Two weeks ago, after nearly a year of writing Throwback of the House, I finally got the nerve to feed my friends one of my creations.
Three days later, I got a call from my editor, informing me that it's time to end this madness.
I'm pretty sure this isn't a coincidence.
Robin Wheeler
​In bidding farewell to Throwback, I've brought forth one of the first recipes I found. A dish so bizarre that it must be reserved for a special occasion such as this. A dish so potentially vile that it would make me never, ever want to experiment with old cookbooks again.
I don't have horrible childhood memories of overcooked Bird's Eye frozen Brussels sprouts. My family, for reasons I don't know, never had them. My only childhood Brussels sprout memory lives in poetry form.
I was in fifth grade, spending the night with my best friend, and I read a poem tacked to her family's refrigerator, written by her brother, age seven: "I hate Brussels sprouts / Nasty little cabbages / Throw them in the garbages."
Robin Wheeler
​That's some pretty sharp rhyming for a first grader, touching enough to live in my memory for over 25 years. Although the lowly sprout's been redeemed in the culinary world over the past decade, I can't eat one without running those three lines through my mind.
When my friends get together, we have one rule: Our friend Erin is required to bring corn dip. This dish has no right to be as good as it is: It's Mexicorn, mayo, pickled jalapeños and cheese, baked and served with tortilla chips -- or, better, Fritos.
It's so delicious we've renamed it Erindipity, and we attack it like hogs at the trough.
I keep expecting to find the recipe in one of my old cookbooks since it has all the hallmarks of a great retro party food: canned vegetables, fat, cheese and bubbly, gooey joy. It hasn't happened yet, so I decided to find another recipe that might be as shockingly divine as Erindipity. The 1968 Spin Cookery Blender Cook Book for 10-Speed Push-Button Cyclomatic Osterizer Liquefier-Blender is loaded with creamy dips. Perhaps Mexican Bean Dip can go toe-to-toe with Erindipity.
Robin Wheeler
​In a blender combine a one-pound can of baked beans, cheddar cheese, garlic salt, chili powder, salt, a wee dash of cayenne, vinegar, Worcestershire sauce and liquid smoke. Blend until smooth.
Oh, corn. You subsidized, ever-present source of cheap carbohydrates. You've been much maligned in recent years, what with that blabbermouth Michael Pollan and filmmakers poking into your business.
It's gotten so bad that we now need television ads to be reminded of the wonder of your versatility.
What cures the cold and panic of Snowmageddeon '10 better than anything?
Why, casserole, of course.
In the 1972 edition of Casseroles and More Casseroles, Mettja C. Roate promised 140 pages of casserole love, but by the time I reached page fifteen I realized Roate might not be the master of baked flavor combos.
Robin Wheeler
​For Beef, Nuts 'n Noodles, Roate suggests browning ground beef in butter and then adding canned beef gravy, cream of mushroom soup, sliced green olives, half-and-half and canned mushrooms.
New year, new beginning, new fad diets. Why should things be any different for the Throwback? Instead of focusing on weight loss via artificial sweeteners and chemicals, I'm going the opposite route with the 1970 edition of Michael Abehsera's Zen Macrobiotic Cooking.
Robin Wheeler
​I debated this one, since I refuse to poke fun at foods simply because they are foreign. There's nothing wrong with ancient Zen cookery. Zen, after all, is a revered way of life (that is, when it's not synonymous with pulling it out of my ass, such as "Zen navigation" or "Zen parenting").
On Christmas Eve, work was the last thing on my mind. My husband, daughter and I were in Sedalia, Missouri, with my parents, bracing for the incoming snowpocalypse and preparing for the next day's food orgy to honor Baby Jesus.
Robin Wheeler
​My mom, Maxine, held a yellowed index card with a hand-written recipe for Apricot Salad. "Yuck," I said. I don't like apricots. "What's in that, besides the obvious?"
​During this week of festivities, who better to consult than Betty Crocker, the grand dame of entertaining? At least, she was the grand dame back in 1960, when Betty Crocker's Party Book was published.
Who else would concoct an Eggnog and Wassail Party?
What the hell is an Eggnog and Wassail Party, anyway? It's the socially acceptable way people self-medicated during the holidays 50 years ago. Since drunk people like to eat fat- and protein-laden foods with flavors they wouldn't dream of touching in a sober state, it's the perfect time to whip up some Shrimp-Anchovy Sandwiches.
​The more I read, the more certain I am that the people at Good Housekeeping were the smirking girls in high school who'd take a dowdy girl, offer her a make-over, turn her into Whizzo the Clown and laugh at her expense.
"Hey Mitzi. I know how we can really screw things up for poor old Ann Marie. Let's convince her that cheddar's red and that green cheese is visually appealing!"
​I hate two things about Christmas food. I hate fruitcake, which doesn't make me unique, and I hate baking cookies, which makes me Satan.
I'm married to a fruitcake fan. He raved for years about how his mother's fruitcake was different. It wasn't. Like most modern-day fruitcakes, it's a brown cinder block dotted with fruit-like substances the color of a fever dream. She puts whole Brazil nuts in it, so every now and then it feels like you're biting into a fossilized thumb. Merry Christmas!
This year I'm not feeling the holiday spirit. Might as well make Fruitcake Slices from Pillsbury's 1976 Festive Baking for All Seasons. It's fruitcake in cookie form. I want to wedge myself in the chimney until late March.
​7-Up doesn't get invited to many parties. She's plain and boring. Unless she's tagging along with her pretty friend Seagram's 7, 7-Up spends most nights at home, washing her hair and talking to her cat.
In 1961, the Seven-Up Company -- then based at 1300 Delmar Boulevard in St. Louis -- decided it was time to give 7-Up a hot makeover with 7-Up Goes to a Party!
Not that she was invited. No -- 7-Up's crashing the shindig while hiding in favorite party dishes.
​With the holidays officially upon us, Throwback will spend the next few weeks dragging out the party classics. Did you miss the days of bosses having secretary three-ways at office parties, or neighborhood shindigs where you spied Mom groping a Santa Claus who looked a lot like Wayne, the bachelor who lived up the street?
​Who did Weight Watchers in the 1980s? I did, in 1985, when I was 13 years old. Yes, that's insane. I was a little chubby, but I probably would have run it off while playing softball.
I did lose weight. It lasted until about a week after I stopped the program. Having read 1977's 400-page hardcover tome, Weight Watchers International Recipes, I've gained an understanding of why the weight came back: When you eat nothing but horrible shit for a year, you go a little nuts when real food comes back.
When I was a kid, my dad often drank soda and iced tea from a big avocado-green tiki mug. That thing scared the hell out of me. I'd seen those Hawaii episodes of The Brady Bunch enough times during after-school reruns to know that idols = increased odds of getting whacked on the head with a surfboard or taken hostage in a cave by Vincent Price.
I was afraid of a lot of things back then. Like the Hamm's Beer cartoon bear mascot.
​When considering Throwback recipes, I try to be fair to foreign cuisines. Just because a culture's eating habits are different from our own doesn't automatically make it a target for mean-spirited pithiness. Sometimes, though, it's hard -- especially when it comes to Scandinavian cuisine.
I have three Scandinavian cookbooks from the mid-1960s. In all of them, I've found recipes so dire that I thought surely they were jokes.
Nope. That's just Scandinavian cuisine. It's bland, pale and, for me, a little scary.
​Even when I was a kid, I wasn't much of a fan of Jell-O. The only Jell-O-related food I really liked was poke cake. Make a white cake from a mix, poke holes in the top, pour ungelled Jell-O -- I preferred orange since I like that baby aspirin taste -- cover the cake and chill. The results were an extra, unjiggly burst of flavor in the cake, with a thin layer of Jell-O skin on top. All the flavor of Jell-O with none of the creepy, clammy jiggle.
I have lots of poke cake recipes in my collection, but I never think to make them for Throwback because I have fond memories of them.
​I don't have a problem with occasional soda-based cooking. My mom's made beans with Dr Pepper for years, and I don't think I've found a chocolate cake better than Coca-Cola
Cake. So when Kelly gave me a copy of 1965's Cookin' with Dr Pepper, I didn't think I'd find anything Throwback-worthy. Sweet potatoes glazed in Dr Pepper? I'd eat that.
Actually, in looking through the book, that might be the only decent recipe. I was distracted from the awfulness of Bean Dip à la Dr Pepper when presented with recipes using Diet Dr Pepper, which was introduced in 1962 to sluggish sales. People thought Dietetic Dr Pepper was intended for diabetics, not people who want delicious Strawberry Bavarian with about 20 calories.
So sue me. I'm not a baseball fan, so the irony of making a dish called Triple Play Warmer after the Cardinals lost their second game to the Dodgers was lost on me. All I knew was it was a cold and rainy night and I could use some warming.
The master of all advertising cookbooks, A Campbell's Cookbook: Cooking with Soup, spawned this recipe. I have the 1976 edition, the thirteenth printing. That's a hell of a lot of recipes with canned soup, and they can't all be winners like tuna casserole. The Triple Play Warmer, like 98% of the recipes in the book, wasn't created because it tasted good. It was created to sell as many cans of soup as possible.
A few months ago, I introduced you to one of my favorite people in the world, my British pal Sally. This week, I got a care package from the U.K.: two cookbooks from Sally's mom's collection, copyright 1962. They're weathered with use, which I love, and full of notes from Sally about which recipes her mom used to make. She even left some clipped magazine recipes hidden among the pages.
Sally's mom, Gill, was classmates with Mick Jagger at the London School of Economics. There's much debate on the nature of their relationship. Gill claims they lunched regularly. Sally and her sister think Gill's not telling the whole story.
Yes, I'm giddy to own cookbooks that nourished one of my favorite people with recipes cooked by someone who shared sandwiches with Sir Mick.
What's the first rule of microwave cookery? No metal. No one likes to explode. In 1979, the kind folks at Reynolds Wrap attempted to argue with physics in their book Reynolds Wrap and Microwave Cooking. I'm sure it was a public service and not a ploy to sell foil.
My first foray into microwave baking didn't go well, so I didn't have high hopes for my nuked Spicy Date Nut Bread topped with flaming foil. In fact, my hopes were so low that I didn't bother to buy dates for it. I figured I could substitute the prunes that have languished in my cabinet since the Prune Whip incident. Besides, I'm lazy, and isn't that the true heart of microwavery?
Good riddance, summer. I'm not a fan of you, and I rejoice in Tuesday's Autumnal Equinox. I'd be remiss if I didn't send summer packing with one last blast of summer chow, though. Like barbecue. Perhaps some Ham-Peach Barbecue from 1967's Good Housekeeping's Clock-Watchers' Cook Book. Because nothing says "barbecue" quite like "clock-watcher."
When my friend Kelly gave me her copy of 1968's Nathan's Famous Hot Dog Cookbook, I thought it might be hard to find a bad recipe in a book published by the company that made New York hot dogs famous. Then I saw the cover, illustrated with a photo of a glass of wine and a crown roast made of hot dogs. Even classics can bring the suck.
The Nathan's book swings from hot-dog delights to nightmares, encompassing the best and worst of human creativity.
You wouldn't like me when I'm hungry. It's a horrible sight to behold. Although I have enough body fat to keep me alive in the wild for the better part of a month, if I go an hour past mealtime without a feeding, there's hell to pay.
My loved ones have seen the wrath of the fat, hungry food writer, and they work to keep the beast at bay, which probably explains why I'm usually not hungry when I make my Throwback recipes. Or at any other time, for that matter. To prevent the hunger-induced rants, my husband throws granola bars at me as if he were trying to fend off a starving bear with live salmon.
Being well-fed provides the luxury of pickiness, so it's pretty easy for me to snob it up on most recipes.
​Even the most hardcore food snob has that one processed food that she just can't shake. For me, it's pimento cheese. These days, I usually make my own with Scott Peacock's gussied-up recipe, but a few times a year I need the processed-orange-crap-in-a-deli-tub cheese from my childhood.
Thanks to Pyrex Prize Recipes, I'm over it. With its Salmon Rice Casserole recipe, Pyrex hasn't just turned me against my beloved pimento cheese, but I don't think I'll be able to eat rice, salmon or olives in any form ever again.
Good old Betty Sullivan. She was a 1965 Superwoman. Not only did she manage to make three squares a day for her six kids and husband, but she also maintained a busy career heading the test kitchen at Hamilton Beach. With so much happening in her go-go life, Betty somehow still had the focus to write The Blender Way to Better Cooking -- 200 pages of recipes, all requiring a blender.
I think Betty was probably mixing some pretty potent Mai Tais when she developed Jellied Chicken Loaf. I've seen variations of this disaster in many old cookbooks, but Betty's is the most pulverized and contains the highest number of unnecessary steps.
Have you been despondent since last week's post? Worried about eating sea pie and dying alone? It's time to find you a man with 1952's Date Bait: The Younger Set's Picture Cook Book by Robert H. Loeb, Jr., which was loaned to me by Kelly of Sounding My Barbaric Gulp.
There's nothing wrong with being alone, according to The Solo Chef, published in 1981 by Conran's. What the hell does a corporation that billed itself as "America's busiest home furnishing store" know about being alone?
They knew that "...no matter how many benefits arise from solitary living, eating well is rarely one of them." Because solo simpletons tend to think cooking for one is "more difficult than finding a worthwhile restaurant you can afford and feel comfortable in by yourself."
When I was in fourth grade, I loved Vienna Sausages and took them in my lunch to school several times a week. I also liked Laura Branigan and Tic Tac Dough, so what the hell did I know?
I can't remember the last time I had Vienna Sausages, or when I realized that gelatin-packed canned meat isn't the best food choice. Leave it to those jackasses at Good
Housekeeping to bring the Vienna Sausages back into my world with their 1967 Keep Cool Cookbook.
There is nothing "cool" about this cookbook. The recipes are so uncool that they get the hell beat out of them on the playground. Nor are they cooling.
No one can beat a joke dead into the dirt like I can. Since last week's meat-stretching edition of Throwback, my brain has been on a giant innuendo feedback loop. You know what cracked me up? Pickle Stretcher!
That's an exaggeration. I'm sure some of the recipes are more in line with the fresh vegetable concoctions that mean "salad" to us. There's a lot more gelatin than produce in this book, though. Jell-O's official website claims that congealed salads became popular around 1930. Gelatin's relatively cheap, and even though it's not brimming with nutritional goodness, it can make a little bit of food go further during depressed economic times.
If you're in such bad financial shape that you need to make pickles go further, you probably shouldn't be spending your time making fancy gelatin molds.
My sense of humor never developed past the age of twelve. Beavis and Butthead will always crack me up. Bodily functions? Hilarious. Cheap innuendo? My favorite. Which is why I cackle every time I come across the 1974 copy of Better Homes and Gardens: The Meat Stretcher Cookbook in my collection.
Heh. I said "meat."
So much giggling to be had in a book about meat stretching. But the killer? The Tokyo Turkey Toss. Because, oh my God, it could either be a euphemism for an unlikely sex act, Ã la the Dirty Sanchez, or it could involve vomiting.
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