I love the pictures in cookbooks. Great pictures of good food make me hungry. Great pictures of bad food intrigue me. In Betty Crocker’s “New Good and Easy Cook Book” (1962) ,there is a full colour photo of a hearty-looking, meaty ring filled with a lumpy white sauce. Intriguing! And next to the picture is […]
Rum Tum Ditty is a ridiculous name for a food-thing. It is so ridiculous, that I keep trying to say it alternately as “Rum Tum Tugger” and as “Rum Tum Titty.” Why would you anyone even name a food something this silly? It’s practically begging for a Freudian tit. I mean, Freudian slip.
Dear Readers, are you plagued with an excess of friends and admirers? Do people constantly hang around your house in order to bask in the light of your reflected glory? Are your parties too entertaining and now you regret setting the bar so high? What you need are some less-appetizing appetizers! Luckily, I’ve got just the […]
I went shopping for a couple of the ingredients I needed before starting this recipe. When I came home, my husband looked into my shopping bag: sliced ham and a package of Jell-O. “Nothing good can come of this,” he said, shaking his head. He was right. If only I had listened… In this recipe, […]
People always say the simplest foods are the best. I’m sure that rule is true in the majority of cases, but good grief, have I ever found some exceptions this week! These 1959 recipes for semi-homemade protein drinks are hardly more complicated than combining a liquid with a powder. But take my word for it: […]
I’ve got a theory. I’ve mentioned it in a few Morbid Curiosity posts before, and on my own blog. My theory is that people who write cookbooks and recipe pamphlets are often bored out of their freaking skulls, and they entertain themselves by seeing how many strange foods and private jokes they can slip past […]
I was feeling particularly wintery this weekend and winter is a good time for casseroles. Cold, damp westcoast winters make me want to bundle up in my warmest, wooliest sweater, wrap myself in two more blankets, and eat piping hot foods until February.
It’s the Monday after American Thanksgiving, and that means red and green on everything everywhere. And why should this gelatin salad creation be any different? Besides, everyone loves cranberries and I’m certain that no one is sick of them yet. Right?
Upon seeing the title of this post, a person (at least, a person identifying as a Doctor Who fan) might ask me, “Jen, did you choose this recipe simply because it reminded you of Doctor Who, and you miss your favorite show?” And I would glance around guiltily, shuffle my feet, and mumble, “Yes.”
I am housesitting for my parents this month and so I have access to my mom’s cookbooks. One of them is a Jell-O cookbook that I fondly remember from when I was growing up. I’m not very old, (Bite your lying tongue! Thirty is not that old!) and I figured that recipes from my childhood […]
Every once in a very long time, I come across a recipe that looks suspiciously like it might be awful, and to my complete surprise, it ends up being phenomenally good. Tomato Soup Cake was one of those instances.
It feels like fall in earnest now. The crisp cool air. The wooly sweaters. The leaves changing colors on the branches. It’s like the J. Crew catalog! But to anyone who will listen, this is also a season that calls out a challenge. It says: PUT PUMPKIN IN EVERYTHING! Well, Fall, I’m calling your bluff.
You know how people are always saying, “Soup could be so great… if only it was a little more solid“? Okay, so people aren’t always saying that. In fact, people probably only say it on very rare occasions. And “people” is probably an overstatement, too. BUT… for that one person who wishes their soup was […]
In one of my cookbooks there is a whole section of recipes for “cold balls.” And, because I am secretly twelve years old, I snicker to myself every time I pass that chapter. But the more I flipped past that chapter, the more it taunted me. Why hadn’t I tried these recipes yet? Was I […]
In nature, a bright shade of red often screams, “Stop! Don’t eat me, you fool!” But what kind of dull existence would it be if I listened to reason? No. When wild Beet and Horseradish Mold warns me with its brilliant hue, I scoff. Do your worst, I say!