No Pattern Required

By RetroRuth

We went a little wild at the last Friends of the Library Book Sale. I couldn’t help it.  Tom couldn’t help it. They handed us a paper grocery bag and told us we could cram the thing full and it would only be $5.  $5!  That’s it.  So, we ran around like idiots and crammed it full until it was to the bursting point.  Luckily it didn’t burst until we got it to the trunk of the car, but burst it did.

But I digress.  I grabbed up a bunch of excellent vintage crafting and decorating books, which I plan to scan like crazy for all you lovely folks.  And when I cracked the first one open to begin the scanning, this lovely order form for crushed marble art kits literally fell out of it!

Of course, I realized I had to post it immediately because I was pretty sure I recognized Sara’s thrifted gravel art from this post. Sara!  The reason you can’t match missing gravel is because it is marble!!! Crazy, huh?

But I think that some of these designs need to be enlarged, copied and made into art right now.  Seriously. 

In fact, I think I might die a little over the birdcage in this last scan.

What do you guys think?

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, the “fun” feature on the blog in which I get to pick a recipe from my collection of vintage cookbooks, make it, and then feed it to my husband for dinner.  Poor Tom!

And this week it really is poor Tom, because I am cooking out of a Spry cookbook.  This particular Spry book was published in 1949, and I think is one of their earlier cookbooks. Now, I am not sure if you guys are familar with Spry cookbooks, but Spry was a vegtable shortening product, similar to Crisco, and the spokeswoman for Spry was “Aunt Jenny“, the universal older aunt who looked like your grandma and had never had any children of her own, so she could spend time baking you 15 kinds of cookies and cakes.  I had one of those aunts. Everyone has one of those aunts, which makes Aunt Jenny believable and comforting. 

To a point.

Now, Aunt Jenny hosted a radio show and had her own line of cookbooks promoting Spry to housewives everywhere, and was a memorable and successful spokeswoman.  She is also incredibly scary. She is really excited about Spry, and not afraid to show it.  Even if we are afraid to look.  She also is famous for lines like, “With Spry, we can afford to have cake oftener!” and “Start enjoying fried foods today!”

For example, here is Aunt Jenny showing “Bride” (who apparently doesn’t deserve a name, even though her husband gets one) the secret to “Cake Success” using the Spry method.

Scary, isn’t it?  At least Jack’s boss is impressed with Nameless-Wife’s cake.  Whew. What a relief.

Aaaanyway, there are also other recipes in the Spry book that aren’t cake but still have a ton of Spry in them. Fried chicken seems to be #1 in the cookbook, but didn’t seem crazy enough for the Menu.  Then I stumbled upon this little beauty:

It looks like a version of tuna noodle casserole, except instead of noodles you just use potato chips.

What? What!?!?! 

And did you know that three cups of crushed potato chips is almost an entire large bag of chips?

You had better believe I found a winner!

Oh, and I also made one of those crazy Spry cakes to round out the menu. I mean, I had to, right?

The assembled ingredients. Check out the bowl of crushed chips. Yipe!

Four tablespoons of vegetable shortening, melting in the pan.  I have never made a white sauce with shortening before, and I had no idea how it was going to taste.

The flour, added to the pan.  As a side note, the flour immediately started frying as soon as I added it. Yum.

Adding the milk/mushroom liquid mixture.  As a side note, this is the second time I have used the liquid from canned mushrooms in the Mid-Century Menu, which is strange because before that, I don’t think I had EVER used it!

Here is the nice, smooth white sauce without a single lump. Huzzah! Also, the parsley and grated onion.

Now, the layering begins. A cup of crushed potato chips is spread on the bottom of a dish. So many, many chips.

The tuna and the canned mushrooms go down.  Yes, there are some fresh mushrooms in there.  I had them in the fridge and I wanted to use them up, so I thought I would throw them in there.

Pouring white sauce over the whole thing. Oh Lord.

The casserole, all layered ending with the potato chips.  I tried to get a shot of the layered look, but I don’t think it was distinct enough for the camera to capture it.

And here it is!  Fresh from its 35 minute stay in the oven.  I took the cover off for the last 5 minutes so the chips on top could brown a little. I am not sure if it made a difference, but I tried!

Here is the table, ready for dining. Tuna-Mushroom Scallop, fresh beans, rolls, milk and a Chocolate-Mallow Cake!

Taking the first bite…and….

It’s good!!!

“Really?” I asked, “Is it really good?”

“Well, it tastes like a pile of potato chips with tuna on it.  I love potato chips!”

I took a bite.  Ugh. It was so, so, so salty.  He was right, it tasted like potato chips with tuna on it.  The white sauce made everything kinda gooey, and didn’t really add much flavor.  It mostly tasted like canned mushrooms.

But when we were almost done, I noticed a change in how Tom was eating.

“I can’t eat any more of this.  Blah.”

The chips had finally gotten to him. Finally.

The verdict:

Tuna-Mushroom Scallop: Strangely good, but not by any means healthy.  Like eating a giant pile of potato chips with sauce slathered over them.

Mallow-Nut Fudge Cake:  A little dry, but still pretty good.  The fudge frosting was interesting, but just ended up tasting like fudge. The cake could have used some real icing. The whole thing was very, very sweet!

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!

Time to learn about some table settings!  I recently picked up this great book on table settings published by Better Homes and Gardens in 1968.  Tom and I found it in a box that had some vintage cookbooks in it and I had to pick it up. Since I am thrifting today with one of my friends (don’t worry, I’ll take lots of pictures), I thought some vintage tablesettings would be perfect for today!

The pictures are so funky and cool in this book that I just had to share it.  Since there is so much stuff, I thought I would post one “idea” at a time for you guys. Don’t want to overload you on table setting advice!

The first couple of pages deal with choosing tableware.  The basic idea: Match your dishes to your home decor. They suggest a floral pattern to “permit you to serve meals in rooms of varied color schemes with the possiblity of maintaining some relation between dishes and the decor of the room in which they are used.”

Wow.  I didn’t know dish patterns were such serious stuff!

Click on the pages to zoom in!

Here is the decorating pamphlet I picked up at an estate sale recently.  I love it, except for one thing.

I batted around a different title for this post.  For a couple days the draft of this post was known as “Types of Girls According to Johnson Wax” because, well, for the purposes of decorating advice this pamphlet divides all girls into four particular “types”. And they don’t do it very nicely.  Yes, I understand that it was a different time back then and things were done differently, but man is this insulting. 

Wait, what?  Where is the good student? The quiet girl who likes to read?  The bad girl who stays out too late with her boyfriend who dad doesn’t approve of?

Also, according to them, decorating is one of the oldest femine habits. Really? Wow. I wonder what they base that on.

Well, the good thing is, they have some really cute decorating ideas.  So, Johnson Wax, I understand and forgive you. But don’t let it happen again.

So, here is the first type. The “Artistic” room.

Ha ha. “Or such”.  Nothing like demeaning a girl’s interests before you try and convince her to buy your products. Nicely done. I don’t know about the giant quill, but I like the sewing machine in the room.The wastebasket idea is really cute, but I don’t understand why the girl can refinish a piece of furniture, but she needs her brother to attach two legs to a board for the desk!  Ah well.

Stay tuned for the other three “personality types” and their bedrooms!