Surprisingly Princely Fare

Hello everybody! I've been downed the past few days with some sort of VGE (Viral Gastroenteritis). I didn't want to think about food, write about food, look at food, smell food, taste food, or even know food existed. Since I spend a good portion of my days looking through cookbook at some serious culinary atrocities, I needed to not be near my cookbook collection. I'm back to my mean old self again, like I didn't spend the past 48+ hours with the grips, feeling my electrolytes deplete by the hour. There is no such thing as TMI in my posts, by the way. We all get stomach bugs. We all just don't write about them on our own website. I'm human! 

Continuing with the installments of the Family Circle Illustrated Library of Cooking, 1972, I have chosen Volume 3, Bur-Buy. It deals with burgers which are made of ground beef which can be shaped into turds which I did not need to look at while my GI system was fighting the good fight. 

The three sections of Bur-Buy are as follows:

Budget Bounty: Penny-wise (now it is one word) Dinners, Meaty Money Savers, and Meat-Stretching Secrets. Oh how grateful I am that the hyphen is no longer-being-used-in-the-manner-in-which-it-was-back-then. But there are secrets to stretching your meat and meaty money savers. 

Burger Bonanza: From Burgers to Meat Loaves to Casseroles and Skillet Dinners. Which pretty much sums up the other 119 posts I have made. 

Buyer's Market: How to Make Your Food Dollar Buy More. Or in 2013, How to Spend $300 on a Family of Five and Only Come Home with 10 Bags of Groceries. 

Quotations in captions are the original captions. Due to the popularity of my pictures on Pinterest, I try not to include the caption in the book on the pictures I use.

Enjoy!   

Family Circle Illustrated Library of Cooking, 1972, Volume 3 Bur-Buy. Not to be a nitpicker, but if the first section is titled "Budget Bounty," then wouldn't it be something like "Bud-Buy?" Or am I making too much sense?

In this book, there are WELL OVER 100 ways to be creative with ground meats. Burgers, loaves, and meatballs? I need to learn to parlay my pauper's share into surprisingly princely fare. That is one of the stupidest sentences ever. However, I do think it's going to have to become part of my sarcastic vocabulary, to be used when tasked with that horrible ordeal of grocery shopping.

"Almost always good buys: pot roasts." Maybe in 1972. In the real world of 2013, I don't think the last roast I bought was less than $12.00. Not feeling like I am parlaying my pauper's share into surprisingly princely fare.

"Always a penny-saver: pasta." Pasta is surely cheap. However, add into it the price of cottage cheese, cream cheese, liverwurst (?) and I'm going to stop right there. Who in the hell is going to eat something with cottage cheese and liverwurst covered with what looks like catsup (not ketchup)?

"Beef isn't budget fare unless it's a not so tender cut like flank steak cleverly extended with a cheesey-herby stuffing, rolled up, tied and pot roasted in a dutch oven with a zippy mushroom and tomato sauce." Sounds like torture. The torture this steak must have went through!

"Memories are made of this--an old fashioned chicken fricassee, made of cost-cutting wings, thighs, and backs." Now it doesn't quite specify if they are good memories, bad memories, or a type of meal that results in a family feud. It jut says that memories are made of this cheapo food.

"Choucroute Garni is a robust Alsatian dish that has within the last few years, ascended to gourmetdom.." And I could have had a few snarky comments about its rapid ascenscion to the epicurious, but then I looked it up and it kind of looks the same. Loose lips sink ships. Or STFU.

Penny-wise Pork Platter. When I think of Penny-wise (no dash), I don't think of pork served over onions, brussels sprouts, potatoes, potatoes, carrots with a raisin sauce. No, I have to go this route: 

Shudder...

Dixie Ham Dinner. Ham, apples, and "sweets." Which would mean sweet potatoes and gingersnaps.

"Budget priced but beautiful, blossom-like head of cabbage stuffed with a savory lamb and crumb stuffing." There is beauty in cabbage. You must seek it.

Polynesian Tuna. There's just not much I can say about this. It must be the pimiento olives. What is a pimiento stuffed olive without its little red identifier? It's just a green ring.

"Perfect for a small dinner when the urge to entertain is there but the money isn't: Showy Salmon Crepes." When the money isn't there, the urge to entertain isn't there. The urge to make salmon crepes is never there to begin with.

Country Omelet Cake. Or canned corned beef hash sandwiched between two omelet layers and topped with tomato soup.

Meatloaf, smeatloaf, double beatloaf I hate meatloaf. Especially with a wreath of halved cherry tomatoes and snowy cauliflowerets. It kind of looks like a sliced and cross sectioned turd.

Checkerboard beef. Or stretching out ground beef with a package of stuffing. Better keep that salt shaker handy. I don't think there's enough sodium in a box of stuffing.

Beef-Macaroni Loaf. Purported to be elegant and high style. Nothing could possibly express it more than macaroni and cheese and meatloaf. Layered. Going for the layered look. That's what gives it the style and class.

Dill Sauced Meat Loaf (I didn't feel like putting the dashes between the words as depicted in the book) and Piquant Ring filled with green rice. Let's just forget these ever were.

Gourmet Veal Loaf. It's gourmet because it has carrots in it. Seriously. Please take me serious here!

Every now and then I find a recipe or a picture that I just can't make up or is just too weird for words. Mock Pot Roast is one of them. Instead of having your family think you are making a roast, SURPRISE them with a hunka hunka meatloaf and try to pull it off as a pot roast. Let's see how that works out.

Lamb Stroganoff Pinwheel, "pretty enough for a party." What kind of party dare I say would this be considered "pretty enough?" Are the standards low or high? I don't want to think of lamb and I sure don't want to think of a stroganoff mixture inside, topped with bottled chili sauce. I don't want to go to that party anyway. That knife looks like a pickle.

Chinese Pork Roll, wrapped in a flaky blanket of canned crescent rolls. It doesn't look too bad until you look deeper and see the cabbage and ground pork swirling and twirling around.

Beef Ring piled high with candied carrots. "Garlic, onion, and catsup (not ketchup) give it that zip." Reminds me of last week. I thought I would be original and modern and make homemade sloppy joes. The recipe, from a modern and popular cook, included ketchup and onions. My house fuggin smelled like ketchup and onions for the next day or two. For all of you who know how I hate my house smelling like food, imagine me grabbing my $20 off $45 Yankee Candle coupon and rushing to the nearest mall only to discover the Yankee Candle store in said mall no longer was there. AGH!

The Superburger. Personally, when I want to eat a hamburger, I would like it to be small enough that I do not dislocate my mandible trying to bite into it.

ERMAHGERD! I have posted constantly about how ground beef looks like tuhds in certain ways. I do believe that I have finally found the ultimate ground beef tuhds! They even look like what doctors want to hear when you describe your poop to them. Tapered on both sides, brown, little lumpy. Sinker or Floater, hell, I don't know. I think the points would hurt coming out of the butt though. Or I'll just keep with the caption, "Party trick--hotdog shaped hamburgers, lacy onion rings." No, turd shaped hamburgers. TURD shaped. Not hot dog shaped!

Hamburger Clubs with green beans and melty mozzarella. Who in the hell puts green beens on top of their hamburgers? How does one request that? No lettuce or tomato but green beans. I don't understand 1972. I just don't! It was not my time..

"Make them round, make them square, no matter what shape, hamburgers and cheeseburgers are tops." Okay, skeptic here. I'm looking at that sliced bread underneath after admiring the person who can make a perfect square burger align with bread and I'm wondering what type of bread would hold up to a greasy ass hamburger? Wouldn't it stick to the hamburger like bread glue?

Golden Gate Saucy Burgers. Forget the green bean comment of a few pictures up. What's up with putting spaghetti on top of a hamburger? Sure some would say it was like eating spaghetti and meatballs. But it's spaghetti. On top of a hamburger. With a rarebit topping.

I cannot be the only one who thinks that blue napkin looks like a vibrator. I can't! Or that the Dinner Beef Patty looks like stool passing through a sphincter.

Beef Rolls Cordon Bleu. If I can't see the cheeses inside, I can only suggest what it looks like on the outside.

That's all. Have a good weekend! Oh, I am getting requests for recipes from previous entries and I am more than happy to oblige, just please indicate the entry and cookbook or recipe card used. And a follow up on how it tasted!