Wednesday, May 21st

Retro Recipe Party

It's almost summertime, and the living is easy. For me, an ideal afternoon is one spent idling around by the pool, book in one hand and drink in the other, with plates of little nibbles close at hand and the grill (or crab steamer) working overtime. In honor of the long weekend ahead - yippee! - and the current craze for all things retro, I thought I'd spend some time planning a fantasy party menu, using only the very weirdest recipes I have come across during my recent review of many fifties - and sixties - era cookbooks. You should be very, very scared.

The Appetizer Course

I found so many fabulous recipes for starters that it's almost impossible to choose, but let's start with an obvious winner: Frosted Sandwich Loaf. That's right, frosted sandwiches. Basically, you put a layer of Wonder bread (crusts off, please) in a loaf pan. Spread a layer of tuna salad on it. Now lay some more white bread on top, and spread that layer with egg salad. My recipe for Frosted Sandwich Loaf (The Better Homes and Gardens Cookbook, late 1950s) suggests that you add yellow food coloring to the mayonnaise for the egg salad before you mix it in for a "sun-golden hue". Repeat the white bread layer, and top with a generous coating of chopped liver, which BH&G recommends tinting red (!!!) for contrast. One final layer of white bread is pressed on top, and then the whole thing turned out of its pan, spread with a "frosting" of whipped cream cheese, dusted with paprika, and voila! Frosted Sandwich Loaf. Slice at will.

That'll work out nicely for my vegetarian friends. Wait till they see the main course...

The Main Event

This would be a little treat entitled "Pineapple Beans and Wieners". I don't know where this came from - it currently exists only in clipping form in a certain person's recipe box. You know who you are. Anyway, this involves opening several cans of different kinds of beans (a combination of pork and beans, ranch-style beans, and baked beans), and adding one full cup of brown sugar and a large can of crushed pineapple. Heat and stir. In the meantime, slice one pound of hot dogs into bite-size lengths. When the beans are merrily simmering, add the sliced wieners and heat until hot. Garnish with red maraschino cherries and serve with coleslaw. Note: this is recommended for parties, since it is easily doubled or quadrupled to feed an army of guests.

I admit, I used to happily chow down on franks and beans (when I was much much younger), but the addition of pineapple and sugar, not to mention those loud red cherries, makes me a bit leery. I guess that's one way to add another serving of fruit to your daily intake! On to dessert.

The Grand Finale

Actually, the dessert section is where the entire Junior League genre really shines. Usually the combined dessert chapters (Cakes, Cookies, Pies, Desserts, Candies) make up half or more of the cookbook. I would happily test ninety-five percent of the recipes within any given cookbook, including those Jello concoctions usually included in "Salads". And so my recommendation for a retro party dessert is one that I've actually eaten many times: the classic "Apple Pie in a Paper Bag" from the Houston Junior League Cookbook, originally published in 1968. I have no idea what baking the pie in the paper bag is supposed to accomplish, but I can tell you that this is a Thanksgiving standard in our family, and it is absolutely delicious - appley, juicy, buttery, and only slightly sweet. The recipe appears to the right of this column on your screen. Unlike the recipes that precede it, it withstands the test of time.

The point of this piece is not to mock mid-century American food habits. But it does amaze me how much our eating habits have changed in a short period of time. One of my friends recently threw an engagement cocktail party at which sushi was the featured hors d'oeuvre; the menu for my New Year's Eve party included everything from homemade potato chips with sea salt to sliced skirt steak with chimichurri sauce. A recent issue of Southern Living included not only recipes for barbecue and dump cakes, but for shrimp with lemongrass and rice noodles. We've become much more multi-cultural, and more interested in where our food comes from as well.

Looking out the window of my office, I can see a Thai restaurant, a Mexican place, a coffee bar where the beans are roasted on-premise every Tuesday, an Italian restaurant, a pan-Asian restaurant, and a Royal Farms store where they stock the Krispy Kremes every morning at 7. I'm trying to decide whether to have Cuban black bean soup or farfalle with tuna, fresh green peas, and some freshly-grated Parmesan for dinner. Yet again, I think I want to have an herb garden on my patio so that I can try my hand at fresh pesto and layer home-grown basil in my tomato sandwiches with fresh mozzarella. No cream of mushroom soup in sight...

Like I said, it's summertime, and the living is easy. Pass me a chunk of that frosted sandwich!