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Edible Secret Pickle War

August 8, 2020 / Rox

Bremerton is a “largest city on the Kitsap Peninsula.” According to Wikipedia on the day this post went up they have a population of 37,000. Um, as a child I lived in a town with 4 times the many people and you could drive from one end to the other in 20 minutes, barring rush hour related traffic.

So it’s really small but thinks it’s big. Like a poorly trained chihuahua.

And like a poorly trained dog there can be arguments over…territory. This has never been more clear than in the tiny section of recipes for pickles. It reads like snotty mean-girls argument. Let’s see that in action shall we?

First Elda presents us with Bread and Butter Pickles and Sweet Dills.

On THE SAME PAGE you’ll find…

Jennie proposes her own Bread and Butter Pickles and Dill Pickles.

Jennie takes the upper hand and rushes in with Never Fail Dills and Sweet Society Chunk Pickles, and Sour Cucumber Pickles. Way to dominate!

Peggy tries to sow her own discord with HER recipe for Dill Pickles but she goes for sheer volume-her recipe is for 12 pounds of cucumbers and a 15 gallon oak barrel. Bold move.

So are you Team Elda or Team Jennie? Maybe you secretly like Peggy.

And now, new secrets for you…Our Edible Secrets

August 8, 2020 / Rox

The first secret is I have no idea what group decided to produce this book. I only know it was done in Bremerton, Washington in about 1950. I can guess a woman named Grace Hagan was involved and it was certainly done by a professional cookbook printing house.

The first thing in the book is the Miller Reynolds Funeral Home ad. This ad is how I can date the book. They were established in 1928 and this ad states they’ve been in business for 21+ years at the time of printing.

This slim unassuming volume has a lot of ads in it. Including one company you will meet later that through some arcane secret is mentioned again and again in the recipes. There is also an ad for Hagan & Peel Goodyear Tires.

Next you’re greeted with this a quote. You may think our new friend Grace penned this while making her own dill pickles. But it’s not so. It’s a quote from Haryot Holt Cahoon, one of the three founders of The Woman’s Chronicle founded in 1888 in Little Rock, Arkansas, a weekly paper promoting suffrage.

I found all these bits in the first 3 pages of the cookbook secretly mysterious. Why would Grace imply she wrote this? Why not say what group this was a fundraiser for? Why is half the book a household organizer with a Christmas card mailing list, car maintenance record and phone book? Also do you need a “Game Warden” in your phone book in Bremerton? Maybe that’s the edible part of the secret?

Like a lot of these community cookbooks there is a section on household “facts” about general cooking times and serving sizes. This is the most distressing part of the book….

If you do this to vegetables you deserve scurvy.

Do you SEE THAT SHIT? If you cook asparagus for 20 minutes in boiling water you’d need a crime scene analyst to tell you what they used to be. Even my mother, remembered even now as “Bone Dry Mary” for her talent for turning proteins into building materials never did that.

Just wait till be talk about the recipes.

Delightful Delicious Desserts: One Last (Great) Recipe

August 6, 2020 / Rox

There are a number of totally solid recipes in this little handmade book. But one last one stands out.

Pecan Blondies with Browned Butter Frosting–submitted by Colleen Dell

1 C White Sugar	1/2 C Brown Sugar
1/2 C Butter, softened	1 tsp Vanilla
2 Eggs	1 1/2 C Flour
1tsp baking powder	1/2 tsp Salt
1/2 C Pecans, chopped

Preheat oven to 350 F. Grease a 9×13 pan. In large bowl beat sugars and butter until light and fluffy. Add vanilla and eggs; blend well. Add in flour, salt and baking powder. Mix well. Stir in pecans. Spread in greased pan and bake for 23-33 minutes or until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean. Allow to cool completely.

(Note, I would mix the flour, salt and baking powder to their own bowl and wisk for a second to combine before adding to the wet ingredients. It really does allow you to mix the blondie batter for less time. I don’t personally think you need to work the batter that much. No dry spots, of course, but you’re not making seitan.)

For the frosting….

2 Tbsp Butter	2 C Powdered Sugar
1/2 tsp Vanilla	2-4 Tbsp Milk
Handful of Pecan bits

Heat butter in a medium saucepan over moderate heat until golden brown. Remove from heat. Stir in sugar, vanilla and 2 tbsp of milk. If you want to thin the frosting slowly add the additional milk. Spread over cooled bars and sprinkle with pecan bits.

I mean, what else is there to say? Maybe substitute cream cheese frosting? I girl can dream.

Delightful Delicious Desserts and More Shenanigans

August 6, 2020 / Rox

I said some nice things about cookies and a lady I never met yesterday. Now I get to show you the real, true, delight in “Delightful Delicious Desserts.” Every community cookbook has a few recipes that make you wonder if this is a cruel joke. The veritable “paper town” of home cooking.

In all honesty I love them more than *normal* recipes. I have 2 treasures and 1 dish that has a crazy name but is basically Methodish Kugel to share with you.

Let’s jump right in with dessert salad. Hey, I didn’t come up with this.

I have found that calling a thing “salad” in a community cookbook is an open invitation from the odd food gods.

And now–Cake?

I don’t see any “cake” here.

I like popcorn and peanuts. And the margarine mixed with marshmellows are the base used for Krispy treats. That part makes sense to me. But someone needs to explain the “salad oil” to me.

This one is THE MOST AMAZING DELIGHT. I leave this to you with minimal commentary.

Basically it’s noodle kugel. I know Bon Appetit is a difficult subject right now but if you visit that page you’ll find a description of Adam Rapoport being all Adam Rapoport about things. Nice time capsule of douche behavior.

Delightful Delicious Desserts and Mista Low

August 5, 2020 / Rox

From the First United Methodist Church Rapid City, South Dakota. 1991. As the title indicates it’s all about desserts. Flipping through the booklet I found two familiar items jazzed up with cowboys– Cowboy Cookies (Oatmeal Raisin), Colorado Cowboy Cookies (Oatmeal Chocolate Chip Pecan). That’s cute but not what I’m looking for.

This is a chunky little darling of a book. It’s entirely made on a photocopy machine and stapled bound.

The front matter dedicates the book to a parishioner named Armista Low who had passed away after years of volunteer work and baking.

Since her cookies were so famous, according to the dedication, I share them below.

Mista’s Cookies

1 C Veg. Oil	1 C Shortening
1 C White Sugar	1 C Brown Sugar
1 egg	1 tsp Vanilla
3 1/2 C All purpose flour	1 tsp Baking Soda
1 tsp Cream of Tartar	1 tsp Salt
1 1/2 C Rice Krispies	1/2 C Slivered Almonds

Geek question–why use Cream of Tartar?

Mix everything. Drop on cookie sheet by the spoonful and flatten slightly. Bake at 350 F for 8-10 minutes

Cream of Tartar (Tartaric Acid) and Baking Soda = Baking Powder so you can substitute BOTH of these items if you use 1 3/4 tsp of Baking Powder.

I’m really fascinated by the Rice Krispies. These cookies seem so *plain* compared to showy recipes but I think I get it. They will be sweet–that’s a good amount of sugar. The leavening agents should make them lighter, a bit crisp. This is not a showy cookie but if the book’s dedication is to be believed they were in high demand with the children of the congregation.

Things no one else will tell you part 1

August 5, 2020 / Rox

See this…. Don’t do it. I know the box seems friendly but its a trap. A disappointing, cold trap.

The first lick tasted of cool, damp cardboard. I stopped. I Thought about my life decisions up to that point. I took a bite. Slightly better, now it was cool faintly chocolate cardboard.

I got distracted and left the slightly rumpled bar on a plate for about 3 minutes. When I went back the stick had fallen out and there was a bit of soupy, flabby choco melt around the pale “treat.” But it tasted better. Hmm….

So take one of these darlings and place it on the counter still wrapped while you assemble the following items

A blender or a blender bottle and about 8-10 oz of skim milk.

Assemble and do the expected with these 3 items. If you did opt for the blender bottle you should let some melting happen. 5 minutes should do it.

Yeah, you can add sweetener if you like, there bars aren’t sweetened in any discernable way. You could mix in fiber or protein powder. Or you could, ya know, go back the store for Ben & Jerry’s NY Superfudge. I won’t judge you.

Just a quick recipe to make cocktails better

August 3, 2020 / Rox

Homemade Cranberry Liqueur

Not my work, so you know it’s good

Enjoy!

August 3, 2020 / Rox

Let’s talk about cookbooks and altruism (part 1)

August 3, 2020 / Rox

That sounds delightfully vague and non-threatening in a time where everyone’s words and intentions seem so loaded. Cookbooks are things we all understand, or believe we understand. They always give you recipes, sometimes give you narratives about food, community, family traditions, tribal identity….. And altruism sounds like “being kind” even if that’s not entirely true.

They intersect in the “community” fundraising cookbook industrial complex. In the past 20 or so years I haven’t seen as many of these little gems but they are still persist. Ebay, the soul-sucking void that sells nostalgia, and any Salvation Army thrift store can sell you at least a few of these for a $1 a copy. But there was a time where the ladies (always the ladies) of the congregation, the auxiliary, or the association would pool their home recipes and build a cookbook. The funds from selling these collections funded lots of community building activities, from picnics to restoring buildings to donations to “the Crippled Children’s Committee”–(that’s not me guessing BTW that’s a fact).

So I find myself a nostalgia addict, who loves food, and thrift stores. What else could I do but collect and giggle over these cookbooks? Clean the house? Forget that. These cookbooks have some great home cooking, some delusions about what “food” means, and some bizarre nonsense. So lets see what we find when we look back to a time where people didn’t have Pinterest to use as your cookbook collection.

Fun fact, at least to me since I’ve been in publishing on and off for 20 years, there were and still are companies who would help publish these for a fee and hyped the money you can earn.