No Pattern Required

Ah!  So many choices!  With over 40 Mid-Century Menus to choose from, Tom and I had a tough time deciding what was the best and worst of this year.  We couldn’t really come up with an overall best or an overall worst, so we came up with a couple of categories  in each choice, and sometimes even have individual favorites for each category.  So, I hope you enjoy all of our choices!

Best Dessert

I didn’t make too many desserts this year for the Mid-Century Menu, but the ones I did make were all pretty good.  Tom and I agreed that this category goes hands down to Jim Dandies.

Cherry and chocolate, a winning combination! (Well, for most of us, Barbara!)

 Best Processed Meat Dish

I was surprised when Tom and I had a disagreement on what should be number one here.  Frankly, Tom just doesn’t remember how good the Bologna Papooses were, which is why I think they should be the best.  Spicy mac and cheese inside a fried bologna shell. What’s not to like?

But Tom remembers the Spamcakes being better.  He claims he really can’t remember what the Papooses tasted like, which means they weren’t that memorable to him.  I guess he has a point.

Best Unusual Combination

There are many, many, MANY moments in the Mid-Century Menu when we are making a recipe and are hesitant to add an ingredient because common sense tells you, “This is never going to work.  And I am going to have to choke this crap down for at least two days.” But sometimes we get a miraculous reprieve and crazy combinations actually DO work out well. Thank god. 

Tom’s choice was the totally insane Meatloaf Ring with Creamed Mushrooms, that used a whopping half cup of HORSERADISH mixed in with the meat.  Thankfully, the baking time really took the heat out of the horseradish, and the meatloaf ended up being really good, even if I couldn’t get the creamed mushrooms to stay in the ring.

The dish I thought was the most miraculous was the Hot Fudge Pudding Cake I made with the Bisquick Pizza Boats.  I totally didn’t think it would work, (mystery layer of pudding from nowhere. Right.) and didn’t even bother to take a picture.  It ended up being amazing and Tom and I licked the bowl clean.  I learned my lesson, and took pictures of everything from then on, even if I thought they wouldn’t work.

Best Main Dish 

We couldn’t pick a best main dish that we agreed on.  Surprisingly, a lot of things this year were really good.  But in terms of recipes that we would make again, we each had a different ideas on what was the best main dish.

Tom loved the Squirt Chicken, it was really tasty and he got to use the grill, which he always loves. The citrus soda ended up being a really interesting flavor in the finished chicken, and we both really liked it.

I, on the other hand, was really impressed by the Spaghetti Timbales.  They were fun to make, a little crazy looking and ended up tasting like really good mac and cheese.  A winning combo.

Love it!

Uh, and now for the WORST!

Just as we made some really good stuff, we also made some really, really disgusting food this year.  Really disgusting.

 Worst Side Dish

Since I didn’t make any truly terrible desserts this year, I decided to name the worst side dish that we came up with.  Tom and I didn’t have any problem agreeing on this one.  And let me tell you, Cheezy Beans and Onions was truly terrible.  Besides looking like horror movie material, it tasted unbearably like cigarette butts. 

Worst Unusual Combination

Sometimes the unusual combinations in the Mid-Century Menu go enjoyably right, and some times they go gut-churningly, disgustingly wrong.  Sometimes they go so wrong, that you wonder about the sanity of the people who put the recipes together.  I mean, really wonder.

My choice for the most horrible combination was the Cottage Cheese Pickle Peanut Sandwichthat was created by someone who was obviously insane.  It was disgusting.  It was grilled. It was pickley. 

Tom’s choice was the legendary and truly terrible Tropical Meat Salad, which was created by someone with good intentions to bring the tropics to American Families everywhere and instead guaranteed that on the night it was served for dinner the kids would go to bed hungry.  I know, cause I sure did. Mayo, ham, bananas, mustard and pineapple does terrible, ungodly things when mixed together. And it tastes even worse.

And now…drumroll please…

The Worst Main Dish of 2009

Now this one Tom and I had no trouble agreeing on.  Even though there were some impressing contenders for this title (Tuna Royals and Eggs Oriental), the honor of Worst Main Dish of 2009 goes to Jellied Stuffed Eggs, the worst thing Tom and I have ever eaten.

This dish had it all, disgusting filling, slimey eggs all suspended (if only temporarily) in jellied chicken broth.  It remains to this day the only dish where Tom took his first bite and gagged on it.

*Shudder* Truly disgusting!

Well, that is it!!  Thanks for a great year with the Mid-Century Menu, guys!  It is great to see so many people following a long with our adventures, and we actually love doing it.  Tom has been chomping at the bit to start up again with dinners, so get ready for a whole new year of Mid-Century Menu starting next week!

Happy Wednesday, everyone!  Well, the countdown to Christmas is in full swing and everything around here is about as chaotic as it can get.   I like getting ready for Christmas, which is really good news because otherwise I might go completely insane.  Did I mention that I bought 9 lbs of butter the other day for my Christmas cookie craziness?  Yep. 9 lbs.

Anyway, this week for my Mid-Century Menu Holiday Marathon, I decided to do two different kinds of candy.  And, in true MC Menu fashion, one is a little wacky. The other is just something I have always wanted to try.

The first is Divinity Fudge, which a lot of you out there have probably made before, but I never have.  I always page through cookbooks, see the plates and platters of candy and think, “That would be fun to try.”  And now I have an excuse to try it!

This recipe comes from the book pictured above, the American Woman’s Cookbook. You may remember this book from the noodle ring post, which was a lot of fun. (Cookie Alert – the noodle ring post also has a great recipe for Almond Cookies, a nice addition to the christmas cookie list!) There is a whole candy section in this great book, but the Divinity Fudge looked really good.  So I was off!

Too bad I was totally off my game when it came to prepping these ingredients.  I had to crack a total of 7 eggs to get the two egg whites you see in the red ramekin.  I don’t know what the deal was with the eggs, but the yolks kept wanted to swim around in the whites. Jeez.

The sugar, corn syrup and water in the saucepan.

While that was heating up to light crack stage, which is ironically the level of high I get from making Christmas cookies (just kidding, moms!), I got the rest of the ingredients ready.

The pans all buttered up.

The egg whites, stiffly beaten.

Here is the sugar mixture, right before it hit the right temp.  I am always terrified of this stuff, hot sugar scares the bejesus out of me.  So I was tiptoeing around the pan, trying my darndest not to get an extra drop anywhere.

So you can appreciate how much guts it took for me to pour the hot sugar with one hand while taking a picture of it.  I was sure I was going to spill it everywhere, but it went pretty well.

And yes, my mixer is filthy.   I made a lot of cookie dough yesterday, so that baby has been getting a workout.

Here is the fudge, poured into the pan.  Sorry I didn’t get pictures of the in between parts, but everything got really hot and crazy for a second, and then it was in the pan.  So, here it is in the pan.

And HERE is the totally sticky bowl that I had to wash!  Ewwwww!!

So, flushed with sucess, I decided to move on to the potato candy, which comes from this awesome book, the State of Maine Potato Cook Book.  There isn’t a publishing date on this cookbook (what is with that lately?), but I am assuming this is a 1960′s cookbook by the illustrations.  And I love the kitchen pictured on the front of the book!

Anyway, this book has a bunch of unique potato recipes I am looking forward to tackling in 2010, but I just couldn’t wait to try the recipe for Potato Candy.  It was just too intriging to wait.

Interesting, isn’t it?  I know I am ready to go!

Pretty simple, huh?  The potato is a bit out of place, but everything else looks good.  

The potato and the sugar in the bowl.  I have to admit this was a lot easier than the divinity fudge.

Now, some kind of weird magic happened at this point.  I started up the mixer, and the sugar just looked really dry.  I kept mixing, and still really dry.  About thirty seconds in I was getting a little doubtful.  Then, the sugar started to ball up, like struesel topping, and then it just turned into goo.  In about 2 seconds.

 Look at it!  I didn’t think that would happen.  I totally thought I would have to add more liquid. 

Ahh, the mystery of potatoes.

I mixed in the salt, vanilla and coconut and crammed it into the pan.  Nothing mysterious here.

Then I poured over the chocolate, which I melted in the microwave.  And that was it!  Pretty easy, huh?

So, then came the moment everyone has been waiting for.  Tom came home.

“Here,”  I said, barely even greeting him and shoving divinity in his hand, “try some of this.”

“Ok, but this is really sticky.”

“How is it?”

“Really sticky.”

“But it’s good,” he said, “Bring me the pan and a spoon.”

“Not yet, you have one more to try.” I brought him a piece of the potato candy.  “Eat this.”

“This is so good.  It tastes just like a Mounds bar.  Bring me that pan, too.”

So, he spent the next 20 minutes eating candy and watching Merry Christmas Charlie Brown.  I would call that a sucess!!

The Verdict:

Divinity Fudge:  Very Good, but I must have not boiled the sugar long enough because it never really set up.  Next time I will go a little longer on the sugar. 

Potato Candy:  Really Good, ended up tasting just like a Mounds Bar.  You could sprinkle chopped almonds on top if you want Almond Joy.  The great thing about this recipe was there was no flour or dairy, so it would be a good Christmas treat for people with special diets.  As long as they can have sugar. Lots of sugar.

The only thing I would do differently is NOT put them in a pan if I was giving them as gifts.  I would roll them in balls and then dip them in chocolate. Just to make them fancy.

Hooray for potatoes!

Well, it is snowing like crazy right now, but I must say we are doing better than most here in Michigan.  At least there isn’t a blizzard beating a path to our door like my poor parents in Wisconsin!  In any case, it is a good day to stay in and bake cookies, or eat them if you are like me and have a whole kitchen full of cookies!

This week for the menu I chose two cookies to test out for my upcoming Christmas cookie boxes, one that I knew probably wouldn’t make the list, and one I really hoped would!

The first is a cookie from the Campbell Cookbook Cooking With Soup, which doesn’t have a publishing date on it, but from the illustrations looks to be from the 1960′s.  Cookies?  From Campbell’s?  Oh yes. Someone over at the test kitchen got a little TOO creative, and they actually have a dessert section in this book, including a layer cake, all made with tomato soup. The cookies in this section are called Rosy Rocks, and I really don’t know why.  I never thought “rock” was a good name for a cookie.  It makes you think you are going to break your teeth on them.

Ok, deep breath.  It just looks like an oatmeal cookie with…tomato soup in it. Can’t be that bad, right?  Oh god.

Everything fine here.  Is that a can of tomato soup?  Just ignore it. Everything is fine.

The dry ingredients, getting ready to get sifted together. There were A LOT of spices in this one, most likely to cover up the taste of the tomato soup.

I skipped over creaming the butter and sugar and adding the eggs so I could get to this picture.  You have all seen creaming before, but have you ever seen someone pouring soup into a cookie?  I hadn’t.  I am fascinated with this shot.

Look.  It’s soup!  In sugar!  Ah!

Adding the dry ingredients to the soup and sugar…soup.

Just look at this!!!! Ah!!!!

Not only did it look like puke, but it just smelled awful.  It reeked like tomato soup and cinnamon, which is NOT a good combo.  Ewww.

Here they are, on the sheet and ready for the oven.  And let me tell you something, they did not smell better when they were getting baked.  Whew.  The whole house stank of tomato soup.

Here are the finished cookies in a happy little pile.  What’s that?  Did I try one?  Ohhhhhh no.  I waited for Tom to come home then I made him try one. Those pictures are coming up.

Anyway, while I was waiting for Tom to come home I decided to get the stench of tomato soup out of my house by making another cookie.  A good one this time!

The cookie I chose came from this book, Best Loved Foods of Christmas, which is a best of book of all the Pillsbury Bake-Off books. I love those books, so I was super excited to find this book hiding in our recent library book sale. This is another book that doesn’t have a publishing date on it (what is with that?) but I am guessing this comes from the late 60′s, mostly because of the price of the book.

Anyway, there are LOADS of great cookies in this book, and I am going to make a bunch of them for my Christmas boxes, but I was especially excited about the Jim Dandies, because I have been looking for a good frosted chocolate cookie to round out my plates.

Looks pretty good, huh?  The only thing is that I didn’t have enough walnuts to put on the tops since I used up a bunch in the Rosy Rocks. Good job me.  So I decided to sub a half a cherry for the top.

Ah, nice normal cookie ingredients.  I like it.

The dough after beating the eggs into the creamed butter and brown sugar.

Putting in the cherry juice and milk.

It turned the dough a pretty shade of pink!  I tried to capture it here, but I think a need a better camera.

Adding the chocolate.  Yum!!

All ready for scooping!  It smelled so good, way better than the other cookies.

Here they are, all scooped and ready for the oven.

While the cookies were baking, I got started on the chocolate icing.  Although, when I make these again, I am going to make the icing first so it has time to cool while I make the cookies.  I don’t think it was cool enough when I started using it the first time.

Adding the powdered sugar to the chocolate mixture.

Ta-da!  Chocolate icing completed!

Meanwhile, I was pulling the cookies out of the oven and putting the marshmellows on the hot cookies.  The cookies turned out soft and puffy, which was what I was looking for.

Here they are, all cooled with the first one decorated.  I just spooned some icing over the top and plopped on a cherry.  Very cute!!!

Here they are, set and finished!  I love the way they looked!

While I was finishing up the Jim Dandies, Tom came home in the mood to try cookies.

First the Jim Dandies.

“Are they good?”

“These are great! But you could probably leave the marshmellow off.  It seems a little unnecessary.”

Then…the Rosy Rocks.  He sniffed them first.  “These smell a little funky.”

“Yeah,” I nodded, “Their smell isn’t the greatest.”

“So, what do you think?”

“What’s in these?”

“Tomato soup.”

“Ah.  I knew there was a…unique flavor I couldn’t put my finger on. Wow.”

I had a bite.  Not too bad.  They didn’t really taste like tomato soup, the spices had finally covered that up.  They weren’t hard either, but puffy and very soft.  The texture was nice, but the whole soup thing still kind of freaked me out. And the cookies ended up more orange than rosy, and pretty ugly.

The Verdict:

Rosy Rocks – These will NOT be on the cookie plate this year.  Even though they ended up tasting pretty good, they are still too ugly to be given away. The tomato soup flavor goes away after they cool, and they just end up tasting like a spice cookie. DO NOT EAT THEM WARM. I had a warm one after my cool one and it was awful.  Wait for them to cool.  I am not sure what the benefit is of adding soup to the cookie, other than just making you buy a can of soup.

Jim Dandies – Really good!  These are going to be on the cookie plate this year, but I may leave off the marshmellow.  Not too chocolatey, nice cherry flavor and really yummy.

If you have time, please email me your classic Christmas cookie recipes!!!  I am putting together a post of everyone’s best cookie recipe, and I would love to have your recipe be a part of it!  Email it to me at nopatternrequired at hotmail.com!!

Happy Wednesday, All!  So, for this Christmas I decided I was going to give Tom a break from the Mid-Century Menu for dinner for a month.

I decided it would be a nice change to do something GOOD for a while.  Besides, with Thanksgiving past and done my mind has switched gears over to Christmas cookies.  And since I was digging through all my vintage cookbooks looking for cookie recipes, I thought it would be a great time to showcase some vintage Christmas Cookies.  So, for the month of December, I am devoting the Mid-Century Menu to cookies.  Sounds good, huh?  I know Tom is excited.

This week I am starting with cookie I picked out from the Duncan Hines Dessert Book, which was published in 1955.  Now, for those of you who don’t know (like me before I picked up this book) Duncan Hines is not just a company that makes cake mix.  I know, shocking, isn’t it?  Anyway, Duncan Hines was actually a man who wrote travel guides and then happened to start a cake mix business on the side.  Hmm…I wonder which became more popular?  In any case, Mr. Hines would often ask people for recipes if he really liked what he was served, and those recipes became the basis for this cookbook.  There are a lot of interesting cookies in this book, but I decided to start with something simple right off the bat to get the ball rolling.

A brown sugar cookie with nuts?  Sounds good to me.  Easy yet tasty.

Simple ingredients. 

Ah…so nice not to have anything creepy staring  up at me from the prep board.  Like sardines.  Yuck.

The shortening, butter and brown sugar.  I thought this was an interesting because these cookies use both shortening AND butter.  I am not sure if that was common back then, but it is the only cookie recipe in this book that does that.

The sugar, butter and shortening, all creamed together.

Adding the egg.

Adding the flour, vanilla and baking powder after the egg was in.

If you haven’t noticed already, there is no salt in this recipe.  I was a little thrown off by that, but I kept going.

The finished batter with the nuts mixed in.  Looks good!

The cookies, all neatly portioned thanks to the Pampered Chef disher my mom brought me over Thanksgiving.  Thanks, Mom!

Finished and ready for the oven, complete with a little nut pushed on the top.  It is supposed to be a pecan half, but I figured since it was a test run I could get away with a third.  Or quarter.  It was pretty small.

Here is a finished cookie, fresh from the oven.  Unfortunately, Tom is at work and not able to do his regular first bite shot.  I will have to take a picture when he comes home from work.  In the meantime, I didn’t mind being the first one to take a bite this time.

It was pretty  good, but not great.  I could tell right away that the cookies were missing salt, and they were also a little too greasy for me.  And a little plain.

The Verdict:  A little plain, not good Christmas cookie material.

If I was going to make this for a Christmas cookie, I would a a 1/4 tsp salt, decrease the shortening by half and add a cup of toffee chips.  Or broken up toffee. And maybe drizzle some chocolate on the top, just to make it look fancy.

Wow, check out the piece of meat on the cover of this cookbook. Appetizing, huh?  It is no surprise that this is the cookbook that I chose the Mid-Century Menu out of this week.  It is 250 Ways to Prepare Meat by the Culinary Arts Institute, published in 1942. This is a great cookbook, because every single way you could think of to make any kind of mid-century meat is in this book. Even some ways that you normally would NEVER think of!!  Pork roast rolled with hot dogs, anyone??

Besides this great book, I was also excited because my parents are visiting from Wisconsin right now, so we have guests for the menu.  Pretty sweet, huh?  My dad didn’t seem that excited, but my mom rolled up her sleeves and pitched right in and helped me make the menu.  It was a blast.

“So,”  my mom said, “What are we having?

“Umm…meatloaf ring with creamed mushrooms.”

“Ewwww…sounds great!”

The ingredients.  Pretty simple, even for a meatloaf!

There’s my mom cracking the eggs!  I took a full length picture of her, too, but she was tired from her trip and didn’t want me to post the photo.   I will just keep it and use it for blackmail some other time…

Diced onions, all ready for the bowl.

The pork and the beef.  I accidentally mixed up the portions when I ordered them at the butcher shop, but they still added up to three pounds total, so I figured it was no big deal.  I would just roll with it.

Check out all the horseradish!!!!

“This says a half a cup of horseradish!”  My mom was horrified.

“Okay, so put it in,” I said.

“We can’t put it in, it will taste horrible. Let’s just put in half.”

I shook my head. “That’s not how the menu works, Mom, you have to do what the recipe says no matter what.  Throw it in the bowl!”

“This is ridiculous.  It is going to taste awful.”

Ahhh…the joys of mid-century recipes.

Adding the pepper, with my mom manning the camera.

Eww..meat hands!  You know, I wouldn’t mind mixing meatloaf with my hands if it wasn’t so darn cold! Gah!

Ketchup in the bottom of the mold, courtesty of my mother.

Here it is, all packed into the ring.  It didn’t quite fit, but we jammed it all in there anyway and hoped for the best. I will have to keep my eye out for a bigger ring mold at Goodwill.

Ta-Da!! Here it is, fresh from the oven.  We had a little bit of spilling, but that is what the pizza pan is for.

It was the fattiest meatloaf ever!  Look at the fat at the bottom of this bowl.  Oh, and thanks goes to my mom for this one, otherwise it would have been a picture of me at the emergency room.  She suggested draining the hot fat off BEFORE trying to unmold the meatloaf.  Good call!

The finished loaf! Mom thought this was a cute picture, and made me post it even though I am wearing scrub clothes with no make-up on.  Ah, the things we do for family!

Filled with the creamed mushrooms….kind of.  I don’t know why I thought the creamed mushrooms would stay in the center, even if it would have been flat on the bottom they still would have spilled out when it was cut.  Thanks to Tom’s quick thinking, a pan saved the day and my floor from being covered with mushroom mush.

The first bite…and…

My dad’s reaction shot!

“So Dad,”  I said, “How is it??”

“Not bad. How much horseradish is in here?”

“A half a cup!”  Now my mom was proud of it.

“You can’t taste it,” Tom said, “it is pretty good.”

I took a bite.  They were right, you couldn’t really taste any heat from the horseradish, but you could still taste the flavor. The meatloaf was really dense, since there was no filler of any kind, but the flavor was good.  We even liked the creamed mushrooms!

“Not so bad, Dad, huh? Worth driving 8 hours for?” 

He shook his head, smiling.  “I don’t know, let’s see how Thanksgiving dinner turns out.”

The Verdict: Good, the heat of the horseradish was toned down by the baking. We even liked the mushrooms!

I almost forgot, we had gingerbread cupcakes for dessert.  Yum!

Welcome to another week of the Mid-Century Menu!  Honestly, I am surprised this feature has gone one as long as it has.  I thought for sure that it would become too disgusting for us to continue, but Tom and I have persevered through all the stinky, nasty dishes and even found a few good ones.  One of these days I need to make a Best and Worst list of the Mid-Century Menu.  Sigh.  So many things to do.

In any case, this week’s menu comes out of Betty Crocker’s Bisquick Cook Book, published in 1956.  I love this cookbook, not just because of some of the crazy recipes, but for all the great pictures as well.  I think this is one of the better photographed cookbooks, just for the fact that they take a lot of pictures of the finished dishes.  With most of these older cookbooks you just have to use your imagination when it comes to picturing the end result of the recipe.  And that has put me off more than a few recipes, let me tell you.  I can imagine some pretty horrible stuff.

Of course, the pictures also have drawbacks.

What in God’s name is oozing out of that waffle sandwich on the right?  What?!?!?  It looks like someone on the photo shoot was so nauseated that they threw up on a waffle.

“Awww, someone bring me another waffle, Bill just yaked on this one.”

“Should we clean-up the plate and reset everything?”

“Nah, the cream on the shortcake will run. Just throw it on top of the other one and we’ll pretend its filling.”

 Gah.

Another thing, has anyone else noticed that the picture of Betty Crocker has yellow eyes?  Yellow eyes, I swear to God, yellow eyes!  Just like Scut Farkas.

Anyway, all kidding aside, here is the dish I picked for this week.

Really?  Really?!?!?  On what planet is a hot dog, cheese and ketchup considered pizza???  Even if you used chili sauce, it would be closer to chili than pizza.  Not even the dumbest 1950′s kid would be fooled by this. 

Pizza. Bah.

In any case, I was off!

I got chicken hot dogs because they were less fat.  I didn’t think it would make that much of an impact in whether or not the boats actually tasted like pizza.

Milk, melted butter and Bisquick.

The dough, all stirred together.

Here it is on the floured board after it kneading it 8 times.

Here it is after being rolled out and divided.  I didn’t bother trimming the dough to make it even!

The hot dog halves, all in place. 

And no, it isn’t pizza yet.

Putting the cheese strips in place.  I thought they would be safer under the hot dog than on top of it.

Nope, not pizza yet!

Ketchup on top of the hot dogs.

Still not pizza!

Here they are, all boated up and ready for the oven.  You know, at first I thought this was going to be an easy recipe, but from the last picture until this picture took…me…forever!  They were so fussy!  Oh well, I suppose I shouldn’t complain.  At least they look semi-appetizing, which is a good thing after all that work.

And no, Sara, they aren’t pizza yet.

Here they are, straight from the oven.  They don’t look like pizza, but you never know. I didn’t put pudding or even milk into the dessert and it came out with pudding on the bottom.  I was really confused, and I wondered if Bisquick was some kind of miracle ingredient.

The first bite. 

“So, is it pizza?”

“Nope,”  Tom said, “It’s not pizza, but these things are really good.”

I took a bite.  They were really good. Sickeningly good, actually.

But they didn’t taste like pizza. Nuts. I guess Bisquick isn’t magic after all.

The Verdict:

Pizza Boats:  Good, but not a bit like pizza. The biscuit is very rich and is a little sickening after the second one, but is still pretty tasty.  Would be a good party snack if cut into smaller pieces.

Hot Fudge Pudding Cake:  Really good.  How the mystery layer of pudding came about I have no idea, but it was really good. Tom ate himself sick on it, and didn’t care about the mystery.

Welcome to this week’s Mid-Century Menu!  I have to confess to a bit of poor planning on my part.  I didn’t put two and two together on this one, and I planned Menu night for the same night that we were suppose to go to a ballgame and eat hot dogs for dinner!  Ah well, when you have a problem, you think up a compromise, right?

So, instead of doing an entire menu, I decided that it would be a neat idea to make some crazy dessert I had my eye on, and then we could eat it when we came home from the ballgame.

And, with that in mind, I started to dig through my cookbooks with an eye out for a showstopping dessert. I found it in the Wonderful World of Welch’s cookbook.

This book was publish in 1968, and I picked it up at a church rummage sale with a ton of late 60′s – early 70′s cooking pamphlets for about 10 cents each.  I adored this book from the very beginning, because the pictures on the front of this thing are just classic. Oh, and the introduction in the beginning of the book, which reads:

“Dear Homemaker:

Greetings.

It gives me great pleasure to endorse ‘The Wonderful World of Welch’s.’

We hope you will enjoy using the unusual and interesting recipes that feature Welch’s products.”

Unusual? Interesting? Unusual AND interesting?  There can’t be any two words more tantalizing for me.  I feel like this was written for me!  Well, for the Mid-Century Menu anyway. And as I paged through the book, I found a ton of possibilities for terror; Saucy Liver (with Welchade), Lobster Catonese (with Fruit Punch), Turkey Glazed with Grape Juice, Spicy Grape Loaf (you don’t even want to know what is in that), and that was only from the Entree section!

But there, right on the front cover, I found my victim.

Welch’s Grapelade Cake. 

That’s right.  A cake made with grape jam, cloves and cinnamon, and then topped with grape juice tinted coconut. Make that a lot of cloves. That has to be a typo.

Anyway, you had better believe I am ready to go!

All of the assembled ingredients.  Notice the prominent placement of the Welch’s products.  Yes, I did actually get the proper products!

Getting ready to sift together the dry ingredients.  Except for the jam, this pretty much looked like a standard spice cake recipe to me!

Creaming the shortening. No butter in this recipe!

The sugar and shortening creaming.  And there is a LOT of sugar in this recipe.

Oh, and here’s more sugar!  Over a cup of grape jam. Wow.

Mixing in the grape jam and eggs. Notice the pretty purple color.

Now here is where it gets fun, kind of like a science experiment.  As I started adding the buttermilk and dry ingredients, the batter started changing color.

Still a little purple, but not much anymore.

Adding the final buttermilk.

The batter mixed up and ready for the pans.  It is now only slightly purple.

Three pans full of batter, ready for the oven.  It is going to be a big cake!

The cakes, fresh from the oven.  I love my little wall oven because it keeps its temp really well, but I hate having to shuffle pans around while they are baking.  All three of my cakes fell! Rrrrr….thank goodness for frosting!

Assembling cake. I decided to use a cream cheese frosting instead of a butter or boiled icing like the recipe recommended. I thought it would taste good with the grape flavor of the cake, and make umm…..the cake taste good if it really didn’t.

Here is another small change I made to the recipe.  I normally don’t make changes, but I figured using the rest of the grape jam as filling for the cake would be allowable.

Popping the lid on the cake.

Adding the cream cheese icing. 

Mixing up the “Lavender coconut”, adding grape juice concentrate.  I also decided to change a bit here, instead of mixing it in a bowl like the directions recommended, I tossed it in a plastic bag like I was breading chicken. It was a lot less mess!

Applying the coconut to the cake.  By this point, everything was really, really sticky!

The coconut applied to the sides of the cake. I didn’t bother smoothing out the cream cheese icing when I applied it since I knew that the coconut was going to be smashed on there anyway.  And it is a good thing I didn’t, because it was so humid and sticky out that without the rough spots the coconut would have rolled right off!

The finished cake, with coconut on the sides and top!

I actually really like how it looks at this point. My grandma would have loved this for a birthday cake, she always loved purple so much!

Ok, so, the cake is finished with no major problems. It smells pretty good, it looks pretty, and Tom is chomping at the bit to get a piece of it. So, I pick up the knife, cut into it, aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaand…..

It’s green inside.

“Holy cow!”  I dropped the knife.  “Look at it!  How did that happen??!?!”

Tom leaned over it, poked it and sniffed it. “Yep, it’s green all right.”

Look at this!  It almost matches the plate!

Maybe it was the mixture of cloves and grape jam.  Maybe it was the heat from the oven.  Maybe it was the other purples of the cake that made the cake itself LESS purple. Either way, that sucker was GREEN!

But Tom is undetered by the color change.  He dug in with excitement.  Probably even more excitement then if we would have cut it and it would have been purple.

Mmmmm…it’s green.

“So,” I asked, “how is it?”

He chewed for a while.  “It tastes like cream cheese, ” he said. “And it is really sweet.”  He took a couple more bites. “And there is something else.”

I took a bite, and chewed. “That would be the cloves,” I said.

“There is a lot of cloves, aren’t there?”

I couldn’t reply.  My mouth was stuck closed with grape jam and cream cheese icing.

The Verdict:  Good. Tasted like cloves, sugar and cream cheese.  Not sure what it would be like without the cream cheese icing.  I never really got a mouthful where I said, “That tastes like grape.” And then there was the disturbing green color.

My unfinished piece.  But don’t worry, Tom took care of the leftovers.

Happy Wednesday everyone!  Today is a great day for many reasons.  The first is that Tom’s fever broke sometime last night and he is feeling much better.  I am really glad, because he was pacing around driving me crazy because he couldn’t go to work!  So, after waiting a few hours this morning to make sure it didn’t come back, he is eating a peanut butter sandwich and getting ready to go to work this afternoon. Thank goodness!  Not that I didn’t like having him around, but I knew that him being home was driving him crazy.

Also, I have my computer back, all fixed and ready to go!  Thank god.  I didn’t know what I was goingf to do if I couldn’t get the Mid-Century Menu up. 

Speaking of which, the main dish for the Menu this week comes from the cookbook to the left, 300 Tasty, Healthful Dairy Dishes. This book is part of a larger collection that I received from my grandma, The Culinary Arts Institute  Encyclopedia of Cooking and Homemaking. It has about 20 individual pamphlet-type cookbooks all bound together.  They are from 1940, so I am assuming she received these neat books as a wedding gift.

Now, today’s meal was the meal I was supposed to serve to Reader Sara when she came to visit, but Tom got sick and that scrapped that plan.  I picked it based on its presentation picture alone, what it was made of was a secondary concern.  I actual picked it out from the “Menu” section of the encyclopedia, which has dinners and luncheons for each month of the year.

For those of you who aren’t familiar with a Timbale, it is kind of like a crustless quiche baked up in a little individual dish. So, eggs, milk, cheese and some sort of meat or veggie are usually tossed in according to what leftovers you have laying around. 

This seems a little calm, but then you see the picture of the luncheon…..

Oh my goodness.  Look at it! Look at it!  I KNEW as soon as I saw it that it was the luncheon for me!

So let’s get started!

The recipe didn’t specify which cheese to use, so I picked a pretty reasonable sharp cheddar that is made locally.  I figured since there weren’t that many spices or flavorings in the cheese sauce, it would need something to make it taste like….well…something.

Quarter cup of butter melting in the pan.  That is a lot of butter!

Peppers and onions browning in the butter.

Cooking the flour in the butter mixture. Whisking to make sure there are no lumps!

Here is a good action shot captured by Hubs; pouring the milk into the butter/flour/onion/green pepper mixture.  I guess the pan was a little hot…the shot is obscured by steam!

The milk/butter mixture cooking and thickening away.

Melting in the cheese….

You know, this is actually a little dull this time. Usually I have had to perform some sort of unholy cooking sin at this point, ruining the dish so badly you need dental records to identify it.

But this actually looked pretty good.

Another nice action shot taken by Tom. Crackin’ some eggs!

Okay, I don’t know if this is cheating or not, but here I am tempering the eggs before I threw them into the hot cheese sauce.  It didn’t actually call for this in the recipe, but I wasn’t sure if this was one of those things that women were just supposed to know how to do or what.  I suppose I could have just slung them in there and had scrambled eggs in my sauce, but I am assuming that wouldn’t be the good ‘ole culinary arts way.

Mixing in the spaghetti and the eggs.  I wasn’t sure about the sucess of the tempering, so I decided to throw the pasta in before the eggs just to make sure.

Okay, now things are starting to get a little crazy.

And then we come to this picture.  Which is insane.

So, I didn’t have little timbale molds or anything like the recipe called for, and I thought regular muffin cups would be a little too short.  In the end, I decided to use this jumbo muffin pan I had from Wilton. I had purchased it on a whim a long time ago when I was going to make individual Christmas cakes one year as gifts.

You don’t even want to know how that went.

Anyway, do you know how hard it is to get spaghetti into a muffin cup?  Do you? !? It turns out it is really hard.  Looking back, I should have cut up the spaghetti or something.  It was ridiculous, like trying to get a bunch of wriggling eels into a teacup.

In the end, I had to use tongs for reapportionment.  Which is what I should have done in the first place!  Grabbed the spaghetti out first, then poured over the remaining sauce.

Sigh.  So I am an idiot.  What’s it to yah?

But here I am using my brain in this picture.  For once.

I decided to put the pan with the timbales in the oven first BEFORE adding the hot water. Hah!  Take that water!

The timbales, cooked to perfection.

By the way, I ended up taking them out about 5 minutes early.  They were plenty brown and pretty solid by then, and I didn’t want them to dry out.

Okay….here is the best part….wait for it….

The timbales plated and ready to go!

I have to admit, I was pretty proud of this one.  I thought the sandwich loaf was impressive, but it was nothing compared to this platter!

Tom came into the kitchen, saw the platter and said, “Holy Cow!  Look at that thing!” So I know he was impressed too.

Hubs serving up his portion of dinner.  By the way, the garnishes are buttered broccoli and broiled muhrooms, and the recipes are at the end of the post!

Excited to take his first bite.

“So,” I said, “how are they?”

“Eh.”  He shrugged. “They just taste like mac and cheese.” 

I took a bite.  He was right, curse it!  All that work, and they just tasted like mac and cheese!  It was good mac and cheese, but still.  It would have been easier to just throw it all in a casserole dish and bake it together.  But I guess this is what happens when I pick a recipe based on the presentation.  I ended up getting a regular recipe, but end up spending and extra hour on plating it.

The Verdict:  Very Good

Spaghetti Timbales:  Very Good.  Taste just like regular mac and cheese.  Make sure to use a good, sharp cheddar, since there aren’t many spices or extra ingredients in the sauce.  Moves up to the #2 Mid-Century Menu meal!

Cheese Sauce:  Very Good!  Tasted like a good cheese sauce. Once again, use a good, sharp cheese!

Buttered Broccoli:  Good. Tasted like broccoli.

Broiled Mushrooms: Very Tasty if you like mushrooms and have garden fresh tomatoes.

Orange Sherbert: Good. Tastes just like sherbet!

*Note, I know the menu says Orange Ice, but I opted for the sherbet because the egg whites in this recipe are “cooked” by the hot sugar syrup. In the Ice recipe, the egg whites were folded in at the end and then frozen with no cooking.

I couldn’t find a recipe with the tomatoes on the bottom, so I just threw tomato slices on the bottom and didn’t turn the mushrooms. 

The broccoli was just boiled and then tossed with butter.

Yum!

More exciting news!  The Mid-Century Menu featuring the None-Such Ham Loaf is in the Accent section of the Midland Daily News today. Hopefully, this won’t be the last Mid-Century Menu that appears in the paper, either.  Depending on the interest level, I might get to contribute some more!

Thanks again to Lori and Pam for giving me this fun opportunity to share the delightful horror that is the Mid-Century Menu.  Here’s to great times and terrible recipes!  Wanna slice of ham loaf??

Welcome to this week’s Mid-Century Menu, where I find the strangest mid-century recipe I can and I cook it up and serve it to my husband, who will eat pretty much anything.  And most of the time it is even edible.

This week’s recipe comes from Warm Weather Meals for 2 or 4 or 6 published by the Pet Milk Company in 1938. 1938 isn’t truly mid-century, but I just love this cookbook. Hubs and I bought this book when we were visiting his parents in Wisconsin. We were in this great antique mall, but all we did was look at vintage cookbooks for the Mid-Century Menu. This book was by far the “best” in terms of choices of recipes. Actually is really interesting, because the recipes are actually portioned out for 2 or 4 or 6 which is really nice. 

The bad thing is the pictures, which are….a little scary. Ok, they are a lot scary.  If you don’t believe me, here you go:

Meatloaf nests filled with creamed noodles and peas. And this is the “Company Dinner”. Wow.

So, let’s get started!

I love the first instruction: Light oven.  Wow, this book is old.  And I’ve never made meatloaf with oatmeal before.  My mom always used crackers.

Anyway, we decided to make the recipe for 4, so off we go!

All the ingredients assembled and waiting to be destroyed.

All mixed up and ready to go.  Why does meatloaf always look so disgusting when you are mixing it? Look at it. Braaaaains….braaaaaains…..

Egg-shaped and ready for the depression in the center.

A carefully placed “nest” for all the creamed noodles.

What the??? What happened? My nests melted! Stupid cheap hamburger!

Actually, the 1 hour cooking time is FAR too long in this recipe.  It probably could have been cut down by 15 minutes. Maybe even longer.

I’ve never, ever, EVER made creamed anything before. I wonder why that is?

The butter and onions happily cooking away.

Adding in the liquid from the canned peas. Good lord.

Actually, the “cream” sauce turned out well. Reminds me of the great white sauce I did for the frankfurter pie, which basically ended up being a waste of culinary skill.  But I suppose you could say that about EVERY recipe here at Mid-Century Menu….

The noodles and the peas join the “cream” sauce. Doesn’t look too bad.

Volia! The finished product, meatloaf nests with creamed noodles and peas, ready to be eaten for dinner!

Besides the fact that I had greviously overcooked the “nests”, this actually was pretty good.  The meatloaf nests pretty much tasted like meatloaf, and the creamed noodles and peas just tasted like canned peas with some pepper in them.

The verdict: Good

I thought this was actually a really good meal.  I was scared it was going to end up like last week’s ham loaf, where it looked ok but tasted as if something horrible had gone wrong.  I ate quite a bit of this dinner, and actually enjoyed it.

Hubs shoveled down his portion quickly, but complained that it tasted “bland”. He said neither item really tasted like much. He said he was expecting something a little crazier.  I, on the other hand, was happy with the “bland” food. This probably is number #1 so far on my list, replacing the Bologna Papooses as the Best Mid-Century Meal Yet.

As a side-note, why are these two recipes considered “Warm Weather Meals”? I mean, that is the title, isn’t it?  I am pretty sure a hot slab of meat filled with a heavily creamed combination of canned peas and noodles isn’t warm weather fare.  And I had to turn my oven AND my stove on to make one main dish.

Bah.

Anyway, visit Vintage Thingie Thursdays at Colorado Lady for more vintage awesomeness!