I was told that since I am now a resident of New England, I am required to be a fan of the Sox, the Pats, and the Celtics.

(Celts?)

Given that the Patriots are playing in the Super Bowl this weekend, I developed a menu which proves my allegiance, providing an appropriate color scheme and using signature New England ingredients like cranberries, maple syrup, clams, and blueberries.

Go Pats!

Snacky

Ranch Style Oyster Crackers

Patriotic Chips and North Shore Dip

Red, White and Blue Nachos

Meaty

Spicy Cranberry Meatballs

Bacon Jalapeno Bites

Mini Ballpark Dogs

Desserty

Blueberry, Blackberry, and Strawberry Skewers with MapleNilla Sauce

Nantucket Cranberry Pie

Ranch Style Oyster Crackers


3/4 cup vegetable oil
1 (1 ounce) package dry Ranch-style dressing mix
1/2 teaspoon dried dill weed
1/4 teaspoon lemon pepper
1/4 teaspoon garlic powder
1 (12 ounce) package oyster crackers

Preheat oven to 275. In a mixing bowl, whisk together vegetable oil, ranch-style dressing mix, dill weed, lemon pepper and garlic powder. Pour over the crackers in a medium bowl. Stir until the coated. Arrange on a large baking sheet. Bake for 15 to 20 minutes.


North Shore Dip

1 8oz container prepared French onion dip
1 can chopped clams

Mince clams extra fine and combine with French onion dip. Serve with Terra Stripes & Blues chips.



















Red, White, and Blue Nachos


Blue corn tortilla chips
Montgomery Jack cheese
Sharp white Cheddar cheese
Chunky salsa

Arrange tortilla chips in a single layer on a cookie sheet. Shred cheeses on chips to cover evenly but not completely. Place in hot oven until cheese is melted. Use a spoon to dribble salsa over the top; try to get some salsa on each chip.


Spicy Cran Meatballs

1 14oz can Jellied Cranberry Sauce
1 12oz bottle Heinz® Chili Sauce
1 2 lb bag frozen cocktail-size meatballs

Thoroughly mix cranberry and chili sauce in a large saucepan or crockpot. Add meatballs and heat until meatballs are heated through. Serve with toothpicks.

MapleNilla Sauce

1/2 cup sour cream
1/2 cup mascarpone
1/4 cup maple syrup
2 teaspoons vanilla

Whisk all ingredients together until well blended. Serve with fruit skewers as dipping sauce.

Spry! Best Wedding Gift Ever!

Spry Pure Vegetable Shortening did an amazing job with marketing during the mid 1930s through the mid 1950s. They created a character named Aunt Jenny who appeared in print advertisements and hosted a radio show/soap opera.

(In this case, I guess it would be called a shortening opera.)

DiDi found for me a trippy old recipe booklet called Aunt Jenny's Favorite Recipes which of course all demand Spry.

Check out the front cover:

That handsome fella with his arm around Jenny is the ever dashing DH Calvin. For some reason, he's not referred to as "Uncle", which makes me question the nature of their relationship.

The back cover is equally fun.

The book is filled with techniques and tips for the aspiring homemaker. The back cover tips you off that Jenny likes to help newlyweds.

Who wouldn't want a paper advertocookbooklet and an economy sized can of shortening as a wedding present!

Ain't Spry grand?

Hot Gazpacho à la Alice B. Toklas

I've been reading The Alice B. Toklas Cook Book which I bought a few months ago at an estate sale. I thought the title sounded familiar, but had no idea what I was actually buying.

The book is a fascinating memoir about Alice's life as friend, lover, and aide-de-camp to Gertrude Stein. Each chapter centers around a set of their adventures, transporting medical supplies during war time, wrangling persnickety vehicles named Aunt Pauline and Godiva, and traveling here and there around the Continent and elsewhere. All the stories conclude with a description of a meal they ate on these travels, along with a recipe or two.

There are many interesting things about the book. Alice always refers to her companion as "Gertrude Stein", never as merely Gertrude. Use of punctuation is spotty. Questions are often ended with periods rather than question marks. Recipes are introduced in the middle of sentences. Names like Picasso are dropped in the midst of stories about friends and acquaintances.

I'm not sure how many of the recipes I'll include in this blog. It tends not to be my style of cooking. Most of it is very French, both literally and by my own use of the term, meaning: multi-stepped and fussy. But I did want to include this passage on gazpacho. It concludes a chapter on variations of this cold soup, and was added as a sort of epilogue. She writes:

Senora Marta Brunet, a distinguished Chilean writer, is of Spanish or rather Catalan descent and she describes gazpacho as a meal of the Spanish muleteers. And meal it seems, in this version, rather than soup. These muleteers, she says, carry with them on their journeyings a flat earthenware dish--and garlic, olive, oil, tomatoes and cucumbers, also dry bread which they crumble. Between two stones by the wayside they grind the garlic with a little salt and then add the oil. This mixture is rubbed all round the inside of the earthenware vessel. Then they slice the tomatoes and cucumbers and put alternating layers of each in the dish, interspersing the layers with layers of breadcrumbs and topping off the four tiers with more breadcrubms and more oil. This done and prepared, they take a wet cloth, wrap it round the dish and leave it in a sunny place. The evaporation cooks the contents and when the cloth is dry the meal is ready. Too simple, my dear Watson.

Now I don't claim to be a scientist of any kind. Brain or otherwise. But my understanding of the evaporation process is that it cools, rather than heats. A quick googling confirmed that, and led me to an interesting link about a self-cooling Spanish clay water vessel called a Botijo.

So that leaves me wondering if the word "cooks" in the passage was a typo inflicted during the publishing process, or if Alice simply got the story wrong.

Interesting, no?

This little book is a priceless window into a particular era, social milieu, and personality. Definitely worth the read.

Food Poems for National Poetry Day

A few years ago, Saveur Magazine published a story called A Feast for Bards: 13 Favorite Food Poems, which opened by saying: "Scratch a poet, find a gourmand. Every aspect of gastronomy, from planting to harvest to cooking to eating, has inspired poets for centuries; poets are sensualists, and these are among life's most sensual experiences."

My lovely wife concurs, and she's been dying to get me to publish some of my poems, a number of which center around food.

Here's one for openers:

If you'd like to read a few more poems in this style, written under my nom de plume Chantelle Franc, you can check them out by clicking here.

Subliminal Bananas for a Better Finale

"Nothing is smarter, nothing more pleasing, than a fruit finale to a meal."

Clearly he agrees.

She, however, cannot bring herself to meet his gaze:

This disquiets me, and makes me wonder if an even more pleasing finale might be needed.

Might the downturned bananas be a subliminal message for hubby?

Viva le Hot Dog!

Cookbook Love loves hot dogs!

And so does Cutco. And so does their illustrator, Frank Marcello. Just look at this fine fellow fencing, confident in his meat selection:

Why he's parried and thrust her burger nearly down to the handle!

Consider his form. And his jaunty shirt. Wish I could find curtains in that fabric.

But on to the recipe:

Check out the loooong arm of this Pisan!

I like that Frank Marcello put the leaning tower in the picture, as a play on "pizza". But he must not have read the recipe because it includes no bun, and his illustration includes no bacon.

Which is a major violation: BACON MUST BE RESPECTED.

Or maybe he was on to something. After all, putting the canino in a bun after grilling would make it more pizza-like.

I guess Frank knows franks.

Pies of Intimidating Beauty

In the spring I wrote a HuffPost Food piece titled 8 Crusts to Cure Your Fear of Pie-ing because so many of us are intimidated by pie crust. My premise is that pretty doesn't really matter. But then I saw these.

Sigh. Now I'm intimidated again.

Toast! Photocopy style.

Check out this darling, yellow and yellowing paperback for kids, published by...

XEROX?

I love finding children's cookbooks because they take me back to my own childhood, and the books given to me as gifts. The ones I had contained recipes for things like handmade soft pretzels, ants on a log, and tuna boats.

This little guy came out a little later than the ones in my mom's kitchen. Look at the cuteness:

It is copyrighted 1972, and was given as a gift three years later.

Instead of handmade pretzels, ants on a log, and tuna boats, this book contains deviled eggs, pomanders, and Miracle Pie.

More importantly, it has multiple recipes for toast. Three to be exact, and none of them made in the toaster. Here are two, in case you are hungry. Something sweet, and something savory.

Now I'm off to Google why XEROX published a cookbook for kids.

Coffee 2 ways

Here are two recipes for coffee from Meals for Small Families. The second one is both fascinating and revolting.

Coffee

For 1 person:

2 tablespoonfuls ground coffee

1 cup cold water

Mix the coffee and water together, cover closely and let stand all night. In the morning bring this to a boil and serve. When poured carefully it will be as clear as amber.

For a small pot:

1 cup ground coffee

1 egg and shell

This amount will make 3 pots for 3 successive mornings, by using one third and keeping the remainder closely covered. Take one-third of the mixture (the egg and coffee mixed together) and add 1/3 cup of water, mixing well; pour into coffee pot and add 1 pint boiling water. Let the coffee boil 3 minutes. Remove from fire and keep hot on stove for 5 minutes (not boiling) and serve.

Where there's smoke, there might be cigarettes

This book was my cocktail hour reading a few weeks ago. I had to pick it up, because just look at the cover!

I love the way the graphic floats dreamily on the green background, pretending it's real grass. Peering into the scene, I can almost taste the creamy, cigarette-ash flavored cheese, and the sugary zing of the Riesling. Unfortunately the book's contents were very disappointing, so don't rush out to buy it. But it did get me thinking about the whole smoke while you eat thing. 

Or even, smoke while you cook. 

And so I went in search of books which seem to combine the two. I couldn't find many, but check this one out:

What I don't understand is if she's so busy, why is she simply standing still, holding a spoon and staring deep into the burning ember? You'd think she'd at least turn toward the stove and give a pot a stir. Makes me think there's more than just tobacco in that cigarette.

Contrast this woman:

I like her a great deal more. Unlike with the previous book, this lady doesn't bother pretending. She's going to sit down and enjoy herself, and she doesn't care who knows it. Bubbling pots be damned.

Given how common smoking was, I'm surprised I couldn't find more cookbooks with smoking women on the cover. I uncovered a handful with pipe-smoking men manning barbecue grills, but that's not what I was looking for. If you come across photos of lady smokers at the stove, please share them with us on the Cookbook Love Facebook page, and we'll be happy to feature them.