Garage Sale Treasures

How does a box of 6 binders full of clipped and hand-written recipes from the 40s thru to the 80s sound? My idea of treasure. Thank you Lois Tollefson, whoever you are, for your painstaking collecting and preservation over the years. Many of these recipes are from friends, so I'll start with one of those:

Kathryn's Layered Salad
Layer 1 --> etc.
1) 1/2 head lettuce broken up
2) 2 pkg frozen peas cooked and cooled
3) 8 medium carrots grated
4) 1 large onion diced
5) 2 c. diced celery
Do not stir above. Mix 1 c miracle whip and 1 T vanilla and 1 T vingar and 1 T sugar and put on top of layers. Cover with saran wrap and ref 24 hrs. She makes double recipe dressing.

It was the vanilla in the dressing that caught my eye with this. I would never have thought of that. Without trying it, I won't pass judgement.

Here's the next recipe on the page, just called "Esther's".

Esther's
1 head lettuce
1 lg red onion
1 lb bacon cooked, crumbled
1 head cauliflower flowerets
Break lettuce - layer in pan - onion sliced thin layer - bacon layer - cauliflower layer - cover with dressing.
1/4 c sugar
2 cup mayonnaise
1/3 c parmesan
Cover and refrigerate overnite.

Actually Donna or Susan gave her one more recipe written below those. It's just titled "Donna or Susan." Since Donna's name is underlined, Lois must have decided it was Donna's recipe after all. Or maybe they both make it but Donna makes it better.

Donna or Susan
1 2 lb can french green beans
1 2 lb can baby peas
1 large onion chopped
1 bunch celery chopped
1 green pepper chopped
1 sm jar pimento
Mix above and salt.

1 1/2 c sugar
1 c vinegar
1/2 c salad oil
1 T water
Pou over veg and marinate 24 hr.

Dinner is Late

About 7 months late. That's how long since my last post. Eh. Been busy. Here's another for old time's sake. I set dinner on the table and got out the camera. "This is going on the internet, isn't it," my partner stated. "Yup."

I don't have names or recipes cuz these are 'inspired' by various recipes I've looked at over the last week but I didn't follow anything. This is ranier cherries and fontina cheese on a pizza crust with a hefty dose of rosemary and tarragon from the plants my mother gave me for mother's day this year. Fabulous. 

Pork chops marinated in hard cider, black and red pepper, garlic, and onion. I used my panini grill--another big thank you, Mom, for getting me that for Christmas. I use it constantly.

Cucumber, tomatoes, red lentils, mung bean seeds, red onion, feta, and mint, in a dressing of raspberry vinegar, honey, oregano, basil, olive oil, and a pinch of salt, over a pile of spring greens.

If only my children would eat what I cook.

Halloween eats

I’m still flipping through The Casserole Cookbook from the Culinary Arts Institute, 1954, looking for comfort, and I think it should be renamed The Innards Cookbook. (Has there ever been such a book?) First there’s beef and kidney pie, but there’s also Sweetbreads and Dried Beef casserole for those of you who think you aren’t getting enough pancreas in your diet, there’s Tongue and Greens, Smothered Liver and Onions, Liver and Rice Piquant, and Heart with Apple Raisin Stuffing. If we were being really honest about the composition of food, we could add the Frankfurter and Beans or Frankfurter and Potato Salad concoctions to the mix.  ("Hot dogs. You know what they're made of, Chet? Lips and assholes.") I really am not comforted. Queasy perhaps. On the other hand, Halloween is coming up and if I needed some kind of appropriate fare for that, I know just what book to turn to. Let's rename this The Culinary Arts Institute Zombie Cookbook.

This isn’t from any cookbook but I based it off of several ideas I found online browsing. I took the things I liked best and threw them together. Here is my Halloween offering at the staff potluck this morning.

Start with a bed of spring greens. Followed by:

Cooked lentils with a dressing of olive oil, garlic, no salt Greek seasoning, and red wine vinegar. (Chilled overnight.)

Butternut squash, baked with a drizzle of olive oil, salt, and red pepper flakes. (Chilled overnight.)

Feta cheese and lime juice sprinkled over the top.

You know what this needed? Some very thinly sliced red onion on top. But still not bad at all.

More apples

How about some more apple ideas for those of us regretting how many we schlepped home from the orchard. It's like planting ten zucchini plants...what was I thinking?

This time from the Antioch Cook Book, no date, but I'm guessing 1920s. It appears to me to be a community church project. I love how very succinct the recipes are; most of merely a list of ingredients. Clearly the woman reading is supposed to have ample knowledge of what to do with them.

Here's an apple recipe written in pencil on the back flyleaf, it comes with a few more instructions:

Spiced Apple Salad
1 cup sugar
1 cup water
1 cup cinnamon drops
1 cup cottage cheese
1/4 cup chopped walnuts (get your Menu Magic every day)
mayonnaise

Heat sugar, water, and cinnamon drops slowly until candy is dissolved. Put peeled and cored apple in syrup and cook until tender. remove and chill. Fill centers with cheese and nuts mixed with mayonnaise. Serve on lettuce.

Mrs. Pearl McDonald supplies a recipe for Apple Dumplings:

1 c flour
2 t baking powder
1/2 t salt
3 T shortening
1/2 c milk
4 apples
4 T sugar
2 t butter

Sift flour, baking powder, salt, add shortening, and just enough milk to make a dough. Divide into four parts, roll, place one apple in each part after paring and slicing, add 1 t sugar, 1/4 t butter in each apple, fold dough around apple. Place in pan, sprinkle remainder of sugar and butter on each dumpling, also remainder of milk. Bake 20 minutes in hot oven in a covered pan. Serve with hard sauce or rich cream.

I've seen other dumpling recipes in which you mix up the ingredients for the sauce and pour it in the pan, then the apples and sauce bake together so I was surprised to see this dry version. I think I'd like it better, I always imagined the bottom half would be squishy otherwise.


Mrs Clarence Tompkins is no-nonsense with her recipe for Apple Salad:

3 c apples, 1 c white grapes, 1 c nuts, 1 c marshmallows, 2 c celery, mayonnaise dressing.

That's it, just the list.

People ate a helluva lot of mayonnaise in the past.

Salad No. 1

I have tons of apples and a new rule to use walnuts every day to make my menu magic. That means turning to this book from the Culinary Arts Institute, 1951, for a ham and apple salad for lunch.

Ham and Apple Salad
1 1/2 cups diced ham
1 1/2 cups diced apple
1/2 c chopped celery
1 head lettuce or romaine, shredded
mustard French dressing

Combine all ingredients, adding enough dressing to coat, toss together in salad bowl. Serves six.

What is mustard French dressing? It's this:

1 cup olive oil
1/2 cup vinegar
1/2 t salt
few grains cayenne (don't get carried away here, one extra grain and you might taste it)
1/4 t white pepper
2 T chopped parsley
2 t prepared mustard

Combine and beat or shake thoroughly before using. Makes 1 1/4 cups. Rub the bowl with a crushed clove of garlic before adding salad. (Then chew the clove so that you'll actually get some garlic flavor in your salad.)

Or in my case, it's something out of a bottle with a little mustard added--for the sake of speed--that probably bears as little resemblance to the real thing in taste as it does to any real food substance, given the list of ingredients on the label.

And it's not a bad combination at all, notice I threw in some walnuts. Mmmm, I can taste Tinkerbell dancing on my tongue. Apparently she hasn't taken a bath in awhile. Thank you Culinary Arts Institute for giving me 482 new salads. I won't say 500 because 18 of them are for molded salads. In my book, if you mold it, it isn't salad. It's either sweet and fruity which makes it dessert, or it's got vegetables and/or meat in it which makes it an abomination. And I'm highly suspicious of the frozen salads too.

Nuts to you

I spent the day at a vintage goods and new crafts flea market. I picked up two new cook books and I wish I could have brought home more. But I settled on Menu Magic in a Nutshell by the California Walnut Grower's Association, which is probably from the 1950s, based on the illustrations, and yet another Metropolitan Cook Book from the Metropolitan Life Insurance Company.

Let's start with some Menu Magic. "Many a fine cook's reputation is based on a trick of kitchen magic--the little flick of the wrist that empties a cup of walnut kernels into some simple recipe! What menu magic these golden kernels work! How they add eye appeal, flavor, and food value to even old favorites! How they transform ordinary dishes into extraordinary treats!"

I can get into adding them to chicken salad, and maybe even the potato salad would be interesting to try, but I wish they didn't ruin a Pear, Cheese & Walnut Salad with celery. I'll have to come up with a good substitute. I do have all these darn apples rolling around the kitchen table.

Pear, Cheese & Walnut Salad
1/4 c cream cheese
1/4 cup celery, chopped fine
1/4 cup walnuts, chopped fine
cream
salt, pepper, and paprika
6 halves canned pears
mayonnaise
lettuce

Mix cheese, celery, and walnuts. Moisten with cream and season to taste. Place pears on lettuce leaves, fill centers of pears with mixture and garnish with mayonnaise.

Walnut Potato Salad
2 cups cold cooked potatoes
1 cup coarsely chopped walnuts
1 small onion, minced
2 T parsley. minced
1/2 t salt
2 small sweet pickles, diced
mayonnaise
lettuce
walnuts
cheese wafers

Cut potatoes into small cubes. Mix potatoes and walnuts with onion, parsley, salt and pickles, using sufficient mayonnaise to moisten. Serve on crisp lettuce leave with small cheese wafers and garnish with walnut halves.

The recipes I really find interesting though, are the ones that use walnuts as a meat substitute: a vegetarian option for the Depression. If you had walnut trees and time and couldn't afford meat...

Walnut Loaf
2 cups cold baked beans
1 1/2 cups soft bread crumbs
3 T minced onion
1 t salt
1 egg, beaten
1 1/2 cups chopped walnuts
2 T melted fat
1/2 t paprika
1 1/2 cups canned tomato juice
2 cups tomato sauce

Mix all the ingredients except the tomato sauce and put into a greased loaf pan. Bake in a moderate oven (350) for 60 minutes. Serve with or without a well-seasoned tomato sauce.

Walnut Sausage
1 cup soft bread crumbs
1 T butter
1 cup cooked rice
2 t sage
1/2 t paprika
1 1/2 cups chopped walnuts
2 eggs, beaten
1/2 t salt
1/4 t celery seed
1 t minced onion
4 T fat
crisp bacon as garnish
1 1/2 cups white sauce
Blend all ingredients except fat, bacon and white sauce. Shape mixture like sausages and brown well in the hot fat in a skillet. garnish with bacon and serve with a white sauce. (Okay, I know the fat and bacon are hardly vegetarian, but you don't have to have garnish you know, and you can always use a vegetable based fat instead.) (Do you usually garnish you sausage with bacon??)

Vegetable Loaf
1 cup canned or cooked peas
1 cup cooked, mashed carrots
1/2 cup chopped walnuts
3 T minced onion
1 cup soft bread crumbs
1 cup milk
1 T melted fat
2 beaten eggs
1 t salt
1/8 t pepper
2 cups tomato sauce
Mix ingredients in order given, omitting tomato sauce, and put in a greased loaf pan. Bake in a moderate oven (350) for 60 minutes. Serve with a well-seasoned tomato sauce.

All in all, a fun little book to have picked from the tree. And remember: "[M]ake it a rule to "Just Add Walnuts" to at least one dish every day."