Bull Cook and Authentic Historical Recipes and Practices

Bull Cook and Authentic Historical Recipes and Practices was written by George and Berthe Herter. George was the heir to the Herter sporting goods chain. While many people remember the sporting goods, everyone who reads this cookbook remembers its unique take on just about everything. It is one of those truly individual cookbooks hearkening back to the turn of the century when you got recipes for food with recipes for cleaners and a few etiquette tips.

There are many weird and wonderful recipes with some long and elaborate stories. For instance, did you know Wyatt Earp was a great cook whose specialities included pickled buffalo tongue (alas there is no recipe for this), buffalo liver and morning doves. He claims that the best shot he ever made was taking out 9 doves with one shot.

We are told to make mayonnaise as it cannot be bought in a grocery store. “That concoction they sell labeled mayonnaise are not even remotely similar to real mayonnaise.”

There is no other cookbook that tells you how to make puff pastry and how to use tomatoes to alleviate skunk order.

We are not told why Blanche Dupont was in Belgium or if there really was a "Blanche Dupont", but the Herters think this is quite marvelous.

Glace Blanche Dupont

This is a recent invention and a great one made in 1942 by Blanche Dupont in Belgium. It is one of the greatest known cooking tricks.

Take one cup of corn syrup, mix with 1/2 cup of water. Put in a pot and bring to a boil. Leave cool until lukewarm.
Brush or pour over the top of fruit cakes. This mixture gives them a rich clear glass like glaze and brings out their color.
Brush or pour over doughnuts. It gives them a beautiful glaze and taste.
Mix 1/8 level teaspoon of ground cloves or a few drops of cherry flavoring and brush over fried or baked ham and fried or cold Spam or brush over similar canned meats. Mix in a few drops of orange flavoring and brush over pieces of tame or wild duck or geese it makes them really delicious. Put in a few drops of peppermint flavorings into the mixture and brush over the tops of brownie cookies. Males them into a great delicacy instead of just another cookie.
Brush over the tops of apple turnovers, horns or lady locks just as it is. Pour over squash and sweet potatoes just as it is.

I am not sure I would agree that a simple syrup is the greatest known cooking trick, but I’m willing to give it a try. Do you think the Krispy Kream people read this cookbook when they developed their glaze?

Finally, the cookbook ends with instruction on what to do in case of an atomic attack. The good news is we have been told that red pepper is good for radiation, in fact, “People that use considerable red pepper in their foods are almost immune to atomic radiation except in sever form.” So, if you are staying awake at night worrying about North Korea and the bomb, stock up on red pepper.

The Reluctant Cook

I must confess I don’t know any biographical information on Ethelind Fearon. I do know that I love her. I have grown to thinking of her as looking like Alex Jardine’s drawing of the women that grace her books. A kind of retro Jane Jetson in an apron and always holding a drink or a cigarette.


Her books were published in the late forties and early fifties. She wrote several, including The Reluctant Cook, for a series called The Home Entertaining Series. Entertaining is the operative word, as Ethelind Fearon is about as entertaining as they come.

She tells us:

If you are hampered at every turn by tiresome complicated recipes: instructions to use half a dozen different containers or operations when one would do, I don’t wonder that you’re reluctant.

…the awful paraphernalia of cooking has turned many a stout heart from Mrs. Beeton to a tin.

If I can show you how to cook like an angel and only have one saucepan to wash up, that would be different, wouldn’t it?

Ethelind Fearon's geography of soup:

Soup in England means either something out of a packet or that you have had a ham and don’t know what to do with the bone.


In France it is a bit of yellow gourd, some onions, a few wisps of odd things which look like weeds, and a bit of vermicelli, all bound together with hot water.

Here is a recipe for a "bold" salad from the mind of Ethelind Fearon:

Salad

Salad like soup can be anything. If you choose to serve cold rice pudding and stewed prunes, with a garnish of lettuce leaves and dressing of lemon juice and oil, as a salad, no one could contradict you. I know because I’ve done it, but you need courage, a knowledge of the inadequacies of your opponent (which is more potent armor than any courage), and a few green olives and radishes cut into the shape of fusicia stuck on top. It’s a masterpiece, and the finest known method of disposing of cold rice pudding.

It is also unorthodox and cannot be advocated as a standard practice, only as an example of how fortune favors the bold.

There is no bolder voice than Ethelind Fearon, so grab that cold rice pudding and whip up a salad. Check out her advice for the Hostess at Lucindaville’s Etiquette Wednesday.

The Party Girl Cookbook

Today is Bastille Day. It would be a great time to drag out a thick, classic French cookbook of important historic note. Screw that. I pulled out The Party Girl Cookbook by Nina Lesowitz and Lara Morris Starr.

The Party Girls offer up tons of party ideas. The theme for the Bastille Day party is heady foods. Lettuce heads, artichoke heads, roasted garlic heads, and salmon with heads.

Berets are de rigueur for those who still have heads. Eiffel Towers tchotchke spread about with some Liberté, Egalité, Fraternité banners add to the motif. Throw Edith Piaf on the record player and you are good to go.

Grab a crusty baguette, slice it thin and spread with a head.

Roasted Garlic Heads

4 heads fresh garlic, loose outer skin removed
2 sprigs fresh rosemary
1/4 cup extra virgin olive oil

Preheat oven to 400F. Cut off the stem and the top one fifth of the head of garlic. Place them on a large piece of heavy-duty aluminum foil. Place the rosemary sprigs across the tops of the cut heads. Drizzle with olive oil. Close up the aluminum foil and seal the edges tightly. Roast for one hour or until garlic is tender. Remove the package from the oven, open carefully, let the contents cool slightly.

Dinner (NOT) at the Bastille

According to Benjamin Franklin, Marie Antoinette and her family were well fed during their incarceration at Tuileries Palace. Here is their dinner list:

3 soups
4 entrees
3 roast dishes with three pieces
4 sweet courses
a plate of fancy cakes
3 compotes
3 dishes of fruit
3 loaves of bread with butter
1 bottle of Champagne
1 small carafe of Bordeaux
1 small carafe of Malvoisie
1 small carafe of Madeira
4 cups of coffee.

It sure beats bread and water!


Give a listen to Mireille Mathieu's riveting performance of La Marseillaise.

The Art of Cuisine

Henri Toulouse-Lautrec was an artist…in the kitchen as well as in print.



Toulouse-Lautrec was a party animal who loved food, drink and fast women. The poet Paul Leclercq said of his friend:

“He was a great gourmand. He always carried a little grater and a nutmeg to flavor the glasses of port he drank. He loved to talk about cooking and knew of many rare recipes for making the most standard dishes, for in this, as in all else, Lautrec had a hatred of useless frills. And like a good Southerner, the more he valued straightforward cooking, the more he despised the doubtful and pretentious chemistry of restaurants and palace hotels.”

Who knew Henri Toulouse-Lautrec was a Southerner! Perhaps it is the "South" of France, but Southerner still. It was another friend, Maurice Joyant, who is responsible for collecting the recipes that Toulouse-Lautrec invented and gathered from friends and acquaintances. His most valuable contribution to the culinary realm may be his "invention" of the cocktail nosh, for it is Toulouse-Lautrec who is often given credit for originating the fashion of cocktail food.



I don’t know if this would be a good amuse-bouche to have with a lovely chardonnay, but give it try next September.

Stewed Marmots

Having killed some marmots sunning themselves belly up in the sun with their noses in the air one sunrise in September, skin them and carefully put aside the mass of fat which is excellent for rubbing into the bellies of pregnant women, into the knees, ankles, and painful joints of sprains, and into the leather of shoes.
Cut up the marmot and treat it like stewed hare which has a perfume that is unique and wild.

Clearly, this why we like the French. In America we might be tempted to call these little guys groundhogs. How positively unappealing! But "Marmot" it sounds so lovely, even thought the translation from the Old French probably means "mountain mouse." Still mountain mouse verses ground hog -- tough call.

Lest you be running around this sunny September sunrise without a clue -- behold the sunning marmot.

Caviar and Corned Beef for the Live- Aloner

In 1936 Marjorie Hillis wrote the ever amusing Live Alone and Like It (re-issued in 2008). She wrote, “There may still be those in Alabama who look upon an unmarried state as an affliction, but in New York it is at most a very minor ailment.” Wow, it could be 2006.

The next year, having identified all those "extra girls" it was only natural that she offer some practical cooking advice. Alas, living alone means having to cook for just yourself and you know how a girl hates that. Of course, for many "Live-Aloners" in 1937, there was a maid to help with that pesky cooking. Caviar and Corned Beef for the Live- Aloner shows you what to do (or what your maid should do). If you are without a maid, here’s a menu you CAN do -- from soup to dessert it comes from cans!

Chicken gumbo soup
Triscuit Wafers
Baked Beans in Casserole
Vegetable Salad
Grapefruit

Your baked beans will stay warm in the oven while you eat your soup and Triscuits. Then your lovely baked beans with a bit of bacon on top. Followed by your vegetables salad. Make your salad of cut-up tomato with asparagus, lettuce and leftover vegetables mixed with mayo. And of course, finally, your canned grapefruit.

While you may be a "Live-Aloner", there is still hope, even Hillis traded her "Live-Aloner" status for a "Mrs." at the ripe old age of 49! Clearly she followed her own advice -- “there is something very flattering to any man about an initiation to dine à deux with a lady.”




If you are planning dinner à deux, follow these simple rules and you too, may just grab a hubby. (My notes)

Don’t invite him unless you can give him a meal he will enjoy. (Don’t serve the CAN menu.)

Never ask a man to balance his plate on his knees. (They are so clumsy!)

Do not judge a man’s appetite by his size. (Fat men are often on a diet.)

Don’t serve your guest his native dish. (No gumbo if he’s from New Orleans.)

Here is a recipe for grabbing that man.

Scalloped Sweet Potatoes

The scalloped sweet potatoes (which are not for reducers) are made by first putting a cupful of boiled sweet potatoes cut into quarter-inch slices in a buttered baking dish with three-quarters of a cupful of thinly-sliced apples. A quarter of a cupful of brown sugar is sprinkled over them, then two tablespoonfuls of butter are dotted here and there and a half teaspoonful of slat tossed into the mélange. The process is then repeated, with the same amount of potatoes, apples and what-have-you forming a second layer, and the whole thing should be baked for an hour in a moderate oven.

All right, you "Live-Aloners", run into that kitchen and start cooking.

The Tailgate Cookbook

April Herbert's The Tailgate Cookbook is subtitled: A Practical Handbook of Delightful Meals for Campers, Travelers and Sports Enthusiasts. I rather like this cookbook, and keep finding torn up copies, book club and ex-library editions, so it must have been quite popular in its day.

It does run the gamut from snails to coq au vin. There is a recipe for pork paté that includes peanut butter and suggests Chinese Fried Rice as an accompaniment. Overall it is a wonderful book -- tons of recipes that would make any tailgate or camp a "delightful" experience. But, as often happens, every cookbook has its misstep. I remind you of this in presenting my favorite recipe from the book, not actually to make but just because it made it into a recipe book. So without further adieu, notes on hot dogs...

FRANKFURTER TREATS

East To Do: use any of the following ideas to embellish hot dogs for a quick, inexpensive, and good dinner.

Can be prepared at home an packed tightly:

Marinated Hot Dogs

MARINATE: 8 frankfurters
1 cup French dressing (p. 189 or bottled)
1/4 cup dry wine

Before serving:

CHARCOAL: Frankfurter Treats until done

Variations: Serve charcoaled frankfurters with bottled Béarnaise Sauce




Nothing screams "TAILGATE" like wine and French dressing marinated hot dogs. Or try this....

Miss Lucinda's Frankfurter Treats

8 hot dogs
1 cup Tab (or Diet Coke if you can tolerate NutraSweet)
1/4 cup Jack Daniels

Mix the Jack Daniels into the Tab

Grill the hot dogs

When the hot dogs are cool enough to eat, grasp by the end (either end works just fine) and dip into the Jack Daniels and Tab. If you drank it all during the cook process, make more.

Variations: For the more traditional cook, use Rum and Coke.

Further Variations: To impress your British friends, make up a big batch of Serena Bass' Pimm's Cup. In lieu of fruit and a big cucumber slice, add a hot dog!

Venus In the Kitchen

Norman Douglas was one of those fine, old-fashioned, Victorian born, homosexual aesthetes that populated the warm climates of the Mediterranean. He is best known for writing South Wind, more or perhaps less, the story of a clergyman traveling home to England from Africa who ends up on a small island. The sirocco or "south wind" of the island blows away the staid trappings of England in favor of the hedonist lifestyle of the island eccentrics.

Douglas' life was filled with large appetites and the ever present scandal, including some accusation of purchasing children. Toward the end of his life, he wrote a cookbook, extolling the aphrodisia of food. According to Douglas, the idea came about one evening when, "we had enjoyed a succulent dinner with several bottles of old red wine, followed by bitter lamentations on the part of the older members of the party over their declining vigor."

Venus in the Kitchen: Or Love's Cookery Book is the culmination of twelve years of intermittent research by Douglas. the book was published posthumously in 1952, the year Douglas, facing a long illness, took his own life. The book has been reprinted on many occasions. My favorite reprint was done 1992 and featured an introduction by Stephen Fry. Fry's introduction is the Pontiff Sauce poured over Douglas' recipes.

As Fry states in his introduction:

"Orthodox medicine has nothing encouraging to say on the subject of aphrodisiac foods. It brackets them and their claims together with homeopathy, herbalism, and psychic surgery as pitfalls of the gullible. A pair of doctors I have canvassed on the subject have offered it as their opinion that Douglas and his cronies would have found drinking a great deal less wine and grappa much more effective a remedy against impotence than any cooking up of larks or devising a new strain of eel-skin sausage."

Still, if you need to cook a crane, Douglas has your recipe.

Crane

Clean and truss a young crane, and put it in an earthenware saucepan with some water and vinegar, pepper and salt. Let it cook gently. When the liquid is reduced to half, take out the bird and put it in another saucepan with a little olive oil, a bunch of marjoram, some coriander seeds, and some stock. Let it simmer for nearly an hour, then add a glass of red wine which has been boiled previously, with a spoonful of honey, some lovage, cummin, benzoin root, and carraway seeds. If necessary add a little starch to thicken the liquid.
When cooked put the bird on a dish, and pour the sauce over it. Wild duck may be treated the same way.

Make sure it is a young crane, you don't want to go to all the work and end up with stringy crane.

The Ex-boyfriend Cookbook

I once wrote a note to Thisbe Nissen on this laptop. Now, every time I write the word “this” it flashes her name on the screen. I don’t know why. What I do know is that she and Erin Ergenbright wrote one of the most clever cookbooks in recent memory. The Ex-Boyfriend Cookbook is appropriately subtitled, They Came, They Cooked, They Left…(But We Ended Up With Some Great Recipes).

Thisbe and Erin, were both at the Iowa Writer’s Workshop. The story goes that one day as they were planning a barbecue, Erin said, “I’ll make Davis’s spicy BBQ rub!” They looked at each other and said, “We should write a cookbook of all the recipes we’ve gotten from boyfriends over the years.” And as they say, the rest is history.

Each recipe is printed on a nifty collage of ephemera, presumably gathered from the ex-boyfriends. The recipes are quite good, but the stories are even better. “Keith was a heavy-lidded, shaggy haired poet who sometimes wore his pants inside out.”


Here is his recipe.

Keith The Pathological Liar’s Cold Remedy

2 shots brandy
8 ounces hot water (nearly boiling)
Juice of 1 lemon
2 tablespoons honey

Repeat as often as necessary.

Check out Thisbe's other books, including Out of the Girls' Room and Into the Night: Stories.

Granny's Hillbilly Cookbook

Today is my Birthday, so I am goofing off. This was a "Famous Food Friday" on the Lucindaville Blog. Enjoy!


Julia, Nigella, Martha, Emeril, hell no! If you ask me, the greatest television cook to ever set a pot on the stove is none other than Granny Clampett.


Granny was an organic, locavore, nose-to-tail, slow food advocate before anyone ever intellectualized such culinary ideas. Long before Paul Prudhomme, Granny was cooking crawdads. Long before Martha was stuffing steamed peas with chevre, Granny was making goat cheese. Long before Alice Waters, Granny was serving organic vegetables from her kitchen garden.

The great actress, Irene Ryan, will forever be seared into the minds of the viewing public as, Granny. Capitalizing on her fame as the Clampett Family's resident cook, Ryan published a cookbook aptly named: Granny's Hillbilly Cookbook.


One of Granny’s specialities was roast possum. I know that smug, self-righteous, I’m to cool to ever even think of such a thing reaction! Trust me, that is same reaction you had the first time someone suggested you eat crawfish, or pig’s ears or corn foam! The day Thomas Keller slaps a possum on the menu, you’ll be the first one at the table and I’ll be there to remind you that Granny cooked it first.


Here is her recipe:

Roast Possum

Possum is easy to catch. Hit ‘em with a rock or a stick when they’s up a tree and you can have ‘em in your sack afore they knows it. The yellow-bellied goomers is too scared to fight back, and they play dead jest long enough to grab ‘em.

Boil up half a peck ‘o water or more, dependin’ on the size o’ your possum. Dunk the critter in boilin’ water an’ right away pull off his hair n’ scrape ‘em clean. Don’t forgit to cut off his feet, his head n’ his tail! Clean out his innards. Put the possum in a hefty jug o’ cold salty water and let ‘em soak overnight. Change his water the next day and start boilin’ him ‘til his skin lets a fork pop through it easy like. They ain’t no time for cooking possum ‘cause some is tougher than others. When the feller is jest right, dry him off and put ‘em in a bakin’ pan with a bit o’ pot likker (juice left over after cooking greens or other vegetables) ‘n some seasoned salt over his belly. When he is brown ‘n toasty, he is ready for slicin’ and servin’. Back home we fattens possum with ‘simmons (persimmons), and most often we eats him with yams.

Granny’s right, possums are easy to catch, but bear in mind they are scavengers. Once you catch a possum, it is best to grain feed him or fatten him with ‘simmons for about 4 weeks. They paunch the same as most small game, but they do have scent glands, so be careful.

And now for that all important question...What wine do you serve with possum?

I suggest a crisp Pouilly-Fuissé. After all, it is the other white meat.

Irish Countryhouse Cooking

I've noticed I have several cookbooks "written" by women who live in quite grand houses. It seems that when you have run out of foxes to hunt and balls to attend those big old houses can be quite boring so, in your copious free time, you gather a cookbook. Now, in the South (other locales, too) bored women gather together recipes for their church or The Junior League to raise funds. They are not considered terribly grand, but throw in some snazzy letterhead and who knows...

Here is the recipe for putting together a cookbook from your estate -- or cottage, which is what you call your estate if you own one!

Recipe For Assembling An Estate Cookbook

1 estate, castle or cottage (minimum of 10 bedrooms)
20- 30 titled friends
Engraved letterhead

Drop a note on your engraved letterhead to your friends.

Tell them you are putting together a list of recipes for Cook to make and ask if they might send along something their cook prepares.

When all the recipes arrive on appropriate letterhead, assemble a book.

It's so easy I don't know why you haven't done it. Me, I'm off to a fox hunt...

The Atlanta Exposition Cookbook

In 1895 Mrs. Henry Lumpkin Wilson compiled recipes and household tips into a souvenir for the women who visited the Cotton States and International Exposition in Atlanta. Commemorative cookbooks are commonplace now, with many church and school groups compiling member’s favorite recipes into fundraising opportunities. It’s hard to realize that cookbooks at the turn of the century were rare. Most Southern women were acquainted with Catharine Beecher’s Domestic Receipt Book, however, the Atlanta Exposition cookbook was published before the Boston Cooking-School Cookbook of Fannie Farmer.



This reprint offers a glimpse into kitchens past, featuring pigeon, terrapin, and tongue. The directions offer such favorite Southern cooking instructions as, “Cook till done.” Most recipes offer little or no instruction as to how to actually assemble the food, which is not such a problem for soup, but can be frustrating for cakes!

One recipe that needs no measurements belongs to Mrs. S. C. Ferrell:

Recipe For Making A Happy Home

One ounce each system, frugality and industry, one ounce each gentleness, patience and forbearance, six ounces Paul’s Christian charity, that covers a multitude of failures. These ingredients thoroughly kneaded with the salt of good common sense, flavored with the “grace of nature and art,” music and flowers will make a paradise of a desert, a palace of a hovel.

It's not terrapin, but it may be easier to find. And then again, maybe not!

They Can’t Ration These

The news these days has been filled with job loss and crashing stocks. I pulled out a lovely reprint of a book first published in 1940 in Britain. The book was written during the height of rationing brought on by the war and while we are not yet rationing, there might just be some things we can learn in They Can't Ration These by Vicomte de Mauduit.

In his preface he states:

The object of this book is to show where to seek and how to use Nature’s larder, which in times of peace and plenty people overlook and ignore.

The Vicomte was quite a guy. He was a cavalry officer, and aviator in World War I, an engineer in Egypt and a cookbook author. During World War II he was believed to have been captured by the Nazi and to have died in Germany. He ignore’s nothing that we might need to know in those (and these) sparse times. We are told how to make soap, how to use horse-radish to “cure “ freckles, and how to find wild bird eggs. There are an array of nifty recipes for hedgehog, squirrel, frogs and various other small winged creatures from Rooks to starlings. As for their eggs, be warned:

When Handling Eggs

If you suffer from a cut on the hands, be careful when breaking eggs that the cut is not in contact with the white, and in all cases if your fingers have been in contact with the white of eggs do not rub your eyes. The white of the eggs, or albumen, is equal in chemicals to the venom of the rattlesnake.

Who knew? It seems a bit odd that I can eat the eggs but not get the whites in my eyes.

Some of the recipes are so unencumbered, they seem to the modern reader to be comical. Truth be told, as someone who cooks a lot, I rather like these bare boned recipes!

Baked Bream

Clean, wash and wipe the fish, then wrap it in a buttered paper and bake in a moderate oven for about half an hour.

This lovely reprint of They Can’t Ration These was done by Persephone Books in London. Each of their reprints are done in simple grey card stock with endpapers taken from old wallpapers and textiles. For the Vicomte's book they chose "October" from a a fabric designed by Alma Ramsey-Hosking. Using the same inventiveness needed to persevere in 1940's rationing, Ramsey-Hosking's fabric was printed at her kitchen table using potato prints and paint on sugar paper. If you are unfamiliar with Persephone Books, take a look at their web site or visit them in London and linger.

Roald Dahl’s Revolting Recipes

Roald Dahl was the a great writer. The fact that most of his books are considered "children's" books is really irrelevant. The wickedly mischievous Dahl loved the gory side of life.

Toward the end of that life, Dahl was helping his wife, Felicity, assemble a book of recipes that became Memories and Food at Gipsy House. While they were assembling the recipes, Felicity suggested that Dahl compile a children’s cookbook based on the foods he invented for his characters. He demurred, believing it to be far to daunting to a man in failing health.

Some time later, Felicity found a list of every food mentioned in Dahl’s books, from Willy Wonka to James and Giant Peach. After his death, several revolting cookbooks grew from his list. Roald Dahls Revolting Recipes is one of them. The recipes are as deliciously wicked as Dahl's words. This recipe from James and The Giant Peach will help you and your children make wasp stings on toast.

Crispy Wasp Stings On A Piece Of Buttered Toast

You Will Need:

small round cookie cutter
baking sheet
bowl

Buttered Toast:

5 tablespoons unsalted butter, softened
1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
4 slices white bread


Wasp Stings

2 1/2 ounces shredded coconut
1/4 cup sifted confectioners sugar
3 teaspoons honey
grated zest (yellow skin only) of a quarter of a lemon


1. Work the butter and cinnamon together until thoroughly mixed.
2. Toast the bread. Cut four disks out of each slice and set aside.
3. Spread 2 ounces of the shredded coconut onto a baking sheet and sprinkle with confectioner’s sugar.
4. Place under a hot broiler until the sugar begins to caramelize (it will happen very quickly), then with a spatula turn the coconut over and caramelize the underside.
5. Transfer to a bowl, add the honey and lemon zest and mix well.
6. Add the remaining coconut.
7. Spread the cinnamon butter on the toast disks and top with the crisp wasp stings.

Quentin Blake ccontinued his tradition of illustrating Roald Dahl.



If you have a budding cook in the family, put this book in their hands and enjoy the mayhem.

She Cooks To Conquer

Here's a throw back to the Fabulous Fifties! She Cooks To Conquer by Robert H. Leob, Jr. and illustrated by Laura Jean Allen is a fully illustrated guide to cooking for your man. Or more specifically, cooking to GET your man. And if that man is a Classics scholar who just loves reading The Odyssey, you are in luck.

Loeb divides women into two groups, Eves and Circes. Here's the difference:

Eve is the gal who snared her Adam.
Circe is the miss who wants to be a "madam."
That would of course be a 50's "Mrs." madam and not a New York Governor's "madam."


Some of the recipes include: Canape Apollo, Fruit Cup Cyclops, Toast Tithonus, Zeus Soup and...

Pommes Polyphemus

OK, it's a baked potato! But a Fabulous Fifties Baked Potato! Now stop reading this blog and get out there an find a husband.

I Like You

I Like You is like a trip to a 1950's kitchen in a crack filled time machine.

Amy Sedaris is funny.

She grew up in the South.

What more do want?

Go out and buy this book.


3 recipes by Amy Sedaris:

1. Fennel and Arugula Salad

Create a salad using arugula lettuce, shaved fennel and parmesan cheese. Top with oil and vinegar.


2. Steamed Carrots

Put carrots in a steamer ands team.

3. Bloody Clammy Mary

Add equal parts clam juice and tomato juice an then vodka. Serve on the rocks

Did I mention the crafts? In addition to the recipes there are crafts, many involving pantyhose.

Million Menus

I loved these multiple flippy picture books as a child. There must be some fantastic, exceeding specific word for them. I cannot believe they are just called multiple, flippy picture books. If there is not a technical name for them, I am going to invent one. "Disarticulous" books comes to mind. We could call them "Multisegmentature" but, I digress.



One boring afternoon, I wondered if one could design a cookbook based on multiply segmented sections.
I disposed myself of this idea believing that trolls, pirates, fairies and the like lend themselves to comedic visualization while dinner is not quite as forgiving. Ah, but some brave soul believed it could be done and thus was born, Million Menus. High points for concept.



The book achieves exactly what a the picture book does. It takes reasonably nice menus and with a simple turn of a page, makes them comical.


Trust me. This is just opening the book and flipping. With subsequent tries, some decent menus fell into place, but for the most part it ends up looking like a bizarre school lunch.