Recipes (Consumers Power Company, 1969) was hoping to make holidays a little brighter for diabetic family members or looking ahead to people's New Year's resolutions by including Lo-Cal Parfaits. In any case, the book does offer a light dessert. 

The layers of low-calorie gelatin, whipped topping, and pudding are surely not spectacular, but also probably not too objectionable... Except for the question of how it all fits together. I would be perfectly happy with any citrus (including lime) and chocolate, or peppermint and chocolate... Lime, peppermint, and chocolate together, though? I think this is a case where two out of three is probably better than three out of three!

If you are not into diet culture, and instead your post-Christmas fun might include trying to recreate old recipes that call for ingredients that don't exist anymore, Chocolate Clackers Crunch offers a nice little project.

This one is hampered by the star ingredient-- Clackers-- being a cereal so obscure that I'd never heard of it before, probably because it disappeared in 1973. The description on Wikipedia sounds kind of like Golden Grahams, but the image in commercials looks closer to Cracklin' Oat Bran. Try getting a box of each and making the candy both ways!

Or just follow my post-holiday sweets tradition and try to find Reese's peanut butter trees on clearance! Cheap, easy, and guaranteed to be good. 

A New Cooking Calendar for a Year Likely to Get Old Fast

Welcome to 2025! I'm sure it will be fine! Just fine! If you wish, just ignore the exclamation points that are giving the entirely accurate impression that I'm trying way too hard to sell a point that I do not actually believe.

This year, we will attempt to distract ourselves from-- well-- pretty much everything by periodically checking in with Cooking by the Calendar (edited by Marilyn Hansen, 1978). (I thought about inserting a few terrible and outlandish scenarios into the previous sentence, but knowing how reality works lately, I was kind of afraid they would somehow come true, but worse...) In any case, my copy of the book is a library discard and looks like this:

I like the way the design team seemingly failed to think things through, as the months written on the tiles are so low that the last third of the year is covered up by food. (Either that, or the art team thought the year ended in August.)

Each month has a special feature at the beginning, and January's is dishes to make with quick-cooking rice and canned soup. There's a whole spread on skillet dinners:

Plus another one on casseroles for those who want to turn on the oven to help warm the house:

I know that things like quick-cooking rice and cream-of-something soup don't get nearly as much love now as they did in the 1970s, but I have to admit that I am a sucker for that combo. Let me replace diced ham with Tofurky ham or ground beef with some veggie crumbles and I would absolutely go to town on most of these.... (Well, except for the ones with mustard or excessive onions. You know I can never be content with anything!)

The January chapter also has a section on citrus fruits since they're in season, offering ideas like Orange-Tomato Pork Chops.

Not only does this feature oranges, onions, and tomatoes together, but it also adds some avocado slices to heat up at the end. This all just seems wrong to me, but I know my tastes tend toward the safe side, so part of me is cringing and part is wondering if reasonable adults think this sounds acceptable or perhaps even good....?

The final part of each chapter features the vegetable of the month, and January's is onions. There are some old favorites, like French Onion Soup, but I was more amused by a very '70s appetizer: Parmesan Onion Thins.

People really loved baking things with mayonnaise on top back then. I'm not sure how thrilled guests would be about white bread covered with a slice of raw onion topped with hot, cheesy mayo, but maybe it could help the host keep the appetizer plates full. If you make poppable fried shrimp or crowd-pleasing pigs in a blanket, you'll spend the whole night refilling the apps. Offer Parmesan Onion Thins, and hosting duties might be much easier (not to mention cheaper)!

Here's hoping for a cheap and easy new year, I guess? We can hope for anything we want, but reality does not always comply. And on that cheery note, your little sunbeam is ending this post.