Day in the Life of an Idiot

 I have a HUGE collection of cook books at home because Shawn is very fond of collecting them both for ourselves and, as it happens, for the Minnesota Historical Society where she works. Most of them are interesting for a variety of different reasons, but every once and a while we come a cross a real TREASURE.

Shawn picked up a bunch of cook books that no one wanted off the Buy Nothing Facebook group. In amongst those, we found this self-bound book. Initially, it looked like someone had just gotten industrious and organized with their clipping collection. But, the further I looked into it, the more I found to love.

When I hit the mimeographed section, I knew I'd found some real gold.


Image: mimeographed story of wrestling the recipe from Grandma Pratt

The recipe itself is just some kind of banana bread, but I love that the person who copied it down felt the keen desire to leave behind the story of how [bleeping] hard someone had to work to get Grandma Pratt to cough up the recipe in any real useable form because, of course, she made the recipe by feel and used "Oh, just a pinch of that and a pinch of this."  

I LOVE this as an annotation because it reminds me of the time I tried to learn how to make injera. I took a Zoom cooking class through Community Ed and the woman who taught the class said that she felt that the only person to teach this class was her grandmother who spoke very little English as they were all fairly recent immigrants from Somalia. Grandma was great!  But, her recipe advice consisted of holding up a handful of flour to the camera and saying, "Like this." We were all begging in the chat for measurements, but grandma HAD NO MEASURING CUPS. The best she could do for us was pour her handful into her tea cup and say, "Like this."

I just stopped taking notes and enjoyed watching them make the food.

The other amazing piece I found was also from the mimeographed section:


This woman's Sloppy Joe recipe admits: "I sort of make it up."

I mean, don't we all?

This whole book is full of this sort of things coupled with bits of the life story of Bea (we found her name on one of the 1978 Minnesota Agriculture Extension Program newsletters) and Art (the husband, I presume, who signed his name to a cooking chemistry test which they also saved for some reason.) Bea was very concerned at the time this cookbook was put together about losing weight, for herself, perhaps, or for Art. There are a ton of "how to count calories" advice columns and, of course, low-fat recipes. 

The saddest bit was a whole article about foods for dementia. She had clearly read the article many times and underlined various bits. All I can say at this point is, I hope it helped, Bea. Or at least gave you comfort that you tried to do something. I mean, at least the advice included exercise, which is almost NEVER bad advice. 

So, question: do you write in your cookbooks? I think most of us do to some extent, but I need to start being cleverer. I mean, I want someone, some day to notice my weird little annotations.

 
Image: 500 RECIPES BY REQUEST: From Mother Anderson's Famous Dutch Kitchens by Jeanne M. Hall from 1948.

Every once and a while I get it into my head that I should try to make something from every single one of the zillion and a half vintage cookbooks that I have around the house. Currently, I am giving that project another go.  Normally, I run out of steam on this idea because no one really likes it when dinner is a flop. Or, let's say, the best recipe from a 1978 cookbook is the dreaded tuna bake. So, what I've decided to try this time around is to make my lunches from one of these books. That way, if it's a flop, it's a light meal and dinner can erase the horror of some 1930s oleo and lard meal. 

Today, I decided to try a split-pea soup from this 1948 cookbook. This cookbook is notable for its Minnesota connection as well, as it is recipes that were often requested at the Anderson Hotel in Wabasha, Minnesota. This is a hotel that I THINK Shawn and I may have stayed at. We did a staycation one year where we decided it would be fun to go to one of those hotels where you get a cat in your room. Keep in mind, that we left behind our three cats for a strange cat in a strange hotel. We were young and foolish. It looks like I am thinking of the VERY SAME hotel: http://www.purr-n-fur.org.uk/featuring/wk-hotel05.html  It looks like the hotel closed in 2009, but so we were there some time right before it shut down. 

At any rate, the split-pea soup recipe was fairly bland as written:

Image: Split Pea and Sausage Soup

There aren't any spices in this besides... salt. I mean, I guess there are whatever spices might eke off of the sausages, but they want you to pre-cook them, so... 

I will admit that if the idea of this exercise is to precisely replicate the recipes, I failed. I just couldn't imagine this soup without some onions, so I sautéed chopped onions in about two tablespoons of butter, added the celery to that until they were both soft, and then I added the uncooked sausages and let the grease from that mingle with the "veggies," and then I also added chicken stock instead of water. I cooked the split peas separately and then added them once they were soft. 

As for sausages, I was not sure what kind I should add. Given that this is a Dutch cookbook, I suspect I was supposed to add something like a braadworst or ossenworst, which.... I mean, if I could find them, they might make all the difference. But, instead, I used Johnsonville breakfast sausages? I considered kielbasa, which I often have around, but the breakfast sausages ended up to be pretty tasty honestly.


Image: finished soup. Not bad!

I mean, would I make this again? Probably not as written. I am fond of split peas, but I would add a lot more veggies to this, like some carrots and potatoes. The sausage (as opposed to ham) wasn't as weird a choice as I expected it to be, but, if I were to make this again, I might try to hunt down some of the Dutch sausage options and see if that made the soup more interesting. 

I ended up eating two full bowls of it, so I definitely liked it. 

I am looking at a Betty Crocker from 1954 for tomorrow's lunch. But, that's going to be a Saturday, so I will have to consider something that Shawn might also actually eat. (One of the other nice things about trying these for lunch is that Shawn is away at work, in-person on Mondays and Fridays so I can try out some of the weirder recipes on offer on those days.)

If I keep this up, I will post my experiments here.