Gifted

Cooper mentioned to me this morning that I have been on the receiving end of a whole lot of gifts lately. He's right.

For starters, last week, Alicia brought over a bunch of vintage cookbooks she got from Mike's family. They're amazing:

A whole cookbook dedicated to deviled ham recipes? SIGN ME UP. 

The Calvert Party Encyclopedia is also especially fabulous. It's mostly drink recipes, like the "One Exciting Night," which is a combo of gin, dry vermouth, sweet vermouth and OJ...and sounds like one hungover morning to me. 

It also has suggestions for party themes, some games, and a small section dedicated to party food, including delicacies like Bologna Boats: "Place American cheese on slices of bologna. Heat in broiler until bologna curls. Serve with crackers." Then watch your friends never, ever come to your house again.

The copywrite date on that book is 1964. Amazing.

Cooper has also surprised me with a gift or two, including a Wicomico County Board of Education Christmas cookbook from 1981 and this little treat, which he picked up at an auction:

Isn't she adorable? (It is a she, too. There's a lady apron.)

These are my favorite kind of gifts: things that are totally cool and that completely align with my interests...and that were complete surprises.

Thanks, Alicia and Cooper!!

Random Ruxton Recipes

Glossy, chef-driven cookbooks are great, but as far as I'm concerned, when it comes to collecting recipes, there's just nothing better than an old-fashioned neighborhood cookbook.

My mother-in-law knows exactly how I feel about this - which is why she occasionally surprises me with gifts from her own personal collection.

Her latest gift to me is this fabulous piece of history - Random Ruxton Recipes, compiled by the Cook Book Committee at Church of the Good Shepherd and published, as far as I can tell, in 1979. The front matter mentions, though, that some of the recipes included were pulled from the original 1953 edition of the book.

Generally speaking, the years between 1953 and 1979 are not known for their culinary strength. And though there are some useful classics in this bunch, there are also a whole lot of recipes that rely on canned vegetables and the kind of processed foods that...well let's just say chances are you're not going to find many of these recipes on most Ruxton dinner tables today.

Case in point - this gnocchi ("gnocci"?) made with cream of wheat and American cheese:

I removed the name of the lady who contributed that because...this is Baltimore. She (or her kids) probably still live here. And I'm fairly certain none of them should be held responsible for this. It was the 70s. This is what people did.

Mid-century culinary atrocities are only one part of why I love these cookbooks. They're also great repositories for staple recipes that might otherwise be lost to history - like this one, for Tomatoes Elkridge:

I'm sure generations of Elkridge members loved these tomatoes, so it's nice to preserve the recipe.

And also..."Put in 350 degree oven almost indefinitely." Almost indefinitely, you say? How specific.

In this particular book, there are lots of little clauses like that one - directions that make me laugh and also that are pretty unhelpful. And a lot of ingredients that appear in the directions, but not in the ingredient list, which makes the recipe editing part of my brain go crazy.

But that's all easy to forgive. It's part of the book's charm. And if a collection of recipes that includes a "cold slaw souffle salad" - made with mayonnaise, lemon jello, cabbage and radishes - isn't charming,,,I don't know what is.

Old vs. New in the Cocktail Game

As much as I love cocktails, it's possible that I actually love books about cocktails even more. I can't stop buying them.

Two of my most recent acquisitions are a vintage copy of Playboy's Host and Bar Book by Thomas Mario and a brand new copy of The Architecture of the Shot by Paul Knorr, with illustrations by Melissa Wood.

The Playboy book was first published in 1955; my copy was printed in 1971. The architecture book, on the other hand, was hot off the presses in 2015. Both books about booze...but they couldn't be more different. I love them both.

Though at first glance the shot book seems like it could be gimmicky, really, it's not. The recipes are precise and descriptions are genuinely interesting. The book includes about 70 different shots, both classics and drinks that are new to me. It's a good mix. Plus, the graphics...I love them.

Seventy sounds like a lot of shots, until you open a book like the Playboy tome, which is truly encyclopedic, with some pretty fab pictures of '70s parties and all manner of cocktail information and advice, from glassware to etiquette.

"But while a host should be active and should generously offer his punches, his pitchers or trays of cocktails, he should remember at the height of his wassailing that he's a host and not a hustler," Mario writes in the first chapter, titled "The Code of Conviviality." In addition to Mario's extremely strong, non-holiday season use of the verb "to wassail," he offers some good advice here. And there's a lot more where that came from.

But also...there are drinks. Dozens and dozens and dozens of drinks, from straightforward martinis to so many that require egg whites, I couldn't even count them all. If this book is any indication, mid-century entertainers really got their arm workouts in, what with all the cocktail shaking.

Despite their different angles - one uber-precise and succinct, one lengthy, comprehensive and swinging - both books are pretty incredible. And both promise hours and hours of good times...followed by a hangover or two.

Mixology Engineering

This cocktail guide, published by the US Forest Service in 1974, is absolutely the best. Cool vintage drawings, way more precision than necessary, detailed keys.

According to Esquire, it's the work of Red Ketchum, a Forest Service engineer who passed away in 2005. Apparently, he drew them as sort of a joke but they ended up in the for-real archives anyway. Possibly by mistake...but what a glorious mistake that is.

At any rate, I love every part of it. The pictures are cute...and full of solid information. I like a little precision in my cocktails.

When someone else is making them, that is. I certainly don't have the kind of patience required to measure that carefully. But I'm glad that some people do.

The Parties of Yesteryear

Adorable illustration of glasses for different bevvies. 

I'm working on something - a short article - that has me pulling out all the vintage cookbooks I've collected over the past few years.

I keep them stacked upstairs in my office. They're out of my usual line of sight, so sometimes I even forget they're there. Until I need some historical perspective on something...then I go digging. And that's when I remember, all over again, how totally entertaining and awesome old cookbooks can be.

For this project, I'm looking at recipes for winter cocktails (I know - some days it's hard to be me). In the search, I pulled out a big binder of a book called the Look and Cook Cook Book. It was written by Lillian Langseth-Christensen and Tatiana McKenna and was published by Brown and Bigelow in 1956. I picked it up a few years ago from Etsy, on the recommendation of my old friend Tracy.

The book is pretty comprehensive, including a wide variety of recipes plus several sections dedicated to menu planning, party-throwing and general fabulousness. I love this bit about menu planning:

We live in an era of scant clothing and great diet consciousness. [Ed note: You ladies hadn't seen anything yet!] There are no vast skirts or flared coats under which the results of too much roast goose can be hidden. Our entire eating habits and thus the making of Menus, must be adapted to giving nourishment, health an all the pleasures of eating, without the penalty of a roll about the waist.

And this, about planning a cocktail party:

The frequent answer to this question is...ask everyone you know, make some spreads and dunks, and have something in the refrigerator for the people (they are no longer friends at this point) who will not go home. Then fall exhausted into bed; and never, never give another Cocktail party - for at least a week.

Pure hilarity.

Vintage Tuesday: Cooking with the Bottle

(Yes, I know it's Wednesday, not Tuesday. I blame snow.)

Today, home cooks are inundated with cookbooks written by celebrity chefs or books focusing on all the magical ways to cook one trendy ingredient. Both types make the marketers happy.

Marketing people have always known that cookbooks do more than educate - that they sell food. Or wine.

Wine sales were the impetus behind Gourmet Wine Cooking the Easy Way, a book published by the Wine Advisory Board in 1968. Written to promote US wines - nearly a decade before the Judgment of Paris and well before California super cabs came on the scene -  the book works California wines into everything from soup to pudding.

Unsurprisingly - since it was 1968 - much of the food sounds revolting. Beets with cornstarch, cloves and claret, anyone? And unfortunately, even the cocktails section - usually the day-saver in old cookbooks - is filled with things that barely sound drinkable. Why - WHY - would you think to mix Chablis, tomato juice and Worcestershire sauce, then garnish with dried dill? WHY?

But it does include some cute illustrations. And, as always, a brutally honest slice of mid-century culinary life.

(This was an Etsy find for me - bought a few years ago after my friend Tracy spotted it online and sent me a link. She thought I'd like it. Oh, did I ever.)

Vintage Tuesday: Booze It Up

Today's vintage item comes straight from my grandmother's bar. Thanksgiving before last, Nan moved from the house she shared with her brother - a little house on the South River in Annapolis, where she climbed a spiral staircase to her rooms every day - to an assisted living place in Severna Park, just around the corner from my parents.

She doesn't have a great view of the Riva bridge anymore and she can't watch the lights from Mike's Crab House, directly across the river, shimmer on the water at night. But up side: no spiral staircase.

After she moved, my family sorted through the decades of stuff she and her brother, who had also just moved, accumulated. And wow, was there a lot of stuff.

One of the finds that made me laugh - enough to cart it home with me - were these three bottles of aging liquor. They were in a small bar my grandfather built, probably sometime in the sixties (we have that, too).

Each is half full and I loved them for two reasons. One: label design. And two: who drinks this stuff? My favorite of the three, of course, is the pre-mixed vodka sour. Because mixing some vodka and sour mix is so taxing. And look at that label! I love it.

These relics of my grandmother's very active social life have been sitting in my kitchen since Thanksgiving 2012, waiting for me to photograph and document them here. And now I have.

So the big question is: will I finally be able to throw them away? And if I do, will I try them first?

Vintage Tuesday: This Is How We Rolls

As promised, here it is: my first official "vintage" post, a weekly feature in which I highlight one interesting vintage cookbook or kitchen or entertaining item from my collection per post.

I'm starting with my newest acquisition which, like many of these cool and funny things, comes directly from my mother-in-law, who found it at an auction some time ago, and just re-found it in her own collection and passed it on to me.

This gem, the Rolls-Royce Owners Cookbook, was published by the Atlantic Region Rolls-Royce Owners' Club in 1975 and was compiled by Emily Walker and Jacqueline Mintz.  The "Atlantic Region" included Connecticut, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania and Massachusetts - and it looks like it's still going strong.

The recipes included were collected from club members - much like your standard Junior League or garden club cookbook. What sets this one apart is the artwork - photos of the members' cars are sprinkled throughout.

Also like the standard JL or garden club cookbook published between the '50s and '80s, many of the recipes sound, well, kind of gross. Sardine finger sandwiches? Hot beef dip made with cream cheese, sour cream, dried onions and "one envelope dried chipped beef"? London broil smothered in havarti? Seafood a la king that doesn't actually specify what type of seafood it includes? All there. And, of course, numerous Jello salads.

But I wouldn't expect anything less. It was 1975, after all. The year of my birth...and of many a Jello salad.

Happy Hour Friday: Come By for a Drink

After blogging yesterday about creative fashion show invitations, I realized I'd never posted about the adorable vintage cocktail invitations my in-laws gave me for Christmas. My mother-in-law found two small packs of these in an antiques shop someplace:

The shot glass gives you a sense of scale - they're only about three inches wide. Aren't they adorable? One of the packs still had a price tag - 65 cents for ten invitations. 

After Christmas, I had big plans to have some new versions made for myself, which I'd then use all the time, whenever we were having people over for a couple of drinks. That, of course, never happened (and really, the postal service probably isn't the most efficient way to ask people if they want to come over the next day).

But even though they're languishing in my office, they're making me happy with their charming font and glamorous mid-century promise. Cheers!

Happy Hour Friday: Buy This Book

Entertaining Is Fun by Dorothy Draper. Originally published in 1941 (rereleased in 2004):

I'm in the middle of it right now and if you like entertaining, or vintage books, or anything vintage, really, you won't regret the purchase. Trust me.

More to follow.

In the Mail

This bit of fabulousness:

Well, actually, twelve of those bits of fabulousness, from BasilicusJones and courtesy of the Fabulous Beekman Boys' One King Lane tastemaker tag sale. While the $5,000 tea sets were a bit too rich for my blood, these little repurposed gems were too full of awesomeness for me to pass up. Plus, $25 for four. Not horrifically exorbinant.

The Ultimate Wisdom of the I Hate to Cook Book

For Christmas, knowing that I'm a sucker for cookbooks from the golden age of canned vegetables, Cooper's mom gave me the reissued version of the mid-century classic, The I Hate to Cook Book. A 50th anniversary edition of the book was issued in 2010, complete with a little perspective from the author's daughter, including this:

The I Hate to Cook Book was born from a group of professional women who would have been much happier sipping martinis with thier husbands than spending the cocktail hour in the kitchen, slaving over a hot stove. These friends decided to share their pain (and surefire recipes) with the hope that they could get back at least a portion of that cocktail hour (and keep their families from going on strike at the same time).

This simple little passage gave me a whole lot of new insight into my own cooking personality. I like to cook, of course, and I used to like nothing better than to spend hours in the kitchen, putting together elaborate meals for friends. As I get older, though, I realize that I'd, also, prefer not to miss any of that cocktail hour. If we've got friends over, I want to be with them, not confined to the kitchen, cooking for them.

It also gave me more than a little insight into my family's cooking tradition. My mom's a good cook, but I didn't exactly grow up making pasta from scratch in our kitchen. Neither did she. In fact, my grandmother is a perfect example of the ladies for whom the book was originally written. She loved to entertain, and she is great to go out to dinner with, but she has never understood why my mom or I might actually want to cook dinner. You should see the look on her face if she finds out one of us got a new kitchen tool for Christmas or a birthday. She doesn't even consider them actual gifts.

It's easy to see now, though, that she's just a product of her time. Like my mom, with her Julia Child books, were a product of hers, and I, with my combination of French Laundry and Barefoot Contessa, am a product of mine.

But back to the book. I'd be remiss if I didn't share at least one recipe because, though I can identify with the women the book was originally written for, I cannot identify with their taste buds. Consider the clam whiffle. No, really - think hard about whether you'd eat this:

CLAM WHIFFLE

3-4 servings

(A whiffle is a souffle that any fool can make. This is a dandy recipe for those days when you've just had your teeth pulled. It has a nice delicate flavor, too, and it doesn't call for anything you're not apt to have around, except the clams. You can even skip the green pepper.)

12 soda crackers (the ordinary 2-inch by 2-inch kind)
1 cup milk
1/4 cup melted butter
6.5-ounce can minced clams, drained
2 tablespoons chopped onion
1 tablespoon chopped green pepper
1/4 teaspoon Worcestershire sauce
dash of salt, pepper
2 eggs, beaten together

Soak the crumbled crackers in the milk for a few minutes. Then add everything else, eggs last. Pour it all into a greased casserol, and bake it in a 350 degree oven for forty-five minutes, uncovered.

That's it. Is it simple? Yes. Quick? Totally. And does the mere thought of it turn my stomach? Absolutely. A good reminder that I'm glad I was born right when I was.

The "Culinary Capers" of Boys' Latin Parents

The other night, Cooper's mom handed me a little book she'd found someplace in her house. It's a compilation of recipes called "Culinary Capers," published by the Boys' Latin Parents' Association. It's one of those garden club-style cookbooks with plastic binding, awkward typewriter text and member-contributed recipes. The kind that get crumpled up pretty easily, but are total go-tos when you're looking for hors d'oeuvres to serve your grandmother.

The book is older than we are - it doesn't have a publishing date, but one of the ads proudly boasts, "In business 50 years in 1972," which I hope means the whole book wasn't published when Cooper was at BL in the '90s. It's so much better for having those extra 20 or so years, too.

Patsy thinks someone gave it to her as a gift when Cooper was in school, and she passed it on to me because she knows I can't resist old cookbooks, especially ones that are full of recipes contributed by actual housewives of the day. And this book delivers: on the very first page, there's a recipe for something optimistically called "Frisky Puppies." I won't name the contributor, but the recipe goes just like this:

FRISKY PUPPIES

1 lb. cocktail hot dogs or 1 pkg. hot dogs, cut into 1/2 inch lengths
1 c. brown sugar
1/2 c. catsup
2 Tbsp. prepared mustard
about 1/2 c. brandy

Melt sugar with a little water.  Add catsup and mustard, and the brandy to taste. Fry hot dogs in butter until brown; add to brown sugar sauce and simmer. Serve on toothpicks. These are very popular at a cocktail party; also, good ham glaze. Mix with bread crumbs and cover ham before baking.

Hot dogs and brandy. So perfectly Mad Men, right? Easy, boozy, repulsive. I love it. This is the kind of stuff I'm going to cook when I really get down to business wearing those caftans.