Home-Style Cooking

I purchased this one not too long ago mainly based on its photos. It is the Better Homes and Gardens Home-Style Cooking, from 1975. Doesn't that huge slab of meat on the cover look wonderful? And just look at the lovely old dears enjoying their drinks? You have to believe something strong is in those...

When I was younger I used to play with my grandmother's biscuit cutter. It had a doughnut hole attachment for the center, and I wanted to make doughnuts. I made them, and they were flat as about about 5 pages of printer paper because I mixed up baking soda and powder again. Isn't it funny how some bad habits are ingrained?

So I decided to start with the biscuits from this book. After all, how hard could they be? Ok, I don't have a pastry cutter (that 'two knives' suggestion literally doesn't cut it, by the way), a pastry cloth, or a biscuit cutter anymore, but that did not stop me. I used my son's sippy cup top.

Here they are:

These were very tasty, and turned out looking ok, too.

Here's the recipe:
Combine 2 cups all-purpose flour, 1 tablespoon baking powder, and 1/2 teaspoon salt. Cut in 1/3 cup shortening till mixture resembles coarse crumbs (good luck with this). Make well in center; stir in 3/4 cup milk just till dough clings together. Knead gently on floured surface; roll or pat to 1/2-inch thickness. Cut with a 2 1/2 inch biscuit cutter; dip cutter in flour between cuts. Bake on ungreased baking sheet at 450 degrees about 12 minutes. Makes 10.

My mother has been giving me lots of recipes her mother made when she was little, and I will try to do them correctly. Both of my grandmothers - one from Ireland and one from Italy were master bakers and seamstresses. While those genes seem to be a bit diluted in me, I do enjoy thinking about them while looking at the old recipe books.

I finished J.A. Konrath's Rusty Nail last night. This great series about Chicago police Lt. Jacqueline Daniels was pretty much heart-stopping action. I took a writing class with Konrath last year that taught me so much about writing and the business of writing, which I think a lot of programs ignore. He continues his advice on his blog: www.jakonrath.com (Go to the Reports link on the left.) He is also on a quest to tour 500 bookstores this summer, and his descriptions of the trip are hilarious.

Bloggin' About Bread

I'm pretty pleased with this one. It is yet another from the 18th Pillsbury Bake-Off: "Peanut Butter 'n Jam Bread" from Paul Deckelman, Old Saybrook, Conn.

1/2 cup sugar

1 teaspoon salt

1 egg

1 cup milk

3/4 cup crunchy peanut butter

2 cups Pillsbury's Best All Purpose Flour

4 teaspoons baking powder (yes, that's not a typo - FOUR. Just don't do like I did and bake this in the very top shelf slot of the oven as it might hit the ceiling and you might have to scrape a bit.)

1 cup marshmallow creme

3/4 strawberry preserves (I used grape which my son loves)

1/2 cup salted Virginia peanuts, if desired (I didn't)

Oven 350 degrees for 60 - 70 minutes.

Combine sugar, salt, egg and milk. Add peanut butter, mixing well. Stir in flour, baking powder and marshmallow creme until well blended. Pour preserves onto batter. Cut through batter gently with spatula to marble. Pour into greased and floured 9*5 inch pan. Sprinkle with peanuts. Bake. Remove from pan immediately.

Now mine was delicious but it did not hold together well, so I left it in the pan until it cooled, which helped. I just couldn't wait to try it as it had a wonderful smell. My father the peanut lover enjoyed this one, as did everyone else who tried it today.

I believe I am ready to move on to to a different old cookbook this weekend, but I did want to show a picture of one from the 18th Bake-Off that I never want to try:

There seemed to be a fixation with making sandwiches look like cakes in the 50's and 60's. Folks, this is "Oriental Shrimp Sandwich Roll" and there is no food coloring included. That lovely pink is all from the shrimp. No doubt this is delicious, but I can't begin to imagine what my version of this would look like as I'm sure all readers have figured out by now that I play fast and loose with both ingredients and directions.

I'm reading The PMS Murder by Laura Levine from her Jaine Austen Mystery series. These are about a freelance writer in LA and are very very funny.

Sausage Wheel...Sort of

Yes, my version of the Sausage Wheel is a thing of beauty. A few little differences you may notice. 1. I got patties instead of links and didn't want to waste them. 2. Spiced apple rings are not available in the summer in suburban grocery stores. Instead, I bought:

I needed the syrup for the recipe, so I figured this would be ok. So there are apple chunks in there, in between layers of batter and sausage patties. (look closely around the center patty)

Result? My son, husband and I all liked this, despite how it looks. It was like apple pancakes with sausage and syrup. It was just a lot of work.

I realized that I put Baking powder instead of soda into the peanut bars earlier today. Oh well, can 1/2 teaspoon really make that much of a difference?

I watched Final Fantasy VII with my anime club of totally dedicated teens tonight and tried to follow along with all their inside jokes. I'm going to have to view that again to keep up, I think. It did have beautiful graphics, though.

I figured out how to make the comments easier here so non members can write in about how fabulous my sausage wheel turned out...

Peanut Bar Bonanza

I was more in the mood for baking today than making the Sausage Wheel, though I may do it for dinner. This book is from 1967, and features "Shortcutted prize winning favorites from 18 years of Bake Offs". I chose Peanut Brittle Cookies on page 20 of the book partially for the fabulous picture alongside a vintage soda fountain glass. I also collect those, and have more banana split and malt glasses than most well stocked ice cream shops. I keep finding more in various cabinets that I've forgotten about. So that more than anything else drew me to this recipe, plus the fact that my Dad loves peanut butter flavored anything and he came over today.

Here's the recipe:
1 cup Pillsbury's Best All Purpose Flour
1/2 cup butter, softened
1/2 cup firmly packed brown sugar
1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon soda
1 egg
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 cup chopped salted peanuts (I didn't chop mine, it was still ok)

Oven 325 degrees for 24 bars

In large mixer bowl combine all ingredients except peanuts. Blend well. Stir in 1/2 cup peanuts. Spread in greased 13x9-inch pan. Sprinkle with remaining 1/2 cup peanuts, pressing lightly into dough.
Bake at 325 for 20 - 25 minutes. Cut into bars. Cool.

This is a nice recipe for a 3 -year-old to help with, too! Josh stirred, and pressed batter and peanuts into the pan.
And here's my version, along with some of my glasses:






I had multiple deadlines this weekend so I didn't get to much reading, though I did zip through the Evanovich/Hughes Full Scoop (fitting, eh?). This series is fun light reading, and this title in particular was an enjoyable read.

"Much of Marriage"

Here's a quotation from the back pages of the 18th Pillsbury Bake-Off winning recipes booklet:

Much of marriage happens in a kitchen

Candlelight remembered...That little restaurant...His laughable attempts to duplicate a secret sauce...Reminiscences of first meetings. There's romance in a kitchen and it's a wise gal who pursues it through the countless "discoveries"...new and remembered in America's foremost culinary collection...The Pillsbury Family Cookbook

Well, actually I don't think I need to say anything about this one. I'll just be a wise gal. However I do have that cookbook somewhere and perhaps there was something in it that I missed when I read it previously.

Last weekend I posted a question about the strange purple sauce on the cover of a cookbook. My librarian friend Kim from Kansas thinks this is grape jelly that she used to enjoy with little smoked sausages. She said this is delicious. Now Kim is a wonderful cook, but I don't think I'm this brave. However I did eat those meatballs, so who knows?

Moving on.

I had some blueberries in the freezer and there is nothing better than taking a nice healthy fruit and loading it up with fat and sugar in a nice muffin.

I went back to The Muffin Lady cookbook by Linda Fisher and made some chocolate chip and some blueberry. You can see how high these rise. My preschooler son is really learning how to sift. I might need to find pans for jumbo muffins.

I'm going to try a recipe from the same Bake Off booklet. I had a hard time deciding between the Sausage Wheel or the Tijuana Hash. Now if my teens were reading this, I'd be unable to even refer to that second one, but here I'm sure it's ok. Here's a picture of the Wheel, and it's oddly cropped like this in the booklet, too.

You can find the recipe at www.pillsbury.com They have all the old Bake-Off recipes.

Speaking of the Bake-Off, the 2006 winner has a fabulous blog herself called Cookie Madness www.cookiemadness.blogspot.com

Her winning recipe was a great chicken/stuffing dish that used Pillsbury waffle sticks. Very creative.

I did not have much time to read this week as I had to write and perform a teen mystery dinner, but I'm in the middle of the adult mystery G.A. McKevett's Corpse Suzette and the teen book Endymion Spring by Matthew Skelton. The first is a great cozy series about a PI from California who loves to bake and shop at Victoria's Secret and the latter seems to be a cross between the Da Vinci Code and Harry Potter.

You'll all be relieved that I took out a book on how to do some HTML for fancy things like links. More soon!

Stuffed Burger Balls

Well, as you can see, my Stuffed Burger Balls did not quite look like the picture from Jiffy Cooking. I did pass on the Worcester sauce, but still. They were yummy, though, after zapping them for another minute in the microwave when I served them to rid the meat of its pink tinge. Basically it tastes like burgers and stuffing - why the elaborate combination? I don't know. I also don't know how a 45 minute cooking time qualifies as Jiffy Cooking.



Moving On:
I was looking for my favorite Jelly Cake recipe (I'll post it when I find it), and found a paper from the same infamous 7th grade cooking class where I did so poorly! This paper gives a recipe and VERY explicit directions for Chocolate Pudding. This is my mother's favorite pudding recipe, and I made it for her many times when I was younger. Actually she made this into an icebox cake by layering it with vanilla wafers and putting it in the fridge for our anniversary recently. So it's been on my brain, and here it is:

Chocolate Pudding (exactly as my home ec teacher has it)
Mix together in a heavy aluminum pan:
3 T. Cocoa
2 T. Cornstarch
1/8 t. salt
1/2 C. sugar
Add slowly:
1 3/4 C. Milk
Mix a small amount of the milk to the dry ingredients, which have been stirred together well.
Add the remaining milk.
Place on a medium flame and stir CONSTANTLY until thickened.
After the mixture is thickened, allow it to boil SLOWLY over a LOW FLAME for two extra minutes.
Remove from flame and add:
1 T. butter
1/2 t. vanilla
Place in individual dishes or a baked pie shell. Cover with a plastic wrap.

Enjoy! Yesterday I received a cookbook from Amazon, White Trash Cooking. I had seen this in New Orleans a few weeks ago when I went for the American Library Association Conference. While I may pass on the 'Cooter' recipes, the "Jail-House Chili" has possibilities.

I've been reading about a mystery a day to get ready for an article deadline, but here's another great teen one: Dead Connection by Charlie Price. Murray can hear dead folks talking in the cemetery and one day hears the voice of a missing cheerleader. The suspense and clues are very tight on this one; its definitely a page turner. I'll review it at length in Crimespree Magazine, so check it out!

To celebrate our wedding anniversary, my husband I recently went for a day of antiquing. In the back of a huge barn of an antique mall, I found a little basket of cookbook pamphlets marked 50% off. So I picked up about 13, all for $1 - $3 each. I then found a couple books, soon to be featured here. It amazed me that while I left my husband near the front of the store and I was crouched down going through the pamphlets quietly, his head soon appeared over the booth divider. He seems to have a radar for when I find a cache of cookbooks... At any rate, I still bought them.

Most of the pamphlets were from the 1950's - 1960's, but a few from the 1940's. Most were in the Culinary Arts Institute series from Chicago, and have titles like the "250 Tempting Desserts", or "500 Tasty Snacks - Ideas for Entertaining." Needless to say, I am very entertained by many of these.

For example, in the '250 Delectable Desserts', the Introduction is incredible:

Everybody has a "sweet tooth" of considerable size. As a nation we Americans
consume more sweets in every form than any other group in the world - and that
is a tribute, not a criticism. We need more sugar, because individually and
collectively we move faster and farther than any other national group. Sugar in
every form is what feeds that dynamic energy.

Hmm, there may be a few other 'national groups' who would not agree, and who also probably eat less sugar. These amazing statements seem to be based upon no research...

Here are a few more from this purchase:

If anyone can tell me what the purple sauce is on the Snacks one I'd be grateful. There is no reference to it in the cookbook.

The Children one boasts recipes that 'All Children' love. Well they have met their match in my son. Plus they seem to be extremely elaborate. Can't wait to try it out.

I plan to do a little vintage cooking this evening, maybe finally get to the stuffing burger balls. The heat here has made cooking totally unappealing, as it's in the 100's.

Strawberry Cookies?

Tonight I was too tired to try another vintage recipe, but was talking to my husband about how we never eat all the strawberries we buy, and I should bake something. He said he'd never seen a strawberry cookie made with fresh strawberries. I started going through my many many cookbooks - vintage and modern, and he's pretty much correct. I saw a few bar recipes, lots with frozen strawberries, but no fresh. I found this one on the Internet after some searching: (Another internet recipe suggested using a dehydrator - for real!)

Strawberry Cake Cookies
Submitted by: Sierra

"Easy strawberry cookies made with strawberry cake mix and fresh strawberries. "
Original recipe yield: 2 1/2 dozen.
Prep Time:
10 Minutes
Cook Time:
15 Minutes
Ready In:
30 Minutes
Servings:
30 (change)
INGREDIENTS:
· 1 (18.25 ounce) package strawberry cake mix
· 2 eggs, beaten
· 1/2 cup chopped fresh strawberries
· 1 cup whipped cream
DIRECTIONS:
1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F (175 degrees C). Grease cookie sheets.
2. In a medium bowl, mix together the cake mix, eggs and strawberries until well blended. Fold in the whipped cream until well blended. Drop by rounded spoonfuls onto the prepared cookie sheets.
3. Bake for 8 to 10 minutes in the preheated oven. Allow cookies to cool on baking sheet for 5 minutes before removing to a wire rack to cool completely.
http://cookie.allrecipes.com/AZ/StrwbrryCkCkis.asp?addtolist=1?

But - I decided to try the Chocolate Strawberry Muffins from one of my favorite cookbooks:

The Muffin Lady by Linda Fisher has great anecdotes about her family history and how she ended up selling her fabulous baked goods to support herself. She started with a variation of her mother's Pancake Batter recipe in muffin form and went from there. I have done the Chocolate Chip muffins many times from this book - they are my husband's favorites. But the chocolate strawberry are fabulous. They use unsweetened cocoa and a fresh strawberry in the middle. This book is from 1997, not quite vintage, but definitely worth seeking out. The copyrights are pretty strict on this, so I won't type out the recipe, but see if your library has one!

Here are the results. Note: I love shaped muffin pans, and used my silicon flower shaped ones and my hearts for this. I am looking all over for stars... Note that I made 3 plain chocolate ones - my husband of the strawberry cookie challenge doesn't even like strawberries!
















I took the train downtown today to meet with some fabulous folks (www.ala.org/yalsa) and finished a wonderful teen mystery. I will be reviewing it for Crimespree magazine http://www.crimespreemag.com/contact.html but here's a teaser. The Night My Sister Went Missing is by Carol Plum-Ucci who is pretty much the best teen mystery author currently writing. Kurt's sister disappears off a pier at a party. A shot was heard, and yet no splash was heard. It has the feel of a great closed-door mystery, and it will be out in November. I finished the last few pages while the muffins baked and my little guy played trains.

While I bought the ingredients a few days ago, plumbing issues at home and a lot of summer programs at work kept me from trying this recipe until tonight!

Well, we didn't relish this dish. That is, it tasted ok, even with the Spam, except for the funky relish taste. If you are going to copy this one, you can use the low-Sodium Spam, but pass on the relish. It did make up in a snap, though. I also passed on the suggested Parsleyed Rye Bread.

Moving on to more culinary tests. While I purchased a myriad of groceries for different dishes, including a very suspect looking 'deviled ham' I believe I will next try the Stuffed Burger Bundles, still from the Jiffy book. The left version above is mine; the right the book's.


SBB
1 cup herb-seasoned stuffing mix
1/3 cup evaporated milk (when I checked to see if I had this, I had a very overdue one - so check those expirations.
1 pound ground beef
1 10 1/2 oz. can condensed cream of mushroom soup (something no suburban cook is ever without)
2 teaspoons Worcestershire sauce
1 tablespoon catsup

Prepare stuffing according to package directions. Combine evaporated milk and meat; divide in 5 patties. On waxed paper, pat each to 6-inch circle. Put 1/4 cup stuffing in center of each; draw meat over stuffing; seal. Place in 1 1/2 quart casserole. Combine remaining ingredients; pour over meat. Bake, uncovered, at 350 degrees for 45 minutes. Makes 5 servings.

I have a few questions about this:
1. Is that 1 cup of stuffing before or after it is prepared - I would think this would make a big difference.
2. A 6 inch circle? Really? OK...

The Menu suggested for this meal includes Hot Deviled Potatoes or Mashed Potatoes, Green Beans, Cranberry Star Mold, Lemon Sauced Cake or Blender Pots De Creme, along with Coffee or Milk.

Here's a picture of the Cranberry Star Mold: The caption on this one is intriguing: "Cranberry Star Mold has built-in convenience. Serve it the first night with Stuffed Burger Bundles; refrigerate any remaining salad to use with dinner another day." Convenient, eh?


There are like four paragraphs about how to unmold gelatin, but they can't describe how much stuffing I should use?


On to my reading. I just finished The latest Anne Tyler Book, Digging to America, about two families with adopted children from Korea. It was wonderful - meaningful and enjoyable and thought provoking all at the same time as many of her books are. Being an adopted parent made the book poignant for me, but I know many others who have liked this one as well. My favorite of hers will always be Saint Maybe, but this is a close second.

Welcome to this blog all you who are obsessed with vintage cookbooks, mysteries, young adult literature or any combination of those items. Mainly, though, I need an outlet for my vintage cookbook collection, and a reason to tell my husband why I need more...

I read vintage cookbooks like novels. The recipes show some strange trends - what was up with all the prune recipes, for example. Or the love of all things Hawaiian when it was added as a state. The pictures range from confusing to hilarious, and the helpful hints are amazingly time consuming. What will my son in thirty years think of Rachel Ray's quick cookbooks? I don't know, but I hope he will enjoy looking at history in this way as much as I do.

So - I will discuss my collection, make some recipes and compare notes with readers. I have no claims of being a good cook, merely an adventurous one. I have dreams of winning baking or recipe contests, but I often think there is a cooking gene missing. I've long sewn all kinds of things, from clothes to quilts, and in seventh grade after I forgot the flour in chocolate chip cookies - again - I received a C averaging the A in sewing with well, a poor grade in cooking.

The first one I want to talk about is this fabulous 1967 title. I picked it up for $2 at an antique store, intrigued already by the cover, a dish described as "Franks with a corkscrew cut are sauced with a tomato soup mixture for Saucy Frank Skillet." Yummy description, but I'm not certain I would have chosen that dish for the cover photo shot... The book begins with some fully planned meals of "Family Dinners", then moves on to "Quick and Good" recipes. So far so good.

I've decided to make the Baked Bean Pie, which is listed in a menu with 'Celery Sticks, Radish Roses or Tossed Green Salad, Parsleyed Rye Bread, Peppermint Ice Cream, Coffee or Milk'

BBP recipe:
1 12 oz. can luncheon meat

2 tablespoons maple-flavored syrup

1 1-pound 5-oz. can pork and beans in tomato sauce, partially drained

2 tablespoons hot dog relish

1 teaspoon instant minced onion

1/4 cup shredded sharp process American cheese

Cut luncheon meat in 8 slices; brush each slice with syrup. Arrange meat slices around inner edge of 9-inch pie plate. In saucepan, combine pork and beans, hot dog relish, and onion; bring to boiling. Pour bean mixture into pie plate; sprinkle with shredded cheese. Bake in moderate oven (350 degrees) 20 minutes or till meat is lightly browned. Serves 3 or 4.

There is a picture of this one, that is too dark to scan, apparently. We will see what kind of luck I have finding the big old can of pok and beans in tomato sauce at the local stores this weekend. More to follow. If this is too hard, I will try the Stuffed Burger Bundles with Hot Deviled Potatoes, or the Mexican Supper Casserole - which seems to contain no ingredients inspired by Central America.

Anyone out there have a favorite vintage cookbook waiting to be introduced?

By the way, I just finished Missing in Tokyo by Graham Marks, a YA/Adult novel about a British teen who goes to Tokyo to find his sister, who has disappeared. Decent mystery, with great cultural descriptions - I want to travel to Tokyo now.