Ok, there's no real rhyme or reason for this frivolous commercial treatise, except that I happened to be reminiscing about the favoured junk food of my childhood (clearly I don't have enough to occupy my mind) and felt moved to jot my juvenile preferences down for posterity, though owing to my tragically sweet tooth, this is by no means an exhaustive list..
Showing posts with label Food. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Food. Show all posts
Sunnyboys, Smarties, White Knights, Choo-Choo Bars and Twisties
Ok, there's no real rhyme or reason for this frivolous commercial treatise, except that I happened to be reminiscing about the favoured junk food of my childhood (clearly I don't have enough to occupy my mind) and felt moved to jot my juvenile preferences down for posterity, though owing to my tragically sweet tooth, this is by no means an exhaustive list..
Kitsch Kitchen
| The Joy of Liberace |
Saveloys in skirts poking through pineapple rings? Pink marshmallow cake with red marzipan love heart embellishments? Nothing so restrained at that. Looking at the cover picture, it seems like the recipes are far fancier - grand pianos cakes with edible candelabras.
The book promises to be a visual treat full of edible extravaganzas with plenty of colour photos and step-by-step recipes put together by the culinary staff of the Riviera Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas.
It's also an insight into the table tastes and food penchants of one of America's most out-there entertainers. See, if you really must, 'Liberace's personal entertaining style come to life' but don't blame me if you suffer a sacharine overload.
Vintage Picnic
| 1950s Twinco thermos set |
| Picnic blanket. Amazon |
Picnics are probably the oldest form of feasting, dating back to the primitive past when we gorged on wild berries and miscellaneous small animals -only without the civilizing influence of accessories, such as a rug, basket, thermos, plates etc. There is something fundamental about eating a meal outdoors, out in the fresh air, surrounded by the natural world. Sure beats a plastic burger in the food court at the shopping mall.
| Nobleman's picnic. Le Livre de chasse de Gaston Phébus 1500s |
In the Medieval era, outdoors feasting was a common pastime for the wealthy. The earliest picnics were hunting feasts, which were enjoyed before the hunting sport began. Servants would set up tables outdoors, laden with hams, baked meats, fruits an pastries.
However the word 'picnic', as applied to outside eating, did not come into common usage until the late 1800s. Picnics became particularly popular in the post-war 20th century as more and more families acquired cars and could move around the countryside with relative ease.
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| The essential and classic picnic basket. From Optima |
Easy Pancake Recipe
Why buy pre-made pancake mixes in a bottle from the supermarket shelves when it's just so, so easy to throw 3 fresh ingredients together and make your own? This very basic pancake mixture is possibly the easiest recipe in the world.
Pancakes make for a very cheap dessert when mixed with fruit or jam and ice-cream or cream and can be used with savoury toppings too.
Ingredients
One cup of flour
One egg
One cup of milk
Method
Make a well in the centre of the flour and break the egg into it, stirring in as much flour as the egg will handle. Add half the milk in small amounts, stirring as you go until all the flour is absorbed. Keep beating with your spoon until bubbles rise then add the remainder of the milk gradually.
Let the mixture stand for a half hour or so, then drop a small wad of butter into a hot frying pan and pour in some of the batter (not too much). Jiggle the pan around so the mixture spreads and when it's brown on top turn with a knife or metal egg flip and quickly do the other side. That's it! Easy -peasy.
1950s Cocktails
Gin (mother's little helper) was the big drink of the 50s and the basis for many cocktail concoctions - classics included martinis, highballs, screwdrivers, champagne punches, mint juleps and Tom Collins's. Here's a few recipes for drinks popular in the mid 20th century:
| Pretty Pink Squirrel |
3/4 oz creme de noyaux---> a red tinged, French liqueur with almond flavouring
3/4 oz white creme de cacao
1 1/2 oz of cream or a scoop of ice-cream!
Brandy Smash
Not exacty obscure but a fine old drink with the zing of mint, especially appealing to the sweet tooths.
2 and 1/2 ozs of Brandy
1 oz of club soda
1 tsp of fine sugar
A slice of orange
1 maraschino cherry
4 fresh sprigs of mint
Gin and Sin
This one sounds dangerous...but nice.
1 and 1/2 ozs of Gin
1 oz of lemon juice
1 oz of sugar syrup
1 tsp of Grenadine
Sea Breeze
This cranberry cocktail, invented in the 1920s was popular in the 50s up until1958, when the US Health Department announced that the cranberry crop had been tainted by toxic herbicides - kind of put people off and it didn't become popular again until the 1970s.
1 and 1/2 ozs of vodka
4 oz fresh grapefruit juice
1 and 1/half ozs of cranberry juice
1 lime wedge
Put everything into a highball glass, stir and decorate with a lime wedge. For a foamy finish, shake in cocktail mixer.
An eternally popular drink and definitely big in the 50s.
1 sugar lump
1 or 2 dashes of Angostura bitters
1 measure of brandy
4 measures of chilled champagne
1 slice of orange
Place sugar lump into a chilled cocktail glass and saturate with the bitters. Add the brandy and top up the glass with champagne. Decorate with a slice of orange.
5 or 6 ice cubes
Half measure of dry vermouth
3 measures of gin
1 green olive
The atomic cocktail was a purely 1950s invention, inspired by the nuclear testing that was going on at the time. I'm not 100% sure of this one -might be a bomb, as I've heard it described by one person as 'disgusting'. Hmm.
1 1/2 ozs vodka
1 1/2 ozs brandy
1 teaspoon sherry
1 1/2 ounces Brut champagne
| A compodium of atomic cocktails that promises to blast your socks off. |
Don't forget to serve some period appropriate hors d'oeuvres to your guests in between drinks...such as, fancy canapes (devilled ham, savoury mushrooms), ham and egg balls, cocktail sausages, fruit cups, stuffed eggs, asparagus rolls, cheese straws, cocktail frankfurts, stuffed olives, devils on horseback...
Who Invented the Hot Dog?
Well it seems the origins of the humble hot dog are murky. Frankfurters or weiners, the red sausage that forms the guts of the delicacy, not surprisingly come from Frankfurt in Germany and have been around since the 13th century and no doubt, they were served on buns now and then. However, legend has it that it took an enterprizing Coney Island entrepeneur - German immigrant, Charles Feltman, in the late 19th century to sell frankfurters in long buns as an item and it's possible he called them 'hot dogs', as the use of 'dog' as a colloquial term for sausage first surfced around 1884.
However credit for the term 'hot dog' is sometimes given to newspaper cartoonist Thomas Dorgan, who created a cartoon depicting 'hot dogs' beeing sold at a Giants baseball game in 1900. Yet an excerpt in The Patterson Daily Press from 1892 suggests otherwise:
Somehow or other a frankfurter and a roll seem to go right to the spot where the void is felt the most. The small boy has got on such familiar terms with this sort of lunch that he now refers to it as "hot dog." "Hey, Mister, give me a hot dog quick," was the startling order that a rosy-cheeked gamin hurled at the man as a Press reporter stood close by last night. The "hot dog" was quickly inserted in a gash in a roll, a dash of mustard also splashed on to the "dog" with a piece of flat whittled stick, and the order was fulfilled.
—Paterson Daily Press, Dec. 31, 1892, pg. 5 (from Wiki.)
Too Hot to Handle
Others claim it was really Antoinine Feuchtwanger, the wife of another German, who first sold sausages in buns to the general public on the streets of St Louis in 1880, allegedly because customers kept pocketing the white gloves that were provided to allow them to eat a hot sausage without burning their hands.The connection with hot dogs and basebal happened early on itn the piece, in 1893 and again a German immigrant, called Chris von der Ahe, was involved. Von der Ahe owned an amusement park as well as baseball team, the St. Louis Giants and via Harry M Stevens, a well-known sports caterer, had hot dogs on the menu as part of the refreshments to serve to the ravenous masses.
Whatever the truth, what does seem clear is that hot dogs have a strong German/American connection, just as donuts did with the Dutch immigrants. Like the donut then, the hot dog is a hybrid, born of two cultures and fitting perfectly together.
Mr. Whippy
No, I'm not referring to some sort of underground S&M character but rather the wholesome ice-cream vendor franchise Mr Whippy, that in the 1960s used to drive around lonely suburban streets luring children from their homes with the promise of soft-serve ice-cream with sprinkles on top.
Recently these old-fashioned vans have made a comeback in Australia and frankly I feel sorry for the operators. It's a hard job for the contemporary Mr. Whippy man when you consider that now people can buy boxes of whatever ice-cream they fancy relatively cheaply at the supermarket, as opposed to the exhorbitant price of a van-served ice-cream, that's if they buy ice-cream at all in these health conscious times.
Moreover, the noise of that music-box "Greensleeves" pumping monotonously through the van's loudspeaker can get downright annoying...and Mr. Whippy's not the end of it...now there's now another wanna be Mr. Whippy company doing the rounds, called Home ice-cream. The Home ice-cream van doesn't even have the distinction of the tinkling Greensleeves music...just a penetrating clang, clang, clang, that goes right through you.
At first I thought they were charming, these quaint reflections of a past era but now I'm beginning to cringe when I hear the Home ice-cream van coming. . and heaven help you if you ever make the mistake of venturing out to buy an ice-cream. Here's why...
There's a house a couple of doors away from mine with small children and ever since they bought ice-creams a couple of times over summer, the ice-cream van has haunted them most evenings, just after dinner time - hovering out the front of their house with his shrill clang, clang clang piercing the airwaves, motor running and rerigerators humming. That van has even been there during winter - it's tragic really. How desperate must he be for a sale? They never buy anything from him..in fact I strongly suspect when they hear him coming, they draw the blinds and hide under the bed. I know I would...
| Image from Whippy kiosks |
Moreover, the noise of that music-box "Greensleeves" pumping monotonously through the van's loudspeaker can get downright annoying...and Mr. Whippy's not the end of it...now there's now another wanna be Mr. Whippy company doing the rounds, called Home ice-cream. The Home ice-cream van doesn't even have the distinction of the tinkling Greensleeves music...just a penetrating clang, clang, clang, that goes right through you.
At first I thought they were charming, these quaint reflections of a past era but now I'm beginning to cringe when I hear the Home ice-cream van coming. . and heaven help you if you ever make the mistake of venturing out to buy an ice-cream. Here's why...
There's a house a couple of doors away from mine with small children and ever since they bought ice-creams a couple of times over summer, the ice-cream van has haunted them most evenings, just after dinner time - hovering out the front of their house with his shrill clang, clang clang piercing the airwaves, motor running and rerigerators humming. That van has even been there during winter - it's tragic really. How desperate must he be for a sale? They never buy anything from him..in fact I strongly suspect when they hear him coming, they draw the blinds and hide under the bed. I know I would...
History of the Donut
| Bad, bad donut |
Where did they come from, this evil incarnate that is so very popular in the Western world? Some say they have been around since the beginning of time and the fossilized remains can be found in the prehistoric ruins of Southwestern America. Could there have been a very early Donut King civilization that was wiped out by a meteorite? Hmmm...
By WWI donuts had ingratiated themselves as a national favourite in the US and in the following decades they began to be mass produced to satisfy the country's growing appetite for them. In the 40s and 50s when the great tide of post-war consumerism and fast food swept over America, donut chains began to spring up - big names like Dunkin' Donuts, Krispy Kreme and Randy's Donuts (now defunct) populated the urbanscape. Donuts caught on internationally and as the decades wore on some of these chains spread to other countries. The donut was now officially everywhere, making resistance futile...besides, they're just so darn good with coffee...
| A quintessentially American site. 1953 donut joint. |
In Australia we have our own home grown Donut King chain and our most popular line in donuts is a hot jam filled, heavily sugar-coated version known simply as The Jam Donut.
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