Night Night Little Piggies

I started a new writing project this week, and I'm tired tired tired.

So before this little piggy trots off to bed, here are a few creepy vintage pork images found around the interwebs for your twisted viewing pleasure:

Last but not what in the weirdness is this?

Kitchen Snark Coloring book

Do you love cookbooks? Need a distraction from the cares of the world? The Kitchen Snark Coloring Book is here to help! You'll find 50 pages filled with humor, wisdom, memories, and a touch of snark, all waiting for your creative flair. Color the stress away with this timeless book of vintage fun.

Amazon LINK -  https://amzn.to/37JNptD

to create something fun connected to one of my other loves: vintage cookbooks!

Homemade biscuit and homemade chocolate gravy with butter

Melissa Underwood Hodge Gravy:: 1-cup sugar -1-tablespoons butter -1-1/2 cup milk - 2 tablespoons flour -3 -tablespoons unsweetened cocoa powder mix together and boil and take a whisper until Thick .. Biscuit::; 2-cups self -rising flour -1-1/3 cup shortening -3/4 cup milk --- shortening into flour add milk and form dough into balls. Place dough onto lightly floured and knead 4-5 times . Roll out to 1/2 inch thick. Cut with biscuit cutter or cup .place on ungreased bake sheet .bake at 425 deg for 15 minutes

Canning as art?

Canning as art form! And I can't manage to make a batch of refrigerator pickles.

Heart Shaped Fish Croquettes

There's no time like RIGHT NOW to start thinking about VD goodies! Especially all you wives out there.

Apparently Pet Milk agreed that the fastest way to a man's heart was through his stomach, and so they published this booklet in the 1940s.

It was FREE if you can believe such a thing, and apparently contained recipes like this one:

"Love it? Of course he will! It's a man's idea of really good eating."

Check back soon for more Valentines Day meal ideas!

French Onion Casserole

Ronda Meadows

This dish is similar to French Onion Soup, without the soup. 

It is a quick and easy side.

Cheesy Onion Bake
2-3 Tablespoons butter
3 large sweet onions, sliced thin
2 cups shredded Swiss cheese
1 can cream of chicken soup
2/3 cup milk
1 teaspoon soy sauce
8 or so slices of French bread
Melt butter in a pan over medium heat, and add onions. Saute onions until translucent. In a shallow 2 quart casserole pan, layer onions, 2/3 of cheese and pepper to taste.
In a sauce pan, heat soup, milk, and soy sauce, stirring to blend. Pour soup mixture in a casserole and stir gently to mix. Top with bread slices. Bake at 350 degrees, uncovered, for 15 minutes. After 15 minutes, top of bread should be nice and toasted.
Push bread slices under the sauce and top with the remaining cheese. Place casserole back in oven and finish baking for 15 more minutes.

Bitter indeed

I've spent the spring in our new home watching mysterious plants pop up here and there around the small yard. Several types grew quickly and were getting large, so I researched them and discovered they were varieties of dock. You've undoubtedly heard of burdock, or encountered it in the hair of a beloved pet or young child. Dock tends to be aggressively invasive, so I realized it was time for them to go before seeds arrived and they took over.

I've had a longstanding interest in foraging and have nibbled bits of greenery and berries across the decades. All those experiments went well, and I thought small samples were harmless.

(Queue the foreboding music.)

I'd read a decent amount about dock, and knew they were used in lots of traditional medicines. Both leaves and roots were reportedly edible. So when I dug up a root like a fat white carrot, I thought why not give it a try? 

So I ate some. Not much. Probably a piece about the size of a quarter.

It did not go well.

I spent the night in the emergency room. 0/10, would not recommend. 

I've done more googling since coming home, and am still convinced what I ate was dock. It's not clear why I had such a bad reaction. 

As a way to vent my spleen about the experience, I decided to see what sort of vintage cookbooks or recipes might exist for the stuff.

And what, pray tell, did I find? 

I'm trying to imagine the mind of the artist who designed ads for this company, but each time I enter in I get scared and have to slam the door shut on it. But I'm pretty sure they're a close relation to Sweeney Todd.

Here's another of the company's idea of a good time:

Wha wha wha what???

Animals were featured in several ads. Like this inexplicable bit of imagery:

(Is she bleaching her children?)

Sometimes the ads focused on human children rather than puppies.

CHILDREN.

Like this poor wain, whose face seems to be saying, "Please mother, might I have something to eat?"

Then there's this child, who looks downright giddy in contrast. Perhaps they've already enjoyed a few sips of the elixir.

The back of the card is equally charming, plus packed with useful intel:

And then there's this. For which I shall offer no comments.

I'm still recovering from my bad decision making, and am tired. So I'll leave you with one final image:

Startling in its vividness. Shocking in it's timelessness. Ugly on multiple levels, though different from the ugliness of my emergency room experience.

The moral of the story my friends, is to be careful what you eat in your backyard, and who you hire to do your advertising. Blood purity just isn't worth it.