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Cookbook Project, Book #188 - The End!
Sep. 20th, 2010 06:10 pm"Fashionable Food," Sylvia Lovengren
And at last we are here, at the final book of the Cookbook Project. I've been saving this book for last since I started the project, because I have loved it deeply since I first discovered it, and so I've been keeping it as a reward for myself and an incentive to keep going and finish things.
It's one of the few books that I bought for myself, at a secondhand store - the title (and the follow-up, 'Seven Decades of Food Fads') caught my eye, as did the hot-pink cover, and by the time I finished reading the back cover I was hooked. It plays to my love of food, my love of quirky recipes, of snarky humor, and of history.
The book tracks food, cooking, and eating trends from the 1920's through the 1990's, explaining how culture, economy, technology, and politics influenced how and what people ate, complete with numerous menus and recipes for each time period. It's brilliant and funny and entertaining and interesting (apart from what I feel is a very unfair attitude towards Marshmallow Fluff), and I loved reading through it... and, like everything else, I never quite got around to cooking from it.
So when it finally came time to use it, I was excited and amused... and a little scared. Most of what I remembered from my first read-through were recipes for things like Candlestick Salad, Tang Pie, and Spam Fruit Cocktail Party Loaf - and while I'm adventuresome, I wasn't quite sure I wanted to end on a note like that. I was surprised to realize, though, on my second read-through, that the book is full of truly great-sounding recipes. The chapter on Chinese food references some impressively authentic sources, the 40's included some truly amazing-sounding chiffon cakes in between ration-friendly main dishes, and between stuff that sounded tasty, stuff that sounded interesting, and stuff that just amused me, I had marked about 30 different pages before I reached the last chapter.
Finally, though, I had to decide. Luckily, a friend's party gave me the incentive I needed to narrow things down to 'party-friendly desserts,' and while I was tempted to go with the Tang pie for amusement's sake, I decided to make Grasshopper Pie instead. It sounded interesting, and tasty, and I had never tried it before. There was a brief flurry of concern as I wondered whether it'd be worth the cost of two large bottles of Creme de Menthe and Creme de Cacao just to use 1/4 cup of each, but a friend with a truly impressive liquor cabinet came to my salvation (likely confusing the heck out of anyone who saw them handing off two odd little plastic containers full of odd-colored liquid in the middle of the Public Gardens), and the pie was made.
It was also very, very good. Or at least, so I was told, and so I extrapolated from the two bites I managed to snatch as a horde of eager partygoers descended upon the pie like.... well, like hungry partygoers on a particularly tasty pie. Clearly, I need to make this again.
Also, I clearly need to make at least a few more of the marked recipes from this book.
And so, the project ends. Well, with the exception of one Christmas cookbook that didn't get used last year, so there'll be a brief addendum in about 3 months.
Not quite two years. Not quite two hundred cookbooks. I've learned a heck of a lot - about cooking technique, about my own skills, and, quite literally, about not judging books by their covers. I'm so glad at what I've done, and so proud to be done... and a little sad at not having the project to work on anymore....
And at last we are here, at the final book of the Cookbook Project. I've been saving this book for last since I started the project, because I have loved it deeply since I first discovered it, and so I've been keeping it as a reward for myself and an incentive to keep going and finish things.
It's one of the few books that I bought for myself, at a secondhand store - the title (and the follow-up, 'Seven Decades of Food Fads') caught my eye, as did the hot-pink cover, and by the time I finished reading the back cover I was hooked. It plays to my love of food, my love of quirky recipes, of snarky humor, and of history.
The book tracks food, cooking, and eating trends from the 1920's through the 1990's, explaining how culture, economy, technology, and politics influenced how and what people ate, complete with numerous menus and recipes for each time period. It's brilliant and funny and entertaining and interesting (apart from what I feel is a very unfair attitude towards Marshmallow Fluff), and I loved reading through it... and, like everything else, I never quite got around to cooking from it.
So when it finally came time to use it, I was excited and amused... and a little scared. Most of what I remembered from my first read-through were recipes for things like Candlestick Salad, Tang Pie, and Spam Fruit Cocktail Party Loaf - and while I'm adventuresome, I wasn't quite sure I wanted to end on a note like that. I was surprised to realize, though, on my second read-through, that the book is full of truly great-sounding recipes. The chapter on Chinese food references some impressively authentic sources, the 40's included some truly amazing-sounding chiffon cakes in between ration-friendly main dishes, and between stuff that sounded tasty, stuff that sounded interesting, and stuff that just amused me, I had marked about 30 different pages before I reached the last chapter.
Finally, though, I had to decide. Luckily, a friend's party gave me the incentive I needed to narrow things down to 'party-friendly desserts,' and while I was tempted to go with the Tang pie for amusement's sake, I decided to make Grasshopper Pie instead. It sounded interesting, and tasty, and I had never tried it before. There was a brief flurry of concern as I wondered whether it'd be worth the cost of two large bottles of Creme de Menthe and Creme de Cacao just to use 1/4 cup of each, but a friend with a truly impressive liquor cabinet came to my salvation (likely confusing the heck out of anyone who saw them handing off two odd little plastic containers full of odd-colored liquid in the middle of the Public Gardens), and the pie was made.
It was also very, very good. Or at least, so I was told, and so I extrapolated from the two bites I managed to snatch as a horde of eager partygoers descended upon the pie like.... well, like hungry partygoers on a particularly tasty pie. Clearly, I need to make this again.
Also, I clearly need to make at least a few more of the marked recipes from this book.
And so, the project ends. Well, with the exception of one Christmas cookbook that didn't get used last year, so there'll be a brief addendum in about 3 months.
Not quite two years. Not quite two hundred cookbooks. I've learned a heck of a lot - about cooking technique, about my own skills, and, quite literally, about not judging books by their covers. I'm so glad at what I've done, and so proud to be done... and a little sad at not having the project to work on anymore....
