RimeGlaze of Sleet
Jan. 18th, 2021 08:48 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ismoLast night the Sparrowhawk burned a saucepan while steaming some vegetables. I happened to be looking at a cookbook because I had a request for my ET cake recipe, which I wrote on the endpaper of the cookbook. To cheer him up, I read him a number of recipes from this cookbook. It fell open to the section labeled "The Story of Meats." Disappointingly, there is no story involved, although there's an introductory paragraph that begins, "The old American custom of serving lots of meat is a fine one." Well then! No vegans here! Some of these recipes, such as "Swiss Veal with Limas," which includes a cup of tomato juice and a package of frozen lima beans, would make me consider veganism. If you flip to the end, you get past all the regular meat and into "LET'S HAVE VARIETY MEATS." If liver and onions is not fancy enough for you, add 1/3 cup grated process Cheddar cheese, and voila, it will become Liver and Onions Au Fromage. Livin' large here. The section on Brains begins, "Brains are a very delicate, tender meat." Then there's Cranberry Raisin Tongue . . . . Oh, let's NOT have variety meats, and say we did.
This cookbook is not a complete loss. It has a few recipes that are kind of okay, and a lot of those useful charts that show different measurements, or where the different cuts of meat come from. And it does come with a story, though not about meats, which is why it's on our shelf. Once upon a time, when we were young, poor, and pregnant, we were visited by a man who sold baby furniture. He had a handy dandy compendium of interlocking furniture items. They were convertible and could be a car seat, a high chair, or a stroller, and furthermore they would save our offspring to be from a whole list of terrible accidents that he told us about in gory detail. The price was far more than we could afford, but we had no furniture at all, and didn't want our baby to die! He said if we signed up right away, we'd also get this great "Good Housekeeping Cookbook." We had three days to change our minds, and the cookbook would be ours no matter what. So we signed up. Of course, as soon as the smooth-talking devil's perfidious footsteps died away on the stairs of our apartment, we came to our senses and cancelled the deal. They were extremely cross with us, but they were forced to admit that the cookbook would remain in our possession. HA, take that, you smooth-talking devils.
Eventually, my parents gave us an old high chair that had been through me and all of my sibs, and was just slightly wobbly. We found an old stroller in the garage of the next house we rented. I bought a remnant of rubberized floor-mat type fabric, borrowed one of those rivet guns people use to put grommets in things, and riveted the fabric to the frame to make a new and sturdier seat. This rusty old dreadnaught lasted for many years. We didn't need a carseat, because we didn't have a car. Fortunately, we had some much better cookbooks, too. We got "The New York Times Cookbook" as a wedding present. We bought ourselves a copy of Julia Child's "Mastering the Art of French Cooking." Talk about getting above your raisin'! it does have some excellent and not very expensive soup recipes in it. We managed pretty well with those and "The Tassajara Bread Book" and "Diet for a Small Planet."
This cookbook is not a complete loss. It has a few recipes that are kind of okay, and a lot of those useful charts that show different measurements, or where the different cuts of meat come from. And it does come with a story, though not about meats, which is why it's on our shelf. Once upon a time, when we were young, poor, and pregnant, we were visited by a man who sold baby furniture. He had a handy dandy compendium of interlocking furniture items. They were convertible and could be a car seat, a high chair, or a stroller, and furthermore they would save our offspring to be from a whole list of terrible accidents that he told us about in gory detail. The price was far more than we could afford, but we had no furniture at all, and didn't want our baby to die! He said if we signed up right away, we'd also get this great "Good Housekeeping Cookbook." We had three days to change our minds, and the cookbook would be ours no matter what. So we signed up. Of course, as soon as the smooth-talking devil's perfidious footsteps died away on the stairs of our apartment, we came to our senses and cancelled the deal. They were extremely cross with us, but they were forced to admit that the cookbook would remain in our possession. HA, take that, you smooth-talking devils.
Eventually, my parents gave us an old high chair that had been through me and all of my sibs, and was just slightly wobbly. We found an old stroller in the garage of the next house we rented. I bought a remnant of rubberized floor-mat type fabric, borrowed one of those rivet guns people use to put grommets in things, and riveted the fabric to the frame to make a new and sturdier seat. This rusty old dreadnaught lasted for many years. We didn't need a carseat, because we didn't have a car. Fortunately, we had some much better cookbooks, too. We got "The New York Times Cookbook" as a wedding present. We bought ourselves a copy of Julia Child's "Mastering the Art of French Cooking." Talk about getting above your raisin'! it does have some excellent and not very expensive soup recipes in it. We managed pretty well with those and "The Tassajara Bread Book" and "Diet for a Small Planet."
no subject
Date: 2021-01-19 01:30 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2021-01-24 03:29 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2021-01-23 07:50 pm (UTC)MyGuy's mom was a home ec teacher, and we inherited a fundraising "salad" cookbook organized and written by home ec teachers. Every damn thing starts with gelatin.
So I'm imagining Cranberry Raisin Tongue might just have some aspic qualities, to make it entirely unpalatable.
no subject
Date: 2021-01-24 03:31 am (UTC)