Survival Sunday 239: A Very Vintage Library

Looking through my collections

So, I have a couple of wooden chests in my room. One of them is my old pine toybox, which has my GBA and some old art in it (as well as a couple of childhood novels). The other is my Hope Chest, a very thoughtful gift from my parents on my 18th birthday where I keep most of my home-making supplies until I have my own place. This is where I've been storing some cookbooks from the 1980s - including a very, very weird box of recipe cards that used to stink of musty cigarette smoke.

It's also, unfortunately for me, where I keep my huge bubblebutt TV and VCR (and my partner's N64).

It's so, so heavy. This picture was taken after I'd moved the TV off of the chest and put it back up.

So I moved some stuff around, put some things deeper in storage, and brought out my box of cards, a stack of McCall's Cookery magazines and a binder called McCall's Cooking School, and I'm going to share these with you today.

Here's my box of recipes!

As we all know, the 1980s were all about making food look as unappealing as possible. It's one of the reasons I love looking at old cookbooks and recipes. Not only are you going to get a devastating dose of gelatin-based foods, you're also going to be slapped in the face by weird photography where they black out the background and cast heavy shadows over your food.

It's very unsettling...

I got the nasty musty odor out of my cards by storing a baggie of coffee grounds in the box inside my Hope Chest (which is lined with cedar). That eventually ditched the stink. Then I was just left with the weird recipes.

Some seem very nice, at least.

The magazines... I'm not entirely sure where they came from? All I know is that, in person, their covers are haunting.

The meat substance in the lower right hand corner, for instance, is upsettingly shiny,
and I have no clue what that white stuff is supposed to be.

And just to prove it's not from some ancient, bygone era, it's just from 1983.

The binder is in amazing shape, especially when you take into account the fact that it's older than I am. I don't think anyone ever used it.

And it's a very heavy-duty binder!

See? This one's just from 1986. Which was 33 years ago.
Oof.

Some of these things actually look pretty good, even if I don't like pecans.

Other things...
Not so much.

And the writing can be downright weird at times.

The "some seem really good, some seem terrible" trend continues in the box of cards, too.

Probably tasty, but doesn't look very appetizing for an appetizer...

And yes, for some reason, they have a tiny section on the proper preparation of game, like venison and pigeon...

Which brings me to my reason for bringing any of this up and nearly herniating my spine rather than just asking for help like a normal person.

I want to cook from these books.

Really, really want to.

And I want to make some of the weird stuff, too.

So I was thinking that maybe I could start making up a spreadsheet of what's available, then I could maybe roll for it? I feel like mastering these foods (obviously, I'd have to cut out the game dishes unless someone wanted to provide me with fresh game meat, which I'd, obviously, be very intimidated by...) would make me a better chef.

Also, I kind of want to make weird stuff and watch people eat it.

Because I'm a weirdo.

So let me know in the comments if you're interested in seeing what I can do with some fairly dated and occasionally borderline-racist cookbooks and bizarre recipe cards from yesteryear?

Because I'm down for that.

That'll do it for me, guys.

Go Enjoy Something!!!
FC


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PS - I'm sorry about that video in the link there guys, but I couldn't not share that after I sat through it. What even... what?