The mystery of cooking for two

I was surprised to find a copy of Cooking for Two (USDA, August 1974) so battered and taped up among my grandma's old cookbooks.

As I mentioned before, I don't really remember her using recipes for very much, but this book clearly got used. The date is 1974, though, not too long before their youngest child left for good. Maybe grandma was having trouble cutting her cooking back to a manageable level for two people, and this was a help. (Come to think of it, she'd cook holiday meals for 10 that could easily have served at least twice as many people, so this seems kind of likely....)

But then I went through the recipes, and many of them are so sad and basic that I was once again shocked that grandma not only gave this book a second glance, but apparently used it regularly. I mean, there's a recipe to make mashed potatoes from instant potatoes.

She made them from scratch as long as I knew her, but even if she wasn't so inclined, the recipe for using instant mashed potatoes is right on the package they're sold in! I can't imagine why anybody would need a cookbook to explain it.

There was also a recipe for something that's so easy most middle-schoolers can manage it without formal instructions: grilled cheese sandwiches. (And it's not like this recipe would be hard to cut down!)

These are SAD grilled cheeses, too, filled with just one thin slice of process cheese. I always use at least a couple types: a slice of process cheese because it's a good melter and a slice of whatever other cheese I already have open so it will taste better. (Plus a slice or two of Tofurky "ham" for some smoke flavor, and maybe a sprinkle of shredded mozzarella if I have some open and want a nice cheese pull.)

At least this sad little grilled cheese recipe comes with an interesting variation. 

I never thought of combining my two favorite types of sandwiches, and I'm still not convinced it's a good idea, but I'm also a bit intrigued...

Speaking of SAD meals... I wasn't surprised to see recipes for cooking dried beans or peas in the book, but I expected them to be used as ingredients in other recipes. The recipes seem to expect readers to straight-up eat the plain cooked legumes as a meal, though. 

To make lightly-salted cooked split peas into a meal, all you have to add is a fruit-cottage cheese salad and a slice of yellow cake. If you've got dried beans, on the other hand...

Serve 'em with coleslaw and applesauce. I'm not making fun of beans. They can be great in things, but I've never been tempted to just open up a can of kidney beans and call it dinner.

To be fair, the pages with these recipes also offer a bit of advice on how to make the beans more flavorful. 

But throwing in some bacon drippings or a bit of ham will only take it so far. I still can't imagine it feeling much like a main dish without a little more assistance.

Then I saw a recipe for rice and beans. That would have to be much better, right?

Not so much. It's barely different-- just adding rice and instructing cooks to include a little meat for flavoring. Not even a few aromatics, herbs, or a couple drops of hot sauce!

The tomato-meat sauce (also known as spaghetti sauce!) is similarly bland.

 No seasonings aside from onion and a little Worcestershire sauce. (Maybe this cookbook is why grandma always bought Prego instead of making her own tomato sauce?)

The book is falling apart, and a lot of pages are stained, though, so I imagine she must have used it. The only recipe I can definitively say she tried was "Chinese-Style Dinner."

You can see how I knew-- she didn't want all that soy sauce! So I guess the blandness wasn't necessarily such an issue for grandma. Still, I am not sure what she saw in such a basic cookbook when she'd already been cooking for decades. Maybe it was a comfort when dealing with an empty nest? Now, it's just a reminder that we can never truly understand anyone else's life... There are always a few surprising, nearly-inexplicable bits if you have a chance to look closely.