Ladies Brunch: Canadian-style Bacon, Orange-nut Ring, Berry-cereal Parfaits

Jiffy Cooking, by Better Homes and Gardens [1967]

This book has served me reasonably well in the past, save for the unfortunate orange-cherry cobbler incident. I am beginning, however, to notice a distinct tendency towards the use of massive amounts of sugar. This menu is no exception. My tummy hurts.

Orange-Nut Ring
2 packages refrigerated orange or cinnamon Danish rolls with icing (16 rolls)
1/4 cup chopped pecans

Separate rolls and arrange 1 package (8 rolls) flat side down, around bottom of ungreased 6 1/2-cup ring mold. Stagger remaining package of rolls on top of first layer, covering seams of rolls on bottom layer.

Bake at 375 degrees F. for 20 to 25 minutes. Invert on serving plate while warm. Spread top and sides with frosting included in packages. Decorate with nuts. Serve warm with butter. Makes 8 servings.

Serve with sliced Canadian-style bacon browned lightly in a skillet.

Berry-Cereal Parfaits
1 quart vanilla ice cream
2 10-ounce packages frozen sliced strawberries, partially thawed
2 cups sugar-frosted corn flakes

In each tall parfait glass, layer about 1/4 cup vanilla ice cream, about 3 tablespoons partially thawed strawberries, and 1/4 cup corn flakes. Top with another 1/4 cup vanilla ice cream and garnish with fresh strawberry halves, if desired. Makes 8 servings.

Verdict:

Orange-nut Ring: This is a thing of beauty! Look at it, it is glorious! It takes like 5 minutes of effort, total, and you get a beautiful ring of pull-apart pastry covered in orange glaze. It doesn't even stick to the pan! If I ever have to make a dessert and have 5 minutes to spend on it, I am SO making this again. AWESOME.

I rebelled and did not arrange the rolls in the manner prescribed, nor did I use a 6 1/2 qt. ring mold. I used a much smaller pan, and arranged the rolls thusly:

I feel my method is superior in attractiveness and ease of eating. You can just pull off a piece of pastry! So delightful. Three of the rolls didn't fit, though, and had to be cooked separately.

One thing though. The butter. If you recall, in the recipe, it says to serve with butter. The picture has an attractive bowl of butter balls. WHY? There is no good reason for this nonsense! Just... just... why would you even... I don't...

Berry-cereal Parfaits: Upon first glance, I know this looks reasonable brunch food. You may think this has yogurt in it, having not read the recipe carefully. If you have not, go back now. I will wait. .... Done? Good. Now take a moment to cease your weeping, nutritionists. Yes, this is a brunch parfait made of ice cream, sugar-coated cereal, and THREE TABLESPOONS of strawberry. The only fruit or vegetable in this entire meal does not even make up 1 serving. I cheated and did not use the proportions listed, because I was just feeling too guilty. Even with rather a lot more strawberry and rather less ice cream, this... this just isn't right.

All together: I don't feel good. Kind of jittery. Want steak. Or broccoli.

Just for fun, I plugged in the information for this meal to Livestrong's MyPlate program. For 2 small rolls, 1 parfait, and 2 slices Canadian bacon (i.e. not very much, actually):

704 calories
36g fat
39 g sugar

Breakfast: Indian Slapjacks, Pork chops, Eggs and Apples, Graham bread

A great variety of dishes are unnecessary for breakfast, but see that what you do have, is nicely cooked, and properly served. Unless sickness or some other circumstance prevents, the mistress of the house should always add the finishing touches to the breakfast room, and the breakfast table. The most experienced servant will fail in producing just the right degree of light and sunlight, in getting rid of the last speck of dust, or the latest evidence of ashes, and never thinks at all of transferring a branch of rosebuds, and geranium from the garden to the mantel piece; these belong to the gentler thought, and more refined instincts of the cultivated lady, and such duties are not at all beneath the dignity of the highest in the land. -Jennie June's American Cookery Book: Containing Upwards of Twelve Hundred Choice and Carefully Tested Receipts; Embracing All the Popular Dishes, and the Best Results of Modern Science... Also, a Chapter For Invalids, For Infants, One on Jewish Cookery; and a Variety of Miscellaneous Receipts of Special Value to Housekeepers Generally.[1870]

Bill of Fare:
Indian Slapjacks
Pork Chops cut thin and fried brown
Fried apples
Graham bread

Indian Griddle Cakes --1
Mix together one pint of Indian meal, one cup of flour, a table-spoonful of molasses, a tea-spoonful of saleratus*, a little salt and ginger, and sufficient sour milk to make a stiff batter. Bake on the griddle.

Pork Cutlets
To broil or fry these, cut them half an inch thick, trim them into neat form, take off part of the fat. To broil them, sprinkle a little pepper on them, and broil them over a clear and moderate fire a quarter of an hour, or a few minutes more; and just before taking them off, sprinkle over a little fine salt. For frying, flour them well and season with pepper, and salt, and sage. They may also be dipped into an egg, and then into bread crumbs mixed with minced sage; if for broiling, add a little clarified butter to the egg, or sprinkle it on the cutlets.

Eggs and Apples
Beat up the eggs as for omelet, pare and slice the apples, fry them in a little butter, take them out, and stir them in with the eggs. Melt a little butter in the pan, put in the eggs and apples; fry, turning over once and serve it hot.

***

Verdict:

Indian Griddle Cakes: Kind of dry and gritty, but not bad. They work astonishingly well for soaking up syrup, possibly up to 3x their weight in syrup. I do not know what property of this recipe is the cause of this, but it is awesome.


Pork Cutlets: So very tasty. I bolded the part of the recipe I followed, and they were fab. Nice and crusty outside, tender and juicy inside. Delightful.

Eggs and Apples: Surprisingly delicious! I used a small apple, three eggs, a splash of milk, a sprinkle of salt, and about 2 T. butter. Butter is important. You wouldn't think this would be as pleasant as it is. I can't quite describe how it tastes, so you'll just have to try it out.

Graham bread: I used 9-grain bread, hoping that the Rev. Sylvester Graham would approve.

All together: The best part about this menu is that you only have to use one pan! Fantastic. To keep the food from getting cold while you make everything, throw everything in the warming oven** as you make it. If you do not live in the 1800's and thus do not have a wood stove, turn your oven to its lowest setting, let it come to temperature, turn it off, and then throw in your tin foil covered food.

After eating everything, I was well satisfied. You may notice, however, that everything is brown. This may be why Jennie June suggests putting flowers on the table! As indeed I did (although they are not in the picture), as I have the refined instincts of a cultivated lady.


*Saleratus is the naturally-occuring form of baking soda. It was gathered up off the ground, where it forms a sort of crust. Early settlers to the western United States were often thrilled to find deposits of saleratus. Like pure baking soda, it has to react with an acid in order to leaven stuff. This is why the recipe above calls for sour milk, which I've talked about before. Fresh milk will not work! To substitute for sour milk, add 1 tsp. vinegar or lemon juice to every 1 cup of milk.

**The warming oven is the part of a wood-burning stove that is right above the range. It doesn't get hot, it just stays... you know... warm. Because of this, it is marvelous for keeping food warm, raising bread, keeping the bread warm after it is baked so that butter melts into it deliciously hours later, and keeping premature babies and sickly lambs in. It is not, as some might quite wrongly believe, for storing pots and pans in. This is a waste of good cookie-storing space.

On Family Recipes

I speak in praise of family foods. Not just the things that appear once a year on holidays, but the things that you think of when you are far from home. The things you crave when you've eaten restaurant food for a week straight. The chicken-and-dumpling soup (made with the leftover chicken carcass, of course), the new potatoes and peas, the Sunday morning waffles, the raisin snack cake. That thing that no one seems to understand the deliciousness of outside your family. There are things you don't want to admit to for fear of snobbish judgment: things with cream of chicken soup or Velveeta or prunes or potato chip topping.

You take them for granted. Your parents or grandparents make them, so you don't need to. There may be better recipes; recipes that are either more elaborate or easier, but not quite the same. But grandmas don't last forever, and neither do moms. The food that reminds you of them will be lost.

***

*If your parents and grandparents are still alive, get those recipes soon. Today would be ideal.

*If you have children or grandchildren, write down your recipes and get them each a copy.

*Answer: What foods remind you of home? What were the foods you ate most as a child?

Rhubarb Fool

Jennie June's American Cookery Book [1870]

I may have neglected to mention this before, but I love cream. So much. If you enjoy cream a tenth as much as I do, you will love fools. No no, the desserty kind. A fool is a fruit sauce folded into cream (whipped or unwhipped) or custard. For this recipe, I chose to replace gooseberries with rhubarb.

RHUBARB.—This is one of the most useful of all garden productions that are put into pies and puddings. It was comparatively little known till within the last twenty or thirty years, but it is now cultivated in almost every British garden. The part used is the footstalks of the leaves, which, peeled and cut into small pieces, are put into tarts, either mixed with apples or alone. When quite young, they are much better not peeled. Rhubarb comes in season when apples are going out. The common rhubarb is a native of Asia; the scarlet variety has the finest flavour. Turkey rhubarb, the well-known medicinal drug, is the root of a very elegant plant (Rheum palmatum), coming to greatest perfection in Tartary. For culinary purposes, all kinds of rhubarb are the better for being blanched. -Mrs. Beeton's Book of Household Management

Gooseberry Fool
Put into a deep dish some green gooseberries, a quart or more if desired, after baking them in the oven until quite soft [I simmered on the stovetop], pulp them through a colander and add pounded sugar to taste. When it is cold, mix in a gill* of cream to each quart of berries, and serve in a glass dish.


Verdict: Another triumph of an extremely short list of simple ingredients. Rhubarb, sugar, cream. Yum. The cream mellowed the rhubarb a little bit, rendering it even more delicious than before. Such an easy dessert! And so tasty. Plus, it is attractively pink. Now go! Try this with whatever fruit your heart fancies! I'm sure it will be fantastic, because you made it.

*5 oz.

Rhubarb, or Pie-Plant Pudding

The White House Cookbook: A Selection of Choice Recipes Original and Selected, During a Period of Forty Years' Practical Housekeeping, by Fanny Lamira Gillette, [1887]

IN presenting this book of recipes to the public, I do so at the urgent request of friends and relatives. During forty years of practical housekeeping, it has been my custom, after trying and testing a recipe, and finding it invariably a success, and also one of the best of its kind, to copy it in a book, thereby accumulating a considerable amount of reliable and useful information in the culinary line.

Rhubarb, or Pie-Plant Pudding
Chop rhubarb pretty fine, put in a pudding-dish, and sprinkle sugar over it; make a batter of one cupful of sour milk*, two eggs, a piece of butter the size of an egg, half a teaspoonful of soda, and enough flour to make batter about as thick as for cake. Spread it over the rhubarb, and bake till done. Turn out on a platter upside down, so that the rhubarb will be on top. Serve with sugar and cream.


Verdict:

Another name for rhubarb is "pie-plant", because of rhubarb's excellence in pie making. I think this is outstanding. Any produce so intimately connected with the manufacture of pie can only be a source of good in the world.

This was quite tasty! Kind of like a rhubarb upside-down cake, except that the cakey bit wasn't sweetened. That was all right, because the sweetened rhubarb made it just sweet enough. That, and the cream and sugar on top. I would have just drizzled the cream on, but I've got all this unsweetened whipped cream in my fridge from a failed butter-making attempt.** Besides being tasty, it was also quick and easy to make. Consequently, I'll probably be making it again some time. Next time, though, I shall add a little bit of sugar to the batter, some vanilla, and some nutmeg. Mmm. Delightful.

This is a great recipe to practice on if imprecise recipes make you nervous.



*For every cup of milk, add about 1 tsp. of lemon juice or vinegar and stir it around. If you lived in the days before pasteurization, you'd be drinking milk that gradually soured due to bacterial formation. Pasteurized milk does not do this. It just goes nasty. The reason for using sour milk instead of fresh milk is not economy; it is cleverness! You need some acidity to react with the baking soda to leaven the batter, making your end result light and fluffy instead of dense and brick-like. This is why you must add acid in the form of lemon juice or vinegar to achieve the same result.

**Remember this post on butter-making? It is much easier with a stand mixer in a room-temperature house than on a chilly day in 1917 with a hand-cranked churn.

Square Dance Special: Pizza Doggies, Raw Vegetable Tray, Doughnuts, Cream Soda Shake

A Campbell Cookbook: Cooking With Soup [1960's-1970's]

Everyone has this cookbook. If you don't, your mother does. If she doesn't, your grandma does. Look in your local thrift store. At least one of these will be there, if not more. The same book, with the same dubious looking dish on the front. They will find you. But enough. Let us see what delights await us therein!

Wheeee!

This is a menu from the section "Teen Soups and Snacks", and is perfect for extremely busy parents of teenagers who would love nothing more than to throw a square dance themed party for their tons of square dance enthusiast friends. Who among us, as a teenager, has not felt that urge?

Pizza Doggies
1 large clove garlic, minced
2 tablespoons olive oil
1 can (10 1/2 ounces) condensed tomato soup
1/4 cup water
2 tablespoons chopped parsley
1/4-1/2 teaspoon leaf oregano, crushed
8 frankfurters, slit lengthwise
8 frankfurter bugs, slit
6 ounces sliced Mozzarella cheese

Cook garlic in olive oil until lightly browned. Add soup, water, parsley, and oregano; cook over low heat 15 minutes. Stir often. Place frankfurters on buns in large shallow baking pan. Fill franks with sauce; top with cheese. Place under broiler about 1 minute or until cheese melts. 8 servings.

Raw Vegetable Tray
I used cucumber, jicama, cantaloupe, and pineapple. Yes. I know two of those are not vegetables.

Doughnuts
Bavarian cream-filled. Awesome.

Cream Soda Shake


Verdict:

Pizza Doggies: The two tablespoons of oil floated on top of the soup like a glistening film until 15 minutes of simmering and stirring finally helped it to absorb. I guess the pizza-ness is supposed to come from the minute amount of oregano to the soup, much as the "Sloppy Josés" on the facing page are sloppy joes made Mexican by the addition of a light dusting of chili powder. Hold on now, Campbell's soup! Don't get too crazy!

Despite my best efforts at filling, the slit-open hot dogs insisted on snapping shut whenever I took my hands away, spewing forth tomato soup. The small quantity that remained inside shot out over my hands in a cascade upon the first bite. Luckily it was just lukewarm, as was the hot dog. I assume the Campbell's test kitchen found some magical window of time in which the hot dog can get properly warm before the bun blackens, but I did not.

They were okay, though. There were two apiece; I ate both of mine and Husband made it through one. I picked the melted cheese off the last one (it's melted cheese!) and chucked the rest. In the garbage, not... you know.

Raw Vegetable Tray: Hey teens! Your choices are melted cheese on meat, doughnuts, soda and ice cream, or raw vegetables!

Doughnuts: I love that this menu has doughnuts on it! It is a strange and somehow liberating experience writing "doughnuts" on one's weekly shopping list. "Yes, let's see... bread, eggs, milk... doughnuts."

Cream Soda Shake: I put mango gelato in cream soda. It was weird. Don't do it.

Bean Croquettes, Pickles, and A Dainty Dessert

Armour's Monthly Cookbook [1913]



Baked Beans- A National Dish

To many people baked beans means just one thing—baked beans, served hot or cold. To the woman, however, who is really interested in furnishing variety in diet, and this in a very economical way, baked beans offers boundless possibilities. First of all, she lays in a stock of Veribest Baked Beans—Veribest, because she knows that in this particular brand the beans are even more thoroughly cooked than she herself could do them. There are two kinds of Veribest Baked Beans, plain, and with tomato sauce, and with both the mellow richness of the bean is preserved with all its natural flavor, making it a most toothsome dish as well as nutritious and economical. Having a good stock to draw from the economical housewife proceeds to serve baked beans to her family every day for a week, varying the dish each day.

Following this paragraph is a helpful guide for serving beans once a day for a week. Hoorayyy!

Monday: "New England Supper", beans and brown bread.
Tuesday: bean croquettes
Wednesday: mashed bean sandwiches
Thursday: bean, celery, and mayonnaise salad
Friday: beans in beet shells
Saturday: some kind of soup made by mixing pureed beans with milk. And a couple spices.
Sunday: bean loaf

That is variety in diet indeed. Since I am not totally lacking in compassion, I did not subject Husband to the entire week. Instead, you only get one. As you will see, this was entirely for the best given the tragic results that followed.

Tuesday, for lunch.—Bean Croquettes. Drain Veribest Pork and Beans (without tomato sauce), and pass them through a colander. Measure and allow one teaspoon of dry bread crumbs to each cup of beans. Season with cayenne pepper and a little minced parsley. For a pint of the mixture, beat one egg. Save enough of the egg to dip the croquettes in, and add the remainder to the beans. Mix and form into small croquettes, or balls, then roll in fine bread crumbs. Dip them in egg and again in the crumbs, and fry in deep boiling Simon Pure Leaf Lard. Border with slices of dill pickles or sweet green peppers.

Although a meal satisfies your hunger you should have dessert, because the educated palate craves that particular spice as a proper finish. Scientists tell us that a dinner digests better because of a tasty dessert, which, they say, gives the final stimulus necessary to dispose of the food previously received.

A Dainty Dessert
Lemon and grape juice frappé is another cool dessert that is also light. To make it, boil a pint of water with two cupfuls of granulated sugar for ten minutes and cool it. Then add a little cinnamon and half a cupful of lemon juice, and lastly a quart of Armour's grape juice. Freeze and serve in cups, with a little of the grape juice.


Verdict:

Bean Croquettes: These were so frustrating to make! I must not have drained the beans very well, because they were still pretty liquid. I tried making a patty and dipping it out of the dribbly mixture, but it did not work well. I added a ton more bread crumbs, and then it worked better, but it was still annoyingly messy. I will confess I used olive oil instead of lard. I ended up with ten or twelve.

I ate a couple. They were fine, just kind of bland. The pickle is absolutely necessary, though. It complements the bean croquettes to an extent I did not think possible. Husband thought they were reasonably tasty with ketchup, mustard, and pickles, and ate the rest of the batch like they were chicken nuggets.

Ten minutes after dinner, he threw them up. He did say that they were just as good coming up as going down though so... no. No. That... does not make it any better. On the plus side, this is a landmark first in Time Travel Kitchen history! Hooray! I guess!

A Dainty Dessert: Tasty! We both liked it very much, but felt it would be better and easier in a popsicle application. The cinnamon was quite nice.

Rejected: Many people find it difficult to take raw eggs when recommended by their doctor. This difficulty is removed by breaking the egg into a glass of Armour's Grape Juice. The egg is swallowed easily and in addition to the nourishment obtained there is the tonic value of the rich fruit from which the grape juice is taken.