Asparagus two ways: Light and heavy

It's asparagus season. My favorite asparagus is the slightly smoky grilled stalks on the Whole Foods salad bar. Prep requires nothing more than an ability to use salad tongs to transfer them to a container and a willingness to imagine that fellow salad bar users are relatively sanitary and sane.

For those who may not be willing to put quite that much faith in humanity (and I can't blame you!), recipes to prepare asparagus at home might be the better way to go. The Natural Foods Cookbook (Beatrice Trum Hunter, copyright 1961, but mine is from a 1975 printing) offers a couple of options. If you want your asparagus light and springy (in both the metaphorical and physical senses), there's an Asparagus Soufflé.

I'm not sure how ethereal this will be given that it is made with those old health-food standbys, whole wheat flour and powdered milk. Still, it sounds much more exciting than the asparagus option right below it. 

Even if you're willing accept the premise that asparagus is appropriate for loafification, I doubt all the wheat germ, soy grits, and milk powder will do much to accentuate the fresh spring taste of tender stalks of asparagus. I imagine it as being more like a brick, made barely edible by the addition of the asparagus.

Kind of makes trusting other salad bar patrons seem like a more palatable option than doing one's own cooking, doesn't it?

A Fruit Meat Cute

McCall's Book of Marvelous Meats (1974) did not seem all that marvelous to me.

There are a lot of time and temperature tips, which do not make for the most scintillating reading, and a lot of interchangeable-seeming meat loaves and recipes that all basically call for cooking meat with potatoes, carrots, and/or onions into a stew or a roast.

For someone who loves weird recipes, the Hamburger Pie was about as exciting as things got.

And even this is mostly just a round meat loaf with potato topping. One thing I did notice about this book, though, is that the editors really liked meat with fruit (one of the many combos that makes me screw up my face into the "trying not to gag" pose). Most sections for each meat have a couple of pages with enough colorful, fruit-centric recipes to cover the "ROY" part of "ROY G. BIV." I decided to represent this with pork chop recipes since the pages faced each other and it made scanning easier. (Don't you love that little peek behind the curtain?)

Representing red, we have a recipe I could imagine my turkey-hating grandma cooking for Thanksgiving dinner.

And then everybody could have spent Thanksgiving yelling at me for only eating side dishes until I finally relented and choked down half a pork chop just to get people to leave me alone. Fun! (Don't worry, though, as they always found some way to yell at me no matter what was being served! I remember being pre-emptively yelled at by my aunt for not eating vegetables-- even though I generally liked them as long as they were pretty plain, which they were that year. I had no intention of skipping the veggies, but I got yelled at for it anyway.)

Anyway-- for orange, there were a couple of options. Obviously, there was an orange orange option.

Honestly, though, the orange juice is not likely to make the pork chops that orange (though the orange sections will help). If you really want things to be brighter, the Braised Pork Chops with Peaches might be the way to go.

And for yellow, the book gets tropical (and a little alliterative) with Pineapple Pork Chops.

And don't worry-- there's a similar series of recipes for ham and veal. There's even boiled tongue with prunes and another tongue recipe calling for a pineapple glaze-- plus standalone recipes for cinnamon-apple wedges, grilled apple rings, baked cranberries, curried dried fruit, pickled pears, spicy cranberry relish, and raisin sauce in case you accidentally forgot to add fruit directly to the meat. I'd almost be tempted to call it the "Meat Meets Fruit Cookbook," but then I'd be forgetting about all those standard pot roasts, stews, and meat loaves.

April is protein month, apparently

Cooking by the Calendar (edited by Marilyn Hansen, 1978) is excited about April, the time when "A sudden shower freshens the ground and the air and the buds unfold daily while the grass grows greener." I'm not really sure what it means for the air to "unfold," and I would be happy for brief and sudden showers if I could trade them for the deluge my area is experiencing. It's easier to be optimistic about April on paper than it is when you're in an actual April....

April features various meat loaves and terrines, like this simplified version of Beef Wellington that is still pretty darn complicated for a meatloaf. 

What with partially baking the meatloaf, making pie crust, smearing the partially-cooked loaf with a liverwurst and canned mushroom mixture, and wrapping the whole thing in the pie crust before additional baking, this is not an easy weeknight dinner. (And that's even before we take the decoration with pastry flowers into account....)

And of course, there's also supposed to be a sauce.

At least this is fairly straightforward-- just doctored-up brown gravy mix.

And if you're more in the mood for a terrine than for a meatloaf, one option is the Walnut-Gherkin Terrine.

This pickle-filled meat reminds me of the bad old days when I worked at a grocery store's deli counter. The week when pickle-and-pimento loaf was on sale was THE WORST. The slicer threw bits of pickles and pimentos everywhere, and by the end of a shift, I'd be covered in green and red flecks like the world's ugliest Christmas decoration. At least this concoction only has the pickles-- no pimentos-- and it won't go through the slicer anyway.

The book also proclaims that spring gives people an appetite for lighter things, like fish, so it suggests Flounder Rolls Florentine.

I picked them mostly because I like the drawing underneath, which looks kind of a like a rejected Muppet. (I could see it wishing "joy to the fishes in the deep blue sea" while Jeremiah shares his wine with Kermit.)

Asparagus is the veggie of the month, and as a further reminder that eggs were cheaper in the '70s, the book recommends an Asparagus Quiche.

The pinwheel-of-asparagus must have been a really popular way to celebrate spring back then. 

Meanwhile, I am going to celebrate by buying a snorkel so I can go outside for a walk. (Or maybe swim?)

Woman's Day goes banana collecting

I understand why, say, Chiquita and Dole put out banana cook booklets. They obviously had an incentive to sell more bananas. I'm less sure why Woman's Day felt compelled to make their entire Collector's Cook Book for April 1970 focus on bananas, but they did it anyway.

Maybe the editors were just so taken with Bud Simpson's cute jungle animal cartoons that they had to go with a banana theme? That monkey chowing down on a banana is adorable, but my favorite is actually the little bird matter-of-factly marching around with an oversized banana under its wing, as if it's on its way to the office and the banana is the equivalent of a briefcase. 

The recipes mostly seem fine when you get to the desserts section. It's hard to be mad at (or very interested in) instructions for a banana split or banana loaf cake. That's, of course, why we're going to be looking at the more savory applications of bananas. (Or unsavory, as the case may be.)

There is a used-to-be-popular-for-some-reason banana meat loaf. 

I am not sure what banana was supposed to add to a meatloaf, other than bulk. Sometimes I think meatloaf was just meant to be kind of the equivalent of an edible garbage can. Just mix whatever you needed to use up into ground beef and proclaim it meatloaf.

I thought the Banana-Meat Roll-Ups might be the ever-popular (in old cookbook circles, anyway) Ham-Banana Rolls. However, they're not. They're a different variation of ground beef with banana.

I guess this is for the cook who doesn't even want to bother trying to pretend there's not banana in the meat. A full banana half is just cooked right in the middle of each wad of ground chuck, perhaps accompanied by half a tomato if the cook is feeling particularly adventurous.

Don't worry, though, there IS a ham and banana recipe.

This one has a simpler sauce than the earlier version-- this one is just thinned-down cheese soup-- so it's updated for the 1970s!

And if ham is too expensive, Franks and Fruit makes for a cheaper smoked-meat-and-banana pairing.

I imagine this sounds pretty good to the "syrup on sausage" crowd, but I am not among their number...

What we can all agree on, though, is that the banana armadillo is pretty cute.

Plus, with its bright orange single-color printing and blocky cartoon style, it's a perfect representation of late '60s/ early '70s style. No wonder the little guy looks so happy. (And of course, that makes me happy too. Gotta get happiness wherever I can find it...)

Funny Name: So Nice They Named It Twice

After a nice breakfast of Double Double Chex Chex, The Stuart Simmers Cook Book (ca. 1970) recommends this for lunch:

Just throw in some HoHos for dessert (or Ding Dongs, if you want a little variety), and you're good good to to go go.

Poppy unsurprisingly Knox another diet plan

Protein has long been a thing in diet culture, as Knox Eat and Reduce Plan (Charles B. Knox Gelatine Co., 1955) illustrates.

The booklet starts with a bunch of not-at-all leading questions.

I would be very shocked if the answer to "Is this a monotonous 'same foods every day' diet... or is it a varied one you'll find easy to stick to?" were "This diet is so monotonous you will soon be willing to eat your placemat just because it would be something different."

But you know the best thing about the Knox diet?

It "allows you to have the famous Knox High-Protein Gelatine Drink 3 times a day"! So nice that this is "allowed" by the company that happens to make gelatin. And it will surely not get monotonous because the Q&A section explicitly stated that it would not!

Plus, there are so many ways to enjoy the famous gelatin drink.

You can have it cold with fruit juice! Or hot with bouillon! Okay, that's really about it, but think of all the juices you could use-- like orange! Tomato! Grape! And there's beef or chicken bouillon! Whee!

If that's not enough gelatin for you, though, "you'll find you have a wide choice of delicious, filling Knox soups, salads, and desserts..." I love that they're called "filling" when Jell-O's old tagline used to suggest the opposite about gelatin: There's always room for Jell-O. But, hey, maybe the sugar-filled version is lighter than Knox's plain. 

In any case, Knox tried to make the solid-ish options seem as varied as possible.

The Basic Main Course Salad Mold offered half a dozen ways to make a seafood-based salad jigglier than usual.

That's nothing compared to the Basic Gelatine Salad, with a full dozen options.

The options span from shredded carrots and canned peas as the "solids" to shredded cabbage with cooked carrots and canned peas to peas, diced cooked carrots, and shredded pimiento. (Okay, I'm being reductive. You could also go with diced cooked beets and shredded raw spinach or grapefruit sections and coarsely chopped nutmeats if you felt crazy.)

And of course, the booklet offers some delectable-sounding desserts, like Egg Nog Chiffon Pudding.

And yes, it's basically just eggs in artificially sweetened gelatin, with a little rum flavoring and nutmeg to give it an egg-noggy edge.

In short, this is definitely a diet that could never get monotonous, and the fact that a few dozen people who were serious about this diet could keep Knox in business all by themselves was just incidental to the plan. Knox was just lucky that gelatin was the perfect medium for weight loss. Amazing how diets back then were more get-rich-quick schemes than likely to be helpful for actual long-term weight management. It's nice that things have changed so much today. 😆

Celebrate spring with an asparagus pinwheel!

Happy Spring! To mark the season, I'm posting one of my favorite things: an elaborately-decorated molded salad.

It's named, appropriately enough, Fresh As Spring Salad. 

And since it's supposed to be savory, it uses plain gelatin, rather than sweetened Jell-O! That's always a plus. But because it's from Not for Salads Only... Wish-Bone (1980), it mostly just tastes like thickened Wish-Bone Italian Dressing and mayonnaise, interrupted only by occasional veggie bits. So, if your idea of a nice spring day is eating a mound of thickened condiments, this one is for you! I will celebrate spring by going outside in a jacket that I think will be too thin and immediately getting too hot OR by going outside in a jacket that I think will be too thick and immediately getting too cold. Who can say? The surprise is what makes it fun.

The National Live Stock and Meat Board kind of forgot what it was doing...

TV Meat Time (National Live Stock and Meat Board, undated, but given that TV seems like a novelty and TV dinners started being sold in 1953, probably the mid-1950s) is kind of a head-scratcher.

What is "TV Meat" and was there ever a popular show featuring pen-and-ink illustrations of cuts of meat? If you pick up the pamphlet hoping to get any kind of answer, you will be sorely disappointed, as the cover is the only place where TV gets mentioned. I guess TVs are just on the cover to get people's attention.

The recipes are mostly pretty standard, telling how to make a basic beef stew or broil a porterhouse steak. There are a few surprises, though like the recipe to shake up the usual meatloaf routine by making Individual Liver Loaves.

I doubt too many kids were thrilled to get an individual custard cup of liver loaf seasoned with nutmeg, so maybe the cover was meant to suggest the family would be more likely to mindlessly consume whatever you cooked if they were distracted by a TV show.

This booklet also offers an interesting insight into the pre-fast-food conception of the breakfast sandwich.

This is clearly from the days before it was common to eat in the car, as the sandwiches are open-faced and on a floppy slice of bread rather than a sturdier biscuit or English muffin. Portability was not a concern! While the pairing of sausage and American cheese will seem familiar, the jellied cranberry sauce between those layers might come as a surprise, especially if this is served in any month other than November.

The recipe that most puzzled me, though, was the recipe for Cherry Nut Pie.

I mean, I already figured out that the National Live Stock and Meat Board was not really committed to the "TV" part of the title, but I expected them to at least be committed to the "Meat" part. Not so much, though. I guess the recipe is supposed to count because it comes with a crust recipe that calls for lard.

Still, that seems like a real stretch, especially in a booklet that only has 15-or-so recipes in it (depending on whether you count the pie filling and crust as one recipe or separate recipes, whether the instructions on turning drippings into gravy count as a separate recipe, whether an explanation of broiling really counts as a recipe, etc.). That's a pretty high proportion of non-meat recipes for a meat-centric booklet! I'm impressed that the National Live Stock and Meat Board could so thoroughly ignore their own premise, but hey, they did get my attention!

Funny Name: Feelings Edition

Would you like a dinner that's fast, easy, and likes to share its feelings by reading poetry at the open mic night at the independent coffee shop? Modern Approach to Everyday Cooking (American Dairy Association, 1966) has just the thing for you. 

This pasta sauce might not be so miraculous...

Cooking with Miracle Whip Salad Dressing (Kraft) is a little newer than I usually go. It's from 1983. But I couldn't help wondering about that big plate of pasta on the cover.

Is that Miracle Whip fettuccine? And if so, why? (Well, that second answer is obvious. This is a Miracle Whip pamphlet, after all.)

So is this an attempt to make Fettuccine Alfredo with Miracle Whip? Not quite. It's possibly even more controversial...

As if there's not already enough debate about what constitutes carbonara, this version skips past the debate of cream or no cream and uses Miracle Whip plus milk instead. I highly doubt anyone would bother wasting their breath protesting the choice of bacon rather than guanciale with this one!

As if that pastatrocity isn't enough, the same page with the carbonara also offers a Miracle-Whippy lasagna variation.

I am fine with subbing in cottage cheese for ricotta if that's cheaper/ easier, but Miracle Whip? And I can't help noticing how gluey-looking that bottom layer is.

Under a layer of canned dog food. Woof!

So in short, for Miracle Whip's 50th anniversary, Kraft wanted to let everyone know that Miracle Whip makes a fine addition to pasta. I think they would have been better off making themselves a Miracle Whip Chocolate Cake and calling it a day...

A Birthday Wish(-Bone)

Make a wish! Rather than blowing out the candles to make it come true, though, we're going to see what kind of dressing-related wishes Not for Salads Only... Wish-Bone (1980) imagines people will make on their birthdays.

If you're a grownup, then you might have a dream of mid-20th-century parties serving the popular sandwich loaf. It's vaguely cake-like, so the Birthday Celebration Loaf kind of makes sense.

Whether the birthday person chooses Wish-Bone California Onion, Creamy Italian, or Creamy Garlic Dressing, everybody better really like that flavor, as it permeates the bacon-and-egg salad layers and the cream cheese "icing." Only the liverwurst layer offers relief from all that dressing (but it is also liverwurst, so "relief" is a relative term here).

Kids are apparently also expected to want to have something retro-fancy, so their birthday dinner is this little beauty. 

Yep! It's the ever-popular Crown Roast of Franks, because children are well-known for wanting a fancy crown roast for their birthdays, but concerned enough about their parents' budgets to want something a little less pricy. 

The crown roast gets filled with that childhood favorite, hot potato salad with celery, onion, caraway seed, and plenty of Wish-Bone Italian Dressing. At least there will be cake and ice cream to fill up on after the crown roast! 

My birthday wish would be far simpler: keep the salad dressing as far away from me as possible! (That applies to both my childhood self AND the supposed grownup I am now.)

Dairy goes modern!

I'm going modern today! 

Not too modern, though. If the cover of Modern Approaches to Everyday Cooking looks like it's straight from 1966, that's because it is from 1966. And as the the cheese-stuffed peppers and piles of whipped cream on various desserts hint, this book is from the American Dairy Association. 

I'm going to be uncharacteristically social today and have a party. I'll start out with a cheesy appetizer.

More specifically, an Appetizer Cheesecake! A savory cheesecake probably sounds weird since most of us are used to dessert-y cheesecakes. This actually looks pretty similar to a cheese ball though-- what with all the shredded cheese, seasonings, and finely-chopped veggies. It just uses sour cream instead of the usual cream cheese and puts it all on a crushed cracker crust rather than rolling the mixture in chopped nuts.

I think I'll put a couple salads on the buffet, since we had such a heavy appetizer. (Nothing like starting a meal with cheesecake, right?) Maybe something with seafood...

Baked Salad of the Sea combines the expected canned seafoods with celery, Swiss cheese, crushed pineapple, and sour cream before dumping the whole shebang into avocado halves and-- as the title suggests-- baking it. Once again, I'm left wondering whether this is one of those instances where cheese and seafood are supposedly A-OK together (Maybe the crushed pineapple or hot avocado make the combination okay?) or whether this is an instance where the judges on the cooking show I'm watching would act like putting seafood and cheese together is tantamount to scraping an unidentifiable mound of festering goo off the sidewalk and suggesting they should eat it.

For those not up to eating canned seafood and pineapple on hot avocado halves, I could offer Chicken Almond Mousse Salad. 

This has the distinction of combining lime gelatin with chicken stock before blending in the chicken, celery, almonds, and cucumber and folding in some whipped cream. Nothing quite like a slightly jiggly, pale green block of chicken to whet the old appetite...

We need something to go with the salads... Maybe a nice Cheese Buffet Sandwich. 

This one goes all-in on the protein, with tuna, ham, bacon, and eggs in addition to the titular cheese. My favorite thing about this, though, is that it's touted as a buffet sandwich. The construction-- slices of bread topped with tuna, onion, lettuce, cheese dressing, more bread, ham, tomato, bacon, a generous pour of more dressing, plus egg and olive garnish-- doesn't seem like it would work so well on a buffet. The first person to try to transfer one of those towering piles of ingredients coated in goop would probably end up demolishing at least several sandwiches in the attempt. Before long, the sandwich platter would look like a mucous-based alien in a monster movie disintegrating into a pile of goo after the heroes figured out that it could be defeated with, say, a few good splashes of vinegar.

Maybe I should go for something a little easier to pick up individually for dessert: Rice Cakes.

These aren't your 1980s styrofoam-based snacks! It's more like rice pudding bound with eggs and cooked as a patty. There's barely any sweetener, so better leave out a LOT of sweetened strawberries to go with them, or the guests may not realize the cakes are supposed to be dessert.

Have to admit that I'm not too tempted to throw a dairy party now, but it's more because of my aversion to crowds than anything else. While I like to imagine I'm not that susceptible to suggestion, I also have to admit that this post makes me want a baked potato with a mound of sour cream and cheese. So maybe I'll have a dairy "party" for one. Don't tell anybody.