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.
Interesting how the expectation of recipes attributed to presidents (and their families) are immediately assumed to be old time frontier days fare. I guess that points to the fact that people don't cook nearly as much anymore, especially if they are rich and in positions of power. Maybe someone should make a book about presidents' favorite takeout. If course you would have to pad that cookbook with a lot of cutsie stories because instructions to hit 3 fast food joints for a favorite meal wouldn't take much space. It might make them more identifiable though.
ReplyDeleteElected officials really liked letting people know about their favorite recipes. I'm sure it's for just the reason you cite-- it made them seem more relatable. Of course, you're right-- as most people cook less and less, politicians will have to use different methods to humanize themselves. (Before too long, they will just be advertising their favorite apps for ordering food.)
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