Dating My Dinners

I've never been one to follow the crowd, no matter what the crowd was doing.  I think the last time I really had to have something my friends had was back in grade school when the textured plastic Liz Claiborne purses and wallets were all the fashion.  Before that, it was a super-duper fancy crayon set that came in a folding case, with special grippy-slots for each crayon.  It was really cool!  Too bad the crayons were crappy.  But really, I've never been a trend follower.

I see this more and more in my cooking style.  I plan dinner menus carefully for my husband and me.  I plan things that look good to me, and that I think my husband will enjoy.  We both grew up with meat-and-potatoes kind of dinners.  And that's what I cook, though admittedly, I plan far more cereal grain-and-legume meals than I do traditional meat-and-potatoes dinners.  Some of that is for budgetary purposes, but the bigger part is that my husband is, in his terms, a "recovering carnivore."  So try to I plan at least three vegetarian meals a week.  And I try very hard not to rely too heavily on beans & rice or breakfast-for-dinner as those meals.  Lately, I've been having to limit the pasta & cheese meals as well.

When I called my mother this morning to get a recipe (for what we have always called Yogurt Fluff, but is actually called Strawberry Yogurt Salad), we began discussing how we eat, and what we cook.  Before I moved to Australia, my mother scoured used-book websites and got me copies of the very same cookbooks she used as I was growing up.  By and large, I don't have to hope someone posted my favorite recipes to a website, I have them in my collection of cookbooks.  Many of them were Better Homes & Gardens cookbooks, both the "Red Plaid" basic book, actually titled Better Homes & Gardens New Cook Book, but also a collection of hardcover "collections" books like Jiffy Cooking, Good Food on a Budget, Cooking with Cheese, and the Casserole Cookbook.  I also have a few cookbooks I got on my own -- Southern Grace, Recipes and Remembrances from the W, Breaking Bread with Father Dominic, the King Arthur Flour Baking Book, and various vegetarian main-dish cookbooks.  My collection is dated, but I don't care.  There is not a Martha Stewart "bible" or a modern celebre-chef's tome in the bunch.  And I like it that way.

My cookbooks reflect how I want to eat, what I think of as dinner, and how I learned to cook.  Yes, they are dated recipes, but they still work.  And in fact, many work better here in Australia because I can find the basic, simple ingredients used far easier than I can find the things called for in more modern cookbooks.  The simple recipes are actually better for me here than newer things with newer, faddish ingredients.

The other thing about my cookbook library is that because of it, I know certain dishes are actually much older than current food-bloggers like to think they are.  I know that Self-Saucing Chocolate Cake is actually a recipe from World War II, designed to stretch precious rationed products like sugar and eggs.  (It was originally called either Chocolate Pudding Cake or Chocolate Magic Cake -- I've seen the recipe in war-time cookbooks under both names.)  The cake has no eggs, and when baked, actually separates into two layers, a cake layer on top, and a sauce, or pudding layer on the bottom.  It's clever!  The pudding layer eliminates the need for sugar-rich frosting, and being an egg-free cake meant the precious eggs could be saved for things that really needed them.  Ina Garten's Chicken Stew with Biscuits is actually a recipe from a Victory Garden cookbook.  I know because my mother has a copy of that cookbook.  And we were making that casserole (originally called Chicken in the Garden) long before Ina made it popular.

I may be dated with my meals, but little by little, the things I know from my childhood, and still make for dinners, are being re-discovered and proclaimed as "new."  No, I'm not dated, I'm a girl before my time.  :)

Menu for the week of February 17, 2014
Monday:  Pretzel Dogs (pretzels:  How to Be a Breadhead), Corn on the Cob
Tuesday:  Spanakopita Pinwheels (filling:  Favorite Brand-Name Vegetarian 3-Books-in-1; Biscuit:  Better Homes & Gardens New Cook Book, 1965 Special Gold Edition), Marinated Vegetables
Wednesday:  Lime-Basted Chicken (Better Homes & Gardens Menu Cookbook), Spanish Rice (rice cooker instruction book)
Thursday:  Baked Potato Soup (Better Homes & Gardens New Cook Book, 2007 Celebrating the Promise edition), Oatmeal Crisps (Better Homes & Gardens New Cook Book, 1965 Special Gold Edition)
Friday:  Apple Monte Cristos (Favorite Brand-Name Vegetarian 3-Books-in-1), Strawberry Yogurt Fluff (Better Homes & Gardens Jiffy Cooking)
Saturday:  Swedish Meatballs (Better Homes & Gardens New Cook Book, 2007 Celebrating the Promise edition), Noodles, Peas
Sunday:  Polenta au Gratin (Favorite Brand-Name Vegetarian 3-Books-in-1), Baked Tortilla Chips, Homemade Salsa

Hmm, this week is mainly from "newer" cookbooks in my collection, but still relatively simple, basic meals, and definitely meals that would have been found on my table growing up.