In the depths of winter, it used to be hard to get fresh veggies. (And honestly, what with the price of groceries and the often-dicey quality of fresh food shipped thousands of miles, fresh is still not always the best option.) So today, we are perusing a "Veggies" feature from the Cooks' Round Table of Endorsed Recipes (a section in old Better Homes and Gardens magazines that recipe collectors were supposed to cut out and slap into their BHG binders) from 1951. Since it's from the February issue, it features canned veggies.
Because I'm accustomed to seeing potatoes O'Brien in the freezer section, featuring onions and bell peppers along with the titular potatoes, I assumed that the Corn O'Brien on this page would feature onions and bell peppers along with the canned corn.
But, nope! The head note explains that "O'Brien here means you make corn taste extra good with celery and pimiento." So, I guess O'Brien just means a main veggie flavored with bits of other veggies? Or maybe BHG just decided O'Brien means whatever they want it to mean....
I figured the Sweet-and-sour Green Beans would feature pineapple bits and vinegar, along with maybe some green pepper. It seems like that's what "sweet and sour" means in pretty much any vintage cookbook. I was wrong again, though!
I guess the sweet and sour elements are both supposed to be covered by the sweet-pickle juice in this recipe, and the bacon is there because canned green beans need something to perk them up.
There was one recipe I was correct about: Minted Peas.
This is mostly just what you'd expect: peas and mint jelly. Of course, you have to be able to endure the squooshy texture, army-green color, and musty-locker-full-of-dirty-socks aroma of canned peas to meet your daily veggie needs with this blend.
This all makes me very glad that frozen food is extremely common, and I can throw frozen veggie bits into whatever I'm cooking rather than putting up with the metallic flavor and hopeless mush of many canned veggies. There's nothing like some old cookbooks to make me realize how good I have it now... (At least on the food front. Don't ask about anything else.)
P.S.: If you want to see how beautiful the Corn O'Brien and Minted Peas were, well...
I imagine the black-and-white photo does the peas some favors, but I'll bet the corn would have been prettier in color, especially with that pimento garnish.
When I worked grocery store night stock I remember that the level 3 baby food jars of peas looked so gross. They were just peas like people with teeth eat, but marked up way higher in price because they were for babies who could chew stuff. I could see how they were conditioning children to hate vegetables early on.
ReplyDeleteYes. And that made me think about how pretty much all the veggies our elementary school served were canned-- just warmed up straight out of the can with no embellishment. There was, like, ONE person in my grade who would eat the canned spinach, and we all knew who it was. Similar thing with stewed tomatoes. It would have been more efficient for the cafeteria to just order the cans and throw them away without even opening them. (OK-- maybe order a single regular supermarket-size can of the veggie to open for the three or four kids in the whole school who would actually eat it.)
DeleteYeah. I don't think anyone in my grade ate canned spinach. I think that there were a few kids who would eat stewed tomatoes, but not many. They were meeting the dietary guidelines though. The regular supermarket size can would have been a much better idea. Hopefully they only opened one industrial size can when they had those items on the menu, although as I recall you had to be quick to say no and jerk your tray away to avoid them. Nothing spoiled lunch more than ending up with some foul smelling canned spinach on your tray (not even the time when someone got stabbed in the back of the hand with a fork deep enough that the tines stayed in).
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