There's Just So Many! (Recipe Cards #20)

I had visions of recipe cards stalking my mind that just needed to be posted. I have found this Better Homes and Gardens 1978 Recipe Card Library to be very interesting with a lot of bad and ugly recipe cards for me to flaunt. I'm looking at these cards, smelling them, and from the quality of the paper, these probably didn't get much use. 

I need to clarify I do not grab handfuls of recipe cards or cookbooks and stick my nose in them for a long sniff, like I can smell the hardboiled eggs or salmon mousse if I concentrated long and hard. These books and cards are over 30 years old and probably changed hands or sat in basements and only came out of storage after the owner died. There could be mold, mildew, cigarette smoke, residual food, cat piss, rodent shit, etc on the books. Some of them do smell their age. 


Anyway, it's time... 

Turn a tossed salad into a tangy main dish with the addition of lemon jello, sour cream, vinegar, and cooked chicken molded cubes. I'm sure you will have someone to thank for this bold innovation. Now that the mold has been hacked into chunks, it looks all the more foul. 

For crying out loud, just leave the hollowed out green pepper cups alone. Whomever decided to make green peppers or tomatoes into a vessel to hold other foods of stench is laughing at me.

Oh what to say about it? Because we are all fatties and we want something "special" we should eat Turkey in Aspic because it's an elegant main dish salad that's made ahead of the crowd. I know these are calories I don't have to count because I sure as hell will never eat it. There's something about the asparagus under its aspic coating with the faithful pimiento strip served on boiled egg pillows that bothers me.

There were a few murmurs from me, shifts to get comfortable as I decided what else needed to be said. After all, lemon jello, onion tops, pimientos, mayonnaise, horseradish, and a can of sauerkraut all molded into a loaf can only be summed up in one word: Gross.

Do you know what will accentuate the frozen french fried taters used in this recipe? Mustard. That's right. I needed a Sling Blade moment. I found it.

Baked beans don't HAVE to always be served from the bean pot. Did you know that? No? But you probably understand what happens after eating beans and hard boiled eggs. If my husband ate this, I would move out for a weekend, maybe even leave the state. 

Dessert time! We have a cherry-cran salad. The card says it's refreshing. The recipe says the creamy top layer is cream cheese (okay as long as I don't taste it), mayonnaise (no thank you),lemon gelatin, whipped cream, pineapple,marshmallows. And the second layer-

The mixture alone warns me to look elsewhere. Okay. I'm going to. I learned a lot about sour cream last post. Now I know it's in a mix and you just add water. I need time to think.

This is interesting. Fresh pear halves poached in syrup, the juice is combined with liquid from the pears, limeade concentrate, powdered gelatin. Served in a flared goblet, unmold, and when it's jiggly and happy, flop some of that mayonnaise on top. Just sling that sauce. Ruin what looked potentially normal.

I bet this is also another calorie counting dish that won't be counted because it won't be created. Nothing against fish, but fish poached in pineapple juice seems a little weird. If I think it sounds weird, then you all know it's bad.

You know what would complete this? SAUCE. Less chopped spinach-cottage cheese mixture and more focus of some damn marinara.

Was asparagus really the answer in the 1970s? This entrée does not come close to "good eating".

Asparagus and Hollondaise sauce once again meet. Lest they do not forget their hardboiled egg sliced sidekick.

The most accurate description is this is "unlike most other salads." Yet it is just like most other salads.

This...is..really..disgusting. Instead of keeping it in the "traditional" loaf, let's change it up and add a can of tuna to the canned salmon mixture. Then let's add dollops of instant mashed potatoes on top of each slice and serve with dill and sour cream sauce.

This looks like it is covered in little tumors. Little pink fleshy tumors. Warts even.

There are some things that might be able to pull off having pizza sauce and cheese on top of it, but I do not think this is one of them.

It's not the mound of red ground meat baked in a ring pan that is bothering me. It's not the potatoes that don't look at potatoes at first glance, either. It's not the peas or the parsley or the crab apples. It's the pea cream spillage. Is that supposed to be tantalizing?

This would not be a hit with the family. I don't know of anybody in my family who would eat an oversized hot dog stuffed with onion, Stove Top stuffing mix, catsup (not ketchup), and relish. I'm less likely to think a Tuna-Bacon-Macaroni Bowl will be met with equal fanfare.

Who can really, truly, honestly say they have made and and enjoyed this? Who can readily admit their friends, family, church, work, etc really looks forward to the potlucks where this is being served? Who? Look at the ingredients. Everything I hate about food is molded into exactly what I imagine it would be. Green and pinkish brown and molded.

I think if I am going to enjoy the favorite flavor combination of corned beef and cabbage, I would like to err on the side of normal and just eat it the plain boring way. But, if canned corn beef is not your forte, canned salmon can be substituted.

The description is more satirical than what I can offer. I don't know if I want to have to be innovative when it comes to leftover turkey. I'll just reheat it and eat it.

 Hopefully I don't scare too many of you off. I'm sure you'll be back for more!!