Category Archives: food

May 18, 2012 · 12:04 pm

Cookbook… no, wait, Cookcards? (Ham and Bananas Hollandaise)

Ham-Banana. Fun to say, questionable to eat. Click for biggyness.

You read this blog, so you know that I lazily collect old cookbooks. That is, I don’t actively seek them out, but I “somehow” have two shelves full and as many more stacked in piles on my dining room table. Bad Housekeeping Seal Of Approval.

When I was a kid, my mom had the McCall’s Great American Recipe Card Collection set of, well, recipe cards. The plastic bin for them was a light beige on the bottom, hot stamped with some sort of patriotic shield-and-eagle thing, and a clear, hinged lid. I never made a single thing from those recipe cards, and I don’t know if my mom did either. Somewhere along the way, it disappeared. Nobody was saddened.

About 5 years ago, I picked up my own nearly-complete set of the 1978 Better Homes and Gardens Recipe Card Library. I’ve never made a single thing from these recipe cards, either, but I did finally go through each and every one to pick out some that look tasty. Many are dubious, and I’m sure they’ll get posts of their own in the future.

Today’s post is about a stack of those old McCall’s cards, found for me last week by my friend Erin of ThedaBaraVintage. My plan is to share these 1973 recipe cards with my customers, and most of them are feasible for today’s palate. Zucchini Tossed Salad. Peaches in Marsala. Salmon Steaks Tarragon. But a few, just a few, would test the taste buds of anyone I know. It will be a crapshoot, and I hope my customers enjoy the gamble. Will you get a recipe card for Creole Doughnuts (Beignets), or for Perfection (gelatine) Salad?

Because I know that everyone will want to make the Ham and Bananas Hollandaise shown above, I’ll share that recipe with you here.

6 medium bananas
1/4 cup lemon juice
6 thin slices boiled ham (about 1/2 lb)
3 Tbs prepared mustard
2 envelopes (1-1/4 oz size) hollandaise sauce mix
1/4 cup light cream

Preheat oven to 400F. Lightly butter 2-quart, shallow baking dish.
Peel bananas; sprinkle each with 1/2 Tbs lemon juice to prevent darkening.
Spread ham slices with mustard. Wrap each banana in slice of ham. Arrange in single layer in casserole. Bake 10 minutes.
Meanwhile, make sauce: In small saucepan, combine sauce mix with 1 cup water, 1 Tbs lemon juice, and cream. Heat, stirring, to boiling; pour over bananas. Bake 5 minutes longer, or until slightly golden. Nice with a green salad for brunch or lunch. Makes 6 servings.

You’re welcome.

3 Comments

Filed under amusement, collections, food, friends, kitchen, nostalgia, vintage

May 11, 2012 · 3:03 pm

Cookbookery: Big Boy Barbecue Book

Yesterday, I promised my Facebook followers (and IG and Twitter) a post dedicated to one of my newest finds: the Big Boy Barbecue Book: Shows how easy it is to cook on Spit or Grill. And so here you go!

Published in 1957 by the “Tested Recipe Institute” with the “cooperation” of the Big Boy Mfg. Co., this spiral-bound booklet is filled withâ€¦well, it’s filled with instructions for using a Big Boy grill or any of the possible Big Boy accessories, such as the (snicker, giggle) Big Boy Electro-Rod briquet fire starter. Now don’t get me wrong, there are plenty of helpful hints to be found, but you have to push through the Big Boy propaganda.

One full page describes the many benefits of barbecuing at home, including this gem:

That’s right, wifey has only to make a salad and dessert! Here’s the first of 4 dessert recipes included in the booklet:

Yup, that shouldn’t require any kitchen time or clean-up!

For those of you hoping that this gem of a book will find its way to the shop, I’m sorry to disappoint you. This one has already been claimed, but I’ll try to make some equally interesting items from my cookbook collection available in the future.

As Julia Child would say, Bon AppÃ©tit!

CAKE!

EDITOR’S NOTE: Thank you for (likely) clicking through on a Pinterest link! As I write this (at the close of 2015), the below post is now four years old and the site has been ~~abandoned~~ relocated for nearly two of those. I invite you to join me instead at the Shoes & Pie blog section of tiddleywink.com. The photos (including the one with the actual recipe you came here for) even load properly over there.

Cake, I love cake, rahhhlly I do.

I’m also picky about cake. That is to say; even shitty supermarket cake is still CAKE, but I swoon over GOOD cake. The kind of cake I grew up with, which was sweet but not cloying, dense but not heavy, and frosted with REAL buttercream. Made with copious amounts of butter.

For someone who likes to cook, and who is so picky about what makes a good cake, you’d think that I’d be baking cakes all of the time. And you’d be wrong. I bake a lousy cake. I blame a certain lack of patience, and the altitude. I was a much better baker at sea level, and try as sporadically as I do, I’ve had a tough time properly adapting recipes to 5,000 feet.

My cakes are so consistently bad that when I decided to bake my own birthday cake last summer, I ran out at the last minute and bought a back-up cake in case mine didn’t turn out. And mine didn’t turn out.Â The flaws with my cakes can apparently be attributed to over-mixing, so for my next cake I was going to be excessively attentive to how long I mixed the batter.

My regular readers know that I collect vintage cookbooks, and one of my recent acquisitions is a 1957 copy of Mile-High Cakes, put out by Colorado State University. Hey, rather than adapt a sea-level recipe to altitude, why not start with a recipe that was developed here in the first place? And so: let’s bake a cake!

Mile-High Cakes, 1957

I read the intro of the book, where the chemistry of ingredients is discussed.Â I grease and parchment-line my pans.Â I read through the recipe three times. I measure out all of my ingredients precisely. And then: I set up my kitchen timer, so I can time my mixing.

High-altitude recipe

Following instructions to a T, I mix that batter for far longer than I have mixed any batter ever before. A combined 12 minutes?! I cringe when I think about what all of this mixing is doing to my historically over-mixed batter. But I am determined to follow every instruction as written. Will it be dry? Crumbly? Will it tunnel? Fall? All of the above? I whip up a quick meringue frosting because I don’t want to waste perfectly good butter on this potential disaster.

Cake. Cake that is real cake.

Over-mixed? Nope. It’s the best cake I’ve made yet. It turns out I’ve been UNDER-mixing my batter all this time. Thank you, ladies of the Home Economics Section, Colorado Agricultural Experiment Station. I could hug you. And/or bake you a cake.

7 Comments

Filed under diner pie, food, kitchen, vintage

January 10, 2012 · 5:51 pm

Cookbook Tuesdays: Mirro-Matic Pressure Pan // Stuffed Peppers

Woo! The final in our Mirro Challenge series. (The winner won’t be chosen until tomorrow, so there’s still time to post your recipe review in the comments of that there linked post, hint hint.)

I’ve written about my 1954 Mirro-Matic Pressure Pan before. I’d used it (against modern safety precautions, don’t follow my example) for canning, and when I discovered theÂ Hip Pressure CookingÂ site, I started using it more frequently for dinner. But I’d spotted a fancy new electric model at Costco, one with digital settings and a timer, and as much as I love Sturdy Old Timey Stuff, I wanted that newfangled Cuisinart jobbie.

Lo and behold, my dad and his wife splurged and got it for me for Christmas! The old one will go into storage for the time being, because I love it so (and it will work even if the power goes out) but the new one gets all the gigs now. I’ve actually only used it twice: to prepare an overdone roast (user error; I’m still a n00b at this) and again last night to steam a giant globe artichoke in a record 10 minutes. TEN. MINUTES. That includes bringing the cooker up to pressure.

I considered posting a recipe from the new Cuisinart guide today, but quite frankly, most of the included recipes are annoyingly fussy and they’re also all written specifically for the fancy electric cooker which might confuse any of you with “regular” pressure cookers. “High” on the Cuisinart is a mere 10psi, so timing is different. Instead, I’ll post a recipe from the trusty 1954 guide by Mirro. I haven’t actually made this one yet, but I do have 6 bell peppers in the fridge which need to be eaten soon or sooner, and a pound of ground buffalo in the freezer. This recipe for Stuffed Green PeppersÂ is the short list! (Click image to enlarge)

Cookbook Tuesdays: Magical Desserts

If you read last week’s post (and if you didn’t, why not?) then you know that I’m giving away a copy of Magical Desserts with Whip â€™n Chill to a random taste-tester of the likely-inedible Banana Tuna Salad.

I still have a hard time typing that out.

Anyway, I thought the prize itself deserved to be shown off with a more in-depth mention than it received last week, so here we go.

Back in the early 1960s, General Foods introduced a product called Whip â€™n Chill to their Jell-O brand lineup. Available in chocolate, strawberry, vanilla, and lemon flavors, this “deluxe dessert” (instant mousse) mix could be served plain or, with the help of this 44-page recipe booklet from 1965, originally available for 25Â¢ and the tops from two boxes of Whip â€™n Chill, be turned into a number of potentially delightful desserts.

You will learn that Whip â€™n Chill is synonymous with versatility because its light creamy texture can be chilled plainly in dessert dishes, sherbet glasses, or pie shells. It can be layered in parfait glasses with fruit, nuts, or whipped cream. It can be frozen in fancy shapes or simply in a freezer tray. It an be turned into a frosting or filling to make a plain layer cake or angel food cake an extravagant delight.

Etcetera, etcetera. For every recipe with an unfortunate or uninspired name like Refrigerator Loaf (ladyfingers, vanilla Whip â€™n Chill, peanut brittle) or Applesauce Dessert (vanilla Whip â€™n Chill, applesauce, nutmeg), there is an equally magnificent sounding recipe the likes of Heavenly Lemon Cream (lemon Whip â€™n Chill, sour cream, lemon zest) or Emerald CrÃ©me Pie (too many ingredients to list).

But what really got me interested in this cookbook were the photographs of some of the more fanciful desserts. I’ll leave you now with some images from the book (click to enlarge), and encourage you to try your hand at winning a copy for yourself. No box tops required!