Yeah.... let's just focus on the guac

I've often mentioned that I'm glad to be looking at books from older times rather than living in those older times. The casual racism and sexism can come through loud and clear. Given recent events, though, it's hard to feel too smugly superior looking at this 1958 cookbook (though mine is the 1963 printing) from the year 2015:

The Women's Auxiliary to the Ocean View Memorial Hospital in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, thought it was a great idea to have the stereotypical Mammy serving up turkey on their cookbook cover. Because of course they would.

The book is packed with titles like "Plantation Soup" and "Jefferson Davis Pie," just in case the antebellum longing wasn't palpable enough.

Of course, the editors might argue that their racism was equal opportunity:

They were perfectly happy to include these caricatures with the recipe for "Chinese Chop Suey" (which at least is stir-fried rather than pressure cooked and has soy sauce and Chinese [bead] molasses rather than cottage cheese and sour cream)...

...and they thought it was a fine idea to represent chili sauce with these sombrero-clad Mexicans resting in the shade of some cacti.

Of course, the defense that they turned all kinds of groups into stereotypes would fall as flat as a glass of Coke left in the sun on the front porch all day. In the immortal words of Batman, "That's not helping."

It seems sizable segments the Carolinas have not progressed nearly as much as one would hope in the 50+ years since this book was printed.

There are plenty of weird recipes and oddly charming and/or puzzling pictures once one can get past the outright offensive ones, so entries from this book will show up again.

For now, though, I will leave you with one related to an entirely different (and much more lighthearted) current controversy: guacamole.

There are certainly no peas in this recipe, but I'm pretty sure purists would not be so excited about this guac being a cream-cheese-based dip! Those touting the "healthy fat" in avocados would be horrified as well, since this version is loaded with dairy fat.

It sounds pretty delicious to me. Avocado, cream cheese, hot sauce, lime juice. What's not to like? I'll be offended by the rest of the book and give this recipe a pass.

Happy Cookbook Wednesday! Thanks again to Modern Day Ozzie and Harriet for hosting.

Poppy's Toothpick and Ice-stravaganza!

Happy Independence Day (at least for American readers)! When I think party food, I think of small things on toothpicks and/or ice, so today we're looking at "Good Housekeeping's Appetizer Book" (1958) for some inspiration for our fourth of July party.

With the sauce's red glare and shrimps toothpicked midair, I thought this might be the most secretly patriotic appetizer picture I cold find.

There's not much that could be more '50s American than a basket with shrimp bursting out of it willy-nilly, held aloft on crimson picks and awaiting a dunk in a hefty goblet full of something ketchup-y looking.

Need to make your own shrimp explosion? Here's the recipe:

Pretty easy: quickly cook shrimp in water with pickling spices (?), refrigerate, then toothpick the little buggers. The recipe merely suggests arranging the shrimp "in dish on tray" or even worse, simply supplying the toothpicks and letting guests spear their own, but CLEARLY the best way to do this up right is to make the rocket shrimp display!

I think the dip in the picture is the "Spicy Dunk Sauce":

Surprisingly enough, it may even be a little spicy, what with the horse-radish AND two full dashes of "liquid hot pepper seasoning."

I'm kind of puzzled by the quarter teaspoon of "bottled thick meat sauce." Do they mean steak sauce? Do they mean a thick barbecue sauce? Maybe that weird British brown sauce? Would that tiny amount be enough to notice? In any case "bottled thick meat sauce" does not sound particularly appetizing to me.... Sort of sounds like it should be overcooked liver baby food or something like that....

What if you have a ton of leftover toothpicks and want another overly-complicated composition to show off some speared tidbits? And what if you feel a bit ripped off that the shrimp recipe didn't necessitate a trip to the dime store for craft supplies? You may want to try this:

This big wheel of cheese surrounded by "frankfurters," olives, and salami "cornucopias" is the "Nosegay Appetizer."

This appetizer is truly made for the OCD cook: It starts with a "plastic foam circle, 9" in diameter, 1" thick" and requires quite a bit of precision. The center needs exactly 17 cubes of sharp Cheddar, not only on a pick but also dipped in salad dressing and parsley on only one side.

Then the hot dogs must be cut in half lengthwise, filled with sharp cheese spread, reassembled, cut into half-inch pieces, picked, and carefully arranged to surround the cheese cubes.

At least the olives are easy, but then the salami cornucopias have to be snipped, rolled, secured with a  pick, and filled by pastry bag with a homemade seasoned cream cheese before being jammed into the outer perimeter of this big ring o' saturated fats.

It's a holiday, though, and maybe you're not OCD. What if you want to actually spend some time doing something other than making toothpick-based craft projects that will be demolished the second you set them out?

I've saved the easy app for last.

This is "Olives in Ice." Can you guess how to make it?

Maybe a little more complicated than you envisioned, but still not bad. The day before, put a water-filled ring mold in the freezer and re-marinate the olives in garlic, lemon and cloves. The day of, drain the olives and dump them in the ice ring with some carrot curls and celery sticks.

Or you could just dump a drained jar of olives into the ice ring and spend your holiday trying to keep the kids from setting each other on fire.

I'd stay in the back working on the Nosegay Appetizer, though.

Happy Independence Day! May your toothpicks and patience be infinite!

Chippers, loons, moose, and Lutheran ladies

My grandparents used to flee summer's most oppressive days by driving their camper up to Minnesota. Grandpa would spend his days fishing while grandma would find loon postcards and write me updates about what the "chippers" (her nickname for chipmunks) were up to. (Mostly they were looking for food, but I always wanted to hear about them anyway.)

In that spirit, we're taking a field trip (mostly) north with The Lutheran Ladies Cookbook (1970).

Lutheran ladies do live up to the reputation Garrison Keillor has given them:

It has everything I've been led to believe a "hot dish" should contain: meat, starch, and copious amounts of canned soup. This is not even limited to one can of cream of mushroom soup, but goes the extra can to include vegetable soup as well!

Hot dish isn't all that Lutheran ladies are good for, though.

What do you suppose this roast is made of?

Congratulations if you guessed venison! Lutheran ladies really like game, too.

I'm not sure what makes "Spicy Barbecued Roast Venison" spicy. My understanding is that chili sauce is mostly a sweet and sour thing... Pairing that with sweet spices, current jelly, and lemon also makes me think this is probably more sweet and sour than spicy, but whatever it is, it's so red the hunters can pretend it's a fresh kill all over again....

Venison is not the only game in this book. Alaskan Lutheran ladies might make this next one:

If you've got extra moose, cook it with some catsup, canned mushrooms, and sour cream for a stroganoff.

With all the game recipes, I was a little afraid to find out what what Lutheran ladies would do with my chippers! Luckily, I didn't find any chipmunk recipes. They must be too small to bother with.

And while I was a bit horrified to see catsup in a stroganoff recipe, I knew it was a somewhat common variation. Another recipe showed me that Lutheran ladies have NO business trying their hands at Creole cooking:

Okay, they've got the onion... and maybe if we feel generous we can allow the substitution of ground beef for sausage. But canned cream soup? Chow mein noodles instead of rice? There is noooo way this has any business being called anything other than extra-salty hot dish!

Far from cooling me down, this post has gotten me steamed! So much for the Lutheran ladies of the north.

Happy Cookbook Wednesday, and a thank to to Modern Day Ozzie and Harriet for hosting!

Graham abuse

Summer means S'More season! Kids love the opportunity to set marshmallows ablaze and then menace everyone within a half-mile radius with their impromptu torches. The adults in the vicinity don't care because they're too busy surreptitiously scarfing down the chocolate. What gets left out of the party?

The graham crackers. With their stodgy image as the boring bread on a heavenly sandwich, they don't get nearly the same love and attention. What to do with these lonely, half-crushed S'Mores leftovers?

Good Housekeeping's "Quick 'N' Easy" cook-booklet (from the 1958 Good Housekeeping's Cook Books collection) suggests this frozen dessert... salad. (This is probably yet another case of thinking that calling a mound of jiggling sugar a "salad" will somehow make it healthier.)

If graham crackers could have a choice, I'm pretty sure they would they rather be paired with a flaming marshmallow and a cooling chocolate bar than serve as the frozen case for a fruit-cocktail-and-mayonnaise-based dessalad. Salert? (Okay, I have clearly not figured out a good portmanteau word to combine "salad" and "dessert.")

Doing time in a frozen "salad" looks like a day in the book section of the antique mall (or whatever activity you non-weirdos consider to be fun) compared to this next recipe (whose origins are a bit of a mystery. I got a little envelope full of recipe cards with "For you-- our valued customer...a package of DIL-ICIOUS IDEAS from the folks at DILS" written on it in a grab bag full of old recipes. There's no date, but my best sleuthing suggests these are from a store called (surprisingly enough) Dils Brothers & Company Department Store. It was in Parkersburg, WV, and closed in 1988, so this must be pre-1988, at least, if my sleuthing is correct):

I will admit, nothing that starts with 2 to 2-1/2 pounds of ham loaf mix is going to be a dish I will consider promising. Mixing it with graham cracker crumbs and bathing it in a slime composed of pineapple, vinegar, cloves, Karo syrup, and dry mustard upon its removal from the oven makes me want to run for the hills! 

If the graham crackers have any sense, they will play dead and be forgotten by the campfire so some nice little skunks and raccoons can gobble them up. Better that fate than being tossed into these recipes!

Have a great weekend, and respect the graham cracker!

Omelettes Take Manhattan!

Let's enjoy summer vacation by taking a nice little trip to France where Madame Romaine de Lyon will give us a class in The Art of Cooking Omelettes (1963). Since Madame Romaine actually ran a restaurant in Manhattan, though, perhaps it would be more accurate to say our field trip is to a culinary outpost of France in Manhattan....

This book has HUNDREDS of omelette suggestions, each with its own name.

They all start the same way, though: brown a tablespoon of butter over medium heat, cook fillings briefly, then pour the egg mix (3 eggs beaten with a tablespoon of water and salt and pepper to taste) on top. Then shake the pan and keep lifting the omelette edges to the uncooked eggs seep to the bottom, and fold and serve on a plate when it is is just done.

A lot of these actually sound delicious:

Eggs filled with asparagus, truffles, and cream sauce? Yes, please.

As the truffle suggests, this book does not shy away from expensive ingredients:

Why not stuff some eggs with foie gras and top them with Courvoisier?

But of course, the real draw for me was that Madame Romaine has a real soft spot for organ meats.

Have some extra chicken livers?

Make it Medici with peas, rice, onions, and croutons!

Need to use up some (veal) kidneys?

Make it Napoleon with ham, eggplant, croutons, garlic, and fines herbes. (I'd rather have a Napoleon Dynamite and fill it with tots instead of kidney.)

What if you have an abundance of sweetbreads?

Then the Champeret (with asparagus tips, mushrooms, cheese, and cream sauce) might be more your style. (Or just skip the sweetbreads altogether. This sounds pretty awesome without it!)

What if you've got calf's brains AND you want to get a Queen song stuck in your head?

No problem! Make a Scaramouche omelette with artichoke hearts, mushrooms, and sherry sauce!

I love this book-- delicious and a bit horrifying by turns, just like Hannibal....

Happy Cookbook Wednesday, and thanks to Modern Day Ozzie and Harriet for hosting!

Have a jellied soup and canned eggplant weekend

Summer officially begins tomorrow! I personally follow the meteorological seasons, which means that my summer started weeks ago on June 1. I've been living it up in summer while you chumps were still stuck in spring! Tomorrow, though, you will catch up with me, so I picked a summer menu from the Family Circle Quick Menu Cookbook by Jean Hewitt (1978) for you to celebrate.

The theme, in case you missed it, is "Fix Ahead for Outdoor Enjoyment." Let's start with the soup:

I'm not sure what makes Jellied Tomato and Zucchini Soup a soup, per se, as onion and zucchini chunks trapped in a tomato juice and chicken broth gelatin would usually be considered a salad by vintage cookbook standards. The garnish of chopped parsley further cements its "salad" status in my mind. Maybe it's the fact that this is broken into small pieces and served in chilled glasses or bowls rather than presented as an enormous, glistening slab that makes it a soup? Maybe it's the mercifully unflavored gelatin, rather than dessert-y lemon or lime, that puts this at the soup level? Your guess is as good as mine.

The Moussaka Burgers are also a bit puzzling:

The burgers are mixed with "eggplant appetizer"? I wasn't quite sure what that meant, but apparently "eggplant appetizer" is '70s-speak for caponata. At least, I'm assuming that's what they meant and not the even-more-puzzling canned stuffed eggplant. So if you want canned eggplant, celery, tomatoes, onions, olives, and perhaps occasional pit fragments in your burger (The specter of impending dental bills can spice up a burger...), this is the one for you! You will have to measure out 9.5 ounces of caponata on your own, too, as it looks as if the 4.75 ounce cans this recommends are hard to find today.

The cole slaw is a pretty standard cole slaw, and the frozen papaya cream works with the caponata to make this an especially exotic menu for the '70s:

Have an exotic weekend! Just try to dodge any pits.

Don't panic, even if something with seven legs and a chef's hat is following you

Let's go to the country!

The Casual Country Cook Book (1970, Tophill Farm, Lee, MA) is by Lorna Lowes Sheldon.

I couldn't resist it for the cover alone. It's covered not just with anthropomorphic flowers and arthropods, but mostly unhappy anthropomorphic flowers and arthropods.

That flower on the right (a daisy, maybe?) looks especially distressed. If daisies could get diarrhea, that is the look they would get on their faces right as it hit.

At the bottom we have the arthropods. The one on the left is the only one that looks genuinely happy, probably because its chef's hat is a clue that it plans on eating the other... creature. I think the chef is supposed to be a spider based on the web behind it, but it's only got six legs (five of which appear to be on the right side of its body), so all bets are off.

The seven-legged creature the "spider" appears to be tracking is not happy he's about to become lunch, but it looks as if that little guy has a circular saw blade sticking out of his ass. Why he won't just saw the spider chef in half is beyond me.

The cover is not the only quirky picture. Right before the recipes begin, we see this:

Ol' Possum's Owlhouse Menu promises all kinds of owl-appropriate fare: frittered titmouse, squirrel soup with cricket croutons, chipmunk chunks, artichoke mouse, and the Christmas special of woodcock wassail.

The recipe cards (all the pages after this one are divided into two cards-- one top main dish and one bottom dessert, dip, or side) do not tell how to make a tickled trout or a pickled piglet, though. Apparently Ol' Possum keeps her recipes to herself.

The cards all feature brief handwritten instructions:

For a second, I was excited that we might get Walter White's Meatball Dish, but this is from Walter Wright. I was thinking of a different guy who liked to cook....

The handwriting confused me for a minute. Take 2 lbs chuck around three times? Is this some weird country way of saying the recipe took 6 pounds of meat? Then I realized whoever wrote this was using a sheet of paper as a guide to help keep the writing straight, so any parts of letters that would dip below the bottom line got cut off. It's "ground three times."

Once I figured out that mystery, a new one presented itself. Why would anyone want to cover balls of raw meat with a bottle of stuffed olives, a bottle of "catsup," and a bottle of water and bake it for 1-3 hours (depending on when the guests actually show up , because this is clearly a fancy recipe meant for guests)? I figured out the first mystery, but this one is much more of a stumper....

The casual tone of the recipes can be very charming, though:

I love the directions as they get toward the end. "Don't panic- when you must now pour 1 c. boiling water over all." Any directions that make me think of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy will make me smile. At the end, we learn why it's called "Best Blueberry Bravo." Even after the weird step of dousing the whole thing with boiling water, "BRAVO!! It's lovely."

This is a whimsical little book, so I will leave you with one more whimsical picture (this one cut in half because it was in the recipe card section):

Apparently, if your lemonade stand is commandeered by an enormous butterfly, it's best to get out of the way!

Happy Cookbook Wednesday!