We here at Bareass Cupid are inordinately fond of vintage cookbooks: fond enough to have a basement full of them. We relish the musty-attic smell of pages tan-splotched with forgotten meals, the lurid Ektachromes of organ meats creamed with peas and baffling combinations of ingredients entombed in Jell-O--and all of it cheerfully proffered by immaculately coiffed housewives in pumps and pearls!
"Hey," I said to my intrepid Sous-Chef, late of an evening, "wouldn't it be cool to cook an entire year's worth of dishes from just one funky old cookbook?"
"You mean like Julie Powell's My Year of Cooking Dangerously where she cooked all of Julia Child's recipes and not only Mastered the Art of French Cooking but Learned to Live Her Life With Gusto?"
"Oh." I said, cursing (not for the first time) the really, amazingly well-informed-ness of Sous-Chef. Also, her ability to speak in capital letters. "Um, yeah."
Never before having let "it's been done" dissuade me from courses of action both ill-advised and futile, I decided to proceed. And you, dear reader, shall reap the weirdness: the cookbook is Betty Crocker's New Picture Cook Book, 1961 edition.
Why that cookbook? I love the Kitchens of Tomorrow photos in the introduction. I love the cheery line drawings throughout. I love the advice to "comb hair, apply makeup and a dash of cologne" before cooking. I love the enthusiastic variations on the chiffon cake, "the first new cake in a hundred years!" Is it Atomic? Very Atomic! And I'm gonna cook the bejeezus out of it. Bomb Appetit!
The rules: one dish a day, six days a week. Sous-Chef chooses, I cook it, and the Cupid family taste tests it.
Posted by Nukegirl at January 28, 2008 11:47 AM