Pear Flip

Yet another delight from The Better Homes and Gardens Blender Cook Book [1971].  I... I am still working myself up to the drink with sauerkraut and tomato soup. 

Pear Flip
1 12-ounce can pineapple juice
1 8-ounce can pear halves, undrained
2 teaspoons lemon juice
Few drops peppermint extract
Mint leaves

Blend first 4 ingredients in blender container till pears are pureed.  Serve mixture over ice cubes; garnish with mint leaves.  Serves 4 to 5.

Verdict:  Lovely.  A proto-smoothie.  I think this would be better with the ice cubes blended up right along with it, but still nice and refreshing.  In case you can't tell, the stuff floating on the top is mint.

My mint plant is a little under the weather. 

WWII: Pigs in Clover and Honey Oatmeal Buns

Usually, the WWII rationing recipes are horrid.  It is to the point where the mention of WWII food brings a certain terrified glint to Husband's eye.  He is really a terribly good sport.  Besides, after the aspic, any comparison is bound to be advantageous.

Pigs in Clover
For this wholesome and economical dish you will need 6 medium, well-scrubbed potatoes, 6 skinned sausages and some cabbage.  With an apple corer, remove a center core lengthways from each potato and stuff the cavity with sausage meat.  Bake the potatoes in the usual way and serve on a bed of lightly chopped, cooked cabbage.

...

Try These For a Change
CABBAGE.  All sorts of additions may be made to steam-boiled cabbage.  A few bacon rinds chopped small; or a few teaspoons of vinegar and a sprinkle of nutmeg or a shake of caraway seeds, and you have something novel and nice.
TOPS. Broccoli tops, turnip tops, and beetroot tops are all excellent if cooked as described above.

 

Honey Oatmeal Buns

These nourishing buns are extremely popular in most homes.  Try them on your family.  This recipe makes 18 medium-sized or 12 larger buns.

Sift 4 oz white flour, 1 heaped teaspoon baking powder and some salt.  Then rub in 2 1/2 oz margarine or clarified cooking fat.  When evenly mixed, add 4 oz fine oatmeal and a level teaspoon ground ginger.  Mix a little beaten-up egg with 3 dessertspoons honey (loosened by slight warming if necessary) and mix to a stiff consistency with a fork.  You may need a little milk here.  Divide the mixture into roughly piled heaps.  Bake in a hot oven for quick rising, then reduce the heat slightly for crisp, even browning.  The whole baking should take about 20 minutes. 

Verdict:

Pigs in Clover: In the absence of an apple corer, I bored a hole through the middle of each potato with a paring knife and stuffed with bulk sausage.  I should really get an apple corer.  Extremely useful for baked apples, which are delicious.  Anyway, this was... good!  Basically a baked potato with a vein of sausage in it.  The sausage lends some flavor to the potato around it, and baked potatoes are nice anyway.  The taste was improved further with some ketchup.  This is an excellent way to stretch a small amount of meat a looooooooong way, and might well be a good freezer meal for lunches.  Additionally, it is sort of cute.  At least if you squint and use some imagination.  Or Photoshop.

Look how winsome!

In place of cabbage, I used swiss chard (otherwise known as silverbeet).  Swiss chard and beets are actually pretty much the same plant; chard is just bred for the tops where beets are bred for the roots.  I put some nutmeg on top, as recommended, but it just made it taste weird.  I don't know why I planted it, because I hate chard.  I think I was lured by the pretty colors.  It was in hopes that it would finally die that I harvested such a huge pile of it, but to no avail.  (Oops!  Aw, I guess I accidentally hacked so much off, it just couldn't carry on!  Alas, now we won't be able to eat even one more single meal with it.  Shucks! Oh I could just kick myself.)  It continues lush and verdant... even perky.  Husband offered to make an assassination attempt of his own, with guaranteed results.

I feel Baby most appropriately expressed her feelings towards the "clover":

Honey Oatmeal Buns:  If you think of these as a dessert, they are not very good.  If you think of them as a biscuit (the American kind, o confused Brits), they are just fine.  Little bit crumbly.  Not bad though.  Benefits from some jam.

Tomato Aspic, with Starbursts

Something glorious happened in 1978.  Something... obscenely wonderful.  The M&M/Mars company put out a cookbook.  A cookbook filled with strange and exotic uses for their products, uses hitherto undreamed of.

My favorite chapter is called "Conversation Starters."  This is the main dish section.  Yes.  The main dish section... of the cookbook dedicated to candy.  It is aptly named, but I think a better title would be "Where Angels Fear to Tread."

Tomato Aspic

Try this shimmering tomato mold with tuna or chicken salad.

2 tablespoons (2 envelopes) unflavored gelatin

1/4 cup water

4 cups tomato juice

2 (1-11/16 oz.) pkgs. STARBURST Fruit Chews (22 candies)

1/2 teaspoon celery salt

1 teaspoon Worcestershire sauce

4 drops hot pepper sauce

1/3 cup chopped green pepper

1/3 cup sliced green onion

Salad greens

Mayonnaise

Combine gelatin and water.  Let stand 3 to 4 minutes.  In a medium saucepan, combine 1 cup tomato juice and candies.  Melt over low heat, stirring until smooth.  Add celery salt, Worcestershire sauce, hot pepper sauce and gelatin mixture.  Stir until gelatin melts.  Blend in remaining tomato juice, green pepper and green onions.  Pour into an oiled 6-cup mold.  Chill until firm, 4 to 5 hours.  Serve on salad greens with mayonnaise dressing.  Makes 6 to 8 servings.  

Verdict:  This is awful.  Just awful.  It is like cold wobbly tomato soup... with Starbursts.  You may think, optimistically, that the two might somehow meld together.  No.  Not at all.  It is much like maple syrup on spaghetti, or frosting on broccoli.  

This is a landmark occasion in Time Travel Kitchen history, because husband was unable to eat even one bite.  He ran full tilt for the sink and spat again and again to remove the taste from his mouth.  I ate a bite, but it was not easy. 

Baby ate a bite without even pulling a face, but I have also found her eating her own poop.

I am excited to try the beef stew recipe from this book!

Spiced Prune Drink

Better Homes and Gardens Blender Cook Book [1971]

I will now admit that I have never actually drunk prune juice before now.  This is terrible, because all know it to be a warrior's drink. 

This is an improvement even on the original noble beverage. 

Spiced Prune Drink
1 cup prune juice, chilled
1 8-ounce carton plain yogurt
1/3 cup confectioners' sugar
1/4 teaspoon ground cinnamon

Combine all ingredients in blender container; blend till combined.  Makes 2 to 3 servings. 

Verdict:  Quite pleasant, actually!  Sweet and tangy.  Could use a bit more cinnamon.  Besides which, the combination of intestine scouring prune juice and colon cleansing yogurt prepares the mighty warrior's body for battle.  Ever tried to fight Romulans and Borg while bloated and not-so-good feeling?  Not easy.  Down a gallon of this, and I guarantee you, that will not be a problem.  Just make sure you do so... well before you plan to defeat your enemies. 

Unless your enemy is constipation.  Which it well may be.

Husband thought it was too thick, but Baby claimed it was a delight both for the taste buds and the fingers.

 

 

 

Stuffed Cubed Steaks, Beet Soup, Swedish Hardtack

This menu is compiled from 500 Wartime Recipes, an American booklet on rationing from WWII. Before now, I have always done British recipes. Having compared the two, I can say that the Brits had it a lot worse, culinarily speaking. I have heard that is usually the case though.

Stuffed Cubed Steaks

4 cubed steaks (1 lb.)
1/4 t. salt
pepper
2 T. flour
1 C. soft bread crumbs
1/4 t. poultry seasoning
1 t. minced onion
4 T. melted butter
2 T. water
1/3 C. cooked rice
2 1/2 C. canned tomatoes
1/4 t. salt

Wipe steaks with a damp cloth, roll in mixture of salt, pepper and flour. Combine crumbs, poultry seasoning, onion, 2 T of butter and water to make a stuffing. Place steaks with cut side up, and cover each with a fourth of stuffing. Fold steaks over stuffing, fasten with skewers or toothpicks and place in greased shallow baking dish. Place rice around meat rolls and add tomatoes, salt and remaining butter. Cover dish and bake in moderate oven (350 F.) about 1 hour or until steaks are tender. Serves 2 or 4.

Beet Soup

6 beets, pared and grated
1 large potato, pared and grated
1/2 C. chopped celery
1 t. salt
2 C. cold water
3 T. butter
1 1/2 C. milk

Cook first 5 ingredients together 10 minutes. Force through sieve. Add butter and milk and heat thoroughly. Serves 6.

Swedish Hardtack

1 pint buttermilk
1/2 C. sugar
1/2 C. shortening, melted
1 t. salt
7/8 t. baking soda
coarse rye flour

Mix ingredients to make a thick dough and shape into 24 balls, dipping them into flour. Roll out very thin with a special peg rolling pin that pricks dough as it rolls. Bake on cookie sheet in hot oven (425 F.) until browned, about 15 min. Very crisp and tender.


Verdict:

Stuffed Cubed Steaks: Watery, tasteless, and horrid. The stuffing was slimy and bland. Were this a British WWII recipe, there would be no butter, 10x the rice, and 1/10 the meat. This is expecting each person to eat 1/4-1/2 lb. of beef per person! During rationing! Insane. I do not know why people were afraid of onion, either. At least this has actual chopped onion instead of onion juice, which is a little sad. Maybe if you went bananas and put a whole onion in, it might taste like a flavor.

Beet Soup: While the recipe says this serves 6, we found it could easily serve around 50. The beautiful, deep color fools you into thinking it is going to be delicious, like something berry flavored. No. It tastes of blended beets. As well it might. There is no other flavor but blended beets. The same results could be obtained by adding water to baby food.

Swedish Hardtack: Very nice! Lovely and crisp, comparable to a very tasty cracker. Because it is. Husband allowed as how he would not mind it appearing in the future, especially on camping trips or emergency snacks to supplement MREs. Due to their flavor, thinness, and relative sturdiness, they are ideal for the transference of jam to one's mouth, second only to a spoon.

Cress grown on a bit of flannel

Ministry of Food War Cookery Leaflet Number 14 Grow your own! Even if you have no garden, you can have fresh-picked parsley or mustard and cress, for these both grow well in window-boxes or flower-pots. Or mustard and cress can be grown on damp flannel. Remember--the fresher the better for you--and the better the flavor!

I've been working on the old Victory Garden recently (Can you picture 7 cubic yards of manure? Neither could I. I can now. Really, really well.), and managed to find a packet of cress. I put half of the seeds on flannel that used to be pajamas with sock monkeys on them, and half of them on an old terrycloth washcloth, so I could see which was better. For victory!

March 3

After watering responsibly and giving the cloths plenty of sun, this was the result:

April 5

Welp.
Result: Buy some potting mix, for goodness sake. Aw, geez. If growing cress on your windowsill helps fight Hitler, what does failing this miserably do?

If anyone has any helpful hints, or has been able to do this successfully, let me know! You will receive all the gold stars in my possession.

Update: apparently, I should have kept them in a darker place until they sprouted. Curses! I wonder how many WWII folk made similar frustrating mistakes?

Plain Swiss (Suet) Pudding

Things A Lady Would Like To Know [1876]

True love, like the eye, can bear no flaw. --Laveter.

Once again showing a lamentable taste in quotations, we proceed, at last, to the long-awaited suet pudding. Queen Victoria, like most Victorians, had a basic distrust of vegetables. Her Majesty in particular lived on a diet made up almost entirely of beef and puddings.

In the absence of a pudding mold, I ended up smooshing it into a metal bowl and setting it on top of a coil of aluminum foil inside a pot of boiling water. I took great care with the smooshing, so that it would detach from the bowl easily and lie there in a beautiful, smooth hemisphere.

Not so much.

Plain Swiss Pudding
Chop very fine 6 oz. of beef suet, and mix it well with 8 oz. of breadcrumbs, 1/2 lb. of apples, pared, cored, and minced fine; add 8 oz. of powdered white sugar*, the juice of 1 lemon, and the peel grated, with a pinch of salt. Well mix all the above ingredients, and put it into a buttered mold; boil it, and when done, turn it out and serve.

From the White House Cook Book [1887] "Sauces for Puddings" section:

Milk or Cream Sauce:
Cream or rich milk, simply sweetened with plenty of white sugar and flavored, answers the purpose of some kinds of pudding, and can be made very quickly.

Verdict: Um. Mixed. The flavor was really, really, really good. Rich and sweet and buttery tasting and fruity and luscious. Really, it is one of the best things my tongue has ever had the pleasure of tasting. That is saying something, considering what I used for breadcrumbs was failed whole wheat bread that was as dense as a brick. Not a bit like beef. But. Every bite leaves a heavy, waxy coating all around the inside of the mouth. It coats the back of the teeth and doesn't leave. It is awful. The bits from the bottom of the bowl were the worst, I think the suet kind of pooled there. The bits from the top were much better. Husband ate all of his portion and only noticed the fattiness after I pointed it out. I ate a few bites, then couldn't stand the wax build-up any more.

I am unsure whether this result is just because that is how suet puddings are, or because this particular recipe or cookbook has a particularly high ratio of suet to other stuff.

*"Powdered" here means "Smashed up from the brick or cone it came in."