Pudding away the rice

I wasn't sure whether I would bother writing a post for National Rice Pudding Day. The problem isn't a lack of recipes; I've got hundreds of vintage rice pudding recipes. The problem is that they're usually pretty similar and not particularly exciting. Mainstream cookbooks use white rice, richer dairy, and regular sugar most of the time, while "health" food books often call for brown rice, leaner dairy, and honey. Both usually suggest adding raisins, perhaps along with other dried fruits or some nuts. So I almost didn't bother.

But my copy of Beatrice Trum Hunter's The Natural Foods Cookbook (copyright 1961, but mine is from a 1975 printing) was sitting out and I thought, "Why not just check?" And I almost didn't bother turning to the Molded Rice Pudding I found in the index, assuming that it was made with a thick custard and baked in a mold. Still, there was a chance this would be a weird gelatin mold, so I checked it out.

And my search paid off! This isn't the usual version of rice pudding. It's a fruit-juice gelatin, sweetened with honey and an added fruit of the cook's choice (Raisin-haters, rejoice!), then made creamy with "yoghurt." (The asterisk is suggesting the cook should use the book's yogurt recipe because health-obsessed cooks in pretty much any timeline are assumed to have the time to endlessly fuss around making everything from scratch.)

If you ever wanted rice pudding that was fruitier and less custardy/ raisin-y, this might be for you! And even if it's not, this is still another weird old gelatin dessert (or salad if you serve it over a lettuce leaf!) to gawk at. It's a win either way.

Frozen "delicacies" to show off your fridge

 What could be better than owning an electric refrigerator in the (probably) late 1920s or early1930s? 52 Recipes for Frozen Delicacies (from Copeland Dependable Electric Refrigeration) suggests the answer is having a new recipe for a frozen delicacy for each week of the year.

There's a lot of fairly standard stuff in this booklet, like lemon sherbet or chocolate mousse. Still, a few of the offerings caught my attention.

For instance, while I see a LOT of gelatin recipes, they are rarely minty. 

I think this Old-Fashioned Peppermint Delight would be better than Jell-O full of Grape Nuts and dried fruit or black cherries and olives.

As someone who often cooks my food until it's just this side of being burned because I like the hint of smoke, I was happy to see a recipe with "burnt" right in the title.

And the almonds aren't actually charcoal-- just roasted until "very dark brown." Sounds perfect to me!

I'm not quite so sold on the Russian Tea Ice Cubes, though.

It's not that uncommon to see recommendations to freeze fruit juices into ice cubes as a way to avoid watering down cold drinks, but the thought of potentially finding whole cloves floating in a beverage once they've been liberated from their icy home? Not so appealing.... And I can only imagine what Lace maker would have to say about potentially encountering a maraschino cherry in some tea!

But hey-- the inclusions in the ice cubes can really remind your guests that you have a fancy electric freezer, just in case they didn't notice that the cubes were composed of fruit juice. Part of the point of owning one of these is showing off, right?

I'm just glad I can lazily stock my freezer with vegetarian "chicken" and frozen veggies and call it a day, without having to make any frozen confections to show off that I have a freezer. Nobody would be impressed now anyway!

Harvest the oranges and cranberries! It's August

Cooking by the Calendar (edited by Marilyn Hansen, 1978) muses that "The steady golden hum of August is upon us with its humid heat and incessant growth. Yes, growth does seem to happen almost overnight, especially if we water regularly." And that is why this chapter is so devoted to using up produce. Of course, a big part of that is gelatin salads! 

Well, in theory, anyway. I'm not sure many of the readers are likely to be growing oranges, bananas, and avocadoes, but they make the chart, too. 

I expected something in this array of Jell-Os to sound appealing, but there's nothing too impressive. The apple, banana, and peach versions sound the most promising, but they still require gnawing through stringy celery and sogged-out nuts to enjoy the better bits. And then there are combinations like avocado, orange, and onion in a citrus gelatin; cheese and celery in a tomato-and-citrus gelatin; or grapefruit, celery, and olives in lemon.... 

I was also a bit surprised by the recommendation to make Cranberry Mousse with Raspberry Sauce.

I don't usually see cranberries in stores until about November. Why not a peach mousse with raspberry sauce if we're trying to use up the produce? Hansen just doesn't seem very committed to the premise for August's recipes.

The chapter also includes grilled recipes for family picnics. While it has the classics like barbecued ribs and barbecued chicken, I was more curious about the Grilled Leg of Lamb Nuggets.

Part of my confusion is probably from reading this in 2025 rather than in 1978. When modern readers see "nuggets," we're almost certainly thinking of finger food-- little breaded-and-deep-fried bits (probably chicken!) ready to dip in a sauce of some sort. These small bits of "lamb-leg meat [cut in] the individual shape nature gives" are not breaded-- just grilled-- and pre-seasoned with a marinade rather than served with a dip. I'm also not sure why any cook would want to try to make grilled nuggets in the first place. I imagine them all dropping through the grill grates. Wouldn't it be easier to just cook bigger pieces of meat?

The recipe that might make the most sense for the purported purpose of this chapter is this one that features one of the veggies of the month: cucumbers.

Hodgepodge Relish also incorporates a whole range of other veggies (though not the other featured veg of the month-- corn). You've just got to be willing to boil big bunches of  canning jars in one of the hottest months of the year to preserve the harvest for later. It's a bit of a tradeoff. (You've also got to like vinegar waaaaaay more than I do to actually enjoy pickles, but we all know I'm a picky five-year-old at heart.)

Of course, August is always a tradeoff--  the beginning of the end of long, sunny days, melting into the first days of school. I get the impulse to try to hold onto it just a little bit longer.