Actually, I'm still on hiatus because I suck at multi-tasking.

Hey guys. This is Jen, popping in to look guilty and remorseful.

I know there are lots of other people who can maintain blogs and such while going to school or working in busy careers or raising families (or all of the above), but I am not one of those people. I went back to school about a year and a half ago to finish my undergraduate degree, and I'm still plugging away at it. I have a daughter who is growing all the time, and I try to spend as much of my non-school time as I can with her because she's such a cool little person and I love her.

While I've been getting better at keeping up with deadlines in my school life, it has made it harder for me to manage any additional (even self-imposed) deadlines in my blogging life. I've slowly dropped all of my fun projects so that I can focus on school.

I really, really hope that I can come back to this blog someday. I have had so much fun with it, and I feel really guilty each time I think about my abandoned projects. Anyway, I appreciate the great feedback my readers have given me. Please keep me in your bookmarks (if you want to and it's not too much trouble).

Maple Syrup Recipes for Canada Day

This post originally appeared in Persephone Magazine on July 1, 2011. Cross-posted with permission. 

Happy Canada Day, Readers! I'm a Canadian lady, so on this most Canadian of days I'm whipping out ALL THE PATRIOTISM! (And maple syrup.)

My recipes today come from Pierre & Janet Burton's Canadian Food Guide. (Non-Canadians: Pierre Burton was one of the most popular Canadian historians of all time. OF ALL TIME! If you don't believe me, just look at his Wikipedia page. You can't throw a microfiche reader in the Canadian history section of your library without hitting one of his books. And check out the majestic sideburns he had...)

See what I mean? Majestic!

Hiatus: Over

Dear Readers... In the immortal words of America in their 1975 hit song Sister Golden Hair:

I've been one poor correspondent

And I've been too, too hard to find

But it doesn't mean you ain't been on my mind

I know I've been inexcusably terrible about keeping up to date with this blog. But let me try to excuse myself anyway...

In the time since my last blog update I've broken my arm, had surgery on said arm, recovered from surgery, packed up all the things, moved to another city, and unpacked most of the things (still working on that one)... all the while continuing to write my regular food column for Persephone Magazine (shameless plug!) and attempting to have some semblance of a social life.

Anyway, I'm sorry. I'll endeavour to be a more faithful blogging-person, or whatever.  

Oh, and yesterday was exactly one year since I posted my first recipe! My Blog-iversary! Huzzah!

So, to recap:

• So sorry.
• Been busy.
• Will re-post my Persephone content more regularly.
• Plus bonus content.

Is it a deal? Do you love me again/still?

Zesty Egg Spread

This post was originally published on Valentine's Day in Persephone Magazine. Reprinted with permission.

This image is presented in Soap Opera Vision for the romance impaired.

Ah, Valentine's Day... a day when winged babies armed with bows and arrows are flying around in the sky, maiming people at will. Romance is in the air! But what to eat? There are many foods traditionally associated with pitching woo, but sometimes you want to try something new. Something zesty...

Carrot Carousel

This post was originally published in Persephone Magazine. Reprinted with permission.

Look upon my gelatin and tremble!

Anyone can prepare a delicious meal, but it takes a special sort of foolhardiness to cook and consume (and document!) food that you suspect will be hideous before you even start. Sometimes I find recipes (especially in my older cookbooks) that look so ill-advised that my curiosity gets the better of me and I need to try them. You know… for science!

Good News, Everyone!

I've been offered a chance to do a weekly column for Persephone Magazine (daily blog for bookish and clever women)!  I've been a reader/ commenter there since they launched, so I'm absolutely thrilled to be on their writing team.  Also, the weekly deadlines and more structured posting schedule will keep me writing steadily and counteract my natural tendency to procrastinate.  

So, I've got that going for me.  

I'll be posting a link to my article later, but if you are someone from Persephone who wandered over to this blog, I welcome you to look around.  Please feel free to leave comments or send me an email.  I love getting feedback!  If you're looking for a primer on what this blog is about, you can read my introduction here.

I have permission to crosspost my work, so whatever I post on Persephone should appear on my site later in the week.  Besides re-posts of my work for Persephone, I plan to put more bonus content (like vintage food ads and cookbook artwork) up on this site.  

Now, will one and all please rise and join me in a happy dance?

Bacon Roll Sunburst

"Here comes the sun (little darling)..."

Well, now.  What do we have here?  Could it be a recipe featuring that most magical of ingredients... BACON?

Metapost: This is why I can't have nice things!

You Guys! 
 
I've been a total slacker and I'm really, really, really sorry!  I've got (seriously!) 3 recipe posts lined up in my drafts folder that I just haven't been motivated to get my ass in gear and finish.  I never wanted to be one of those bloggers that only posts to say how horrible they feel for not posting more often, but... yeah.  

I'm a bit of a chronic procrastinator with a strong perfectionist streak.  I'll have a great idea, and I'll start something, but then I'll think, "Hmmm... this is good, but I could make it BETTER!"  But then I'll be a little bit unsure of how to actually make it better, and I'll delay my editing/ improvements, hoping for inspiration.  And the longer I drag it out, the better I feel the end product needs to be in order to justify the delay, and the draft folder ends up making me feel anxious and guilty every time I see it, like a wilting and neglected houseplant.

Anyhow, I've done all my Christmas shopping, work is lighter this week, and I'm all out of excuses.  I want to try to post all three of my recipes at some point this week. And then next week, hopefully, I will be an Actual Blogging Dynamo and post a few humorous pictures from my Collection O' Cookbooks.  That's the plan.

For those of you that have been patient enough to keep checking in, in spite of my various neuroses, thank you.  I'm trying to improve.

PS-  The very observant among you may notice I've been tinkering with some of the fonts and layouts. (You know, instead of actually completing a post.)  What do you think? 

Tuna Treat

"Treat"

Hello again, my internets! It has been about a month since the last post and I missed you beyond measure. Let's never be apart again! In all seriousness, I had a bunch of other (boring) stuff going on this month, but I should be back to my semi-regular weekly posting schedule now.

Now, I'm sure you're wondering about the delightful creation in the picture above, aren't you? The cookbook calls this recipe Tuna Treat, but I keep feeling like I should put the word treat in quotation marks... like this: Tuna "Treat". That's better.

Blue Cheese - Cottage Cheese Molds

For my third entry in my Season of Jellied Things theme, I present to you Blue Cheese - Cottage Cheese Molds!  Now, I love blue cheese.  And when I say I love blue cheese, I mean it in a so-why-don't-you-marry-blue-cheese sort of way.  Except I'm already married to a human guy, and I haven't quite figured out how a cheese/lady/guy style of polyandry would work.   

Now where was I?  Oh yes... I love blue cheese, but I realize that many of you folks out there get violently ill at the very thought of it.  My response to this is usually an emphatic, "Haters gonna hate," but since the recipes in this blog are meant to gross people out a bit, I think I'll use your misguided blue cheese hatred to my advantage.

Pacific Lime Mold

So, what makes this "Pacific" exactly?  The green colour?

Welcome to the second entry in my Season of Jellied Things series.  The Pacific Lime Mold is another recipe from Betty Crocker's New Good and Easy Cook Book (published 1962).  There was no picture  of the finished product in the cookbook, so I was a little perplexed about what made this lime mold "Pacific", per se.  Does the lime Jell-O take on the colour of the ocean when combined with the mayonnaise and other ingredients?  Or is it more of a [pineapple = tropical = Pacific] sort of equation? Oooo... venturing into unknown territory!  Here there be dragons!

Tangy Tomato Aspic

Doesn't that look irresistible?  No, wait... What's the opposite of that?

I chose a tomato aspic recipe for the first instalment of my Season of Jellied Things.  

As soon as I started this blog back in July, several people told me I should do a tomato aspic, so this must be a fairly well known weird food.  I just think jellied foods are weird in general!  And as someone who grew up with a dog as a pet - a dog that ate canned dog food -  I am inherently suspicious of any food item that makes a shhhloooup noise when it releases from its upturned container.  (Dog owners know the sound I am referring to.)

But the picture in the Betty Crocker Good and Easy Cookbook was just too delightfully awful not to do it.  How could I resist?

Metapost: I Don't Think You're Ready For This Jelly...

Ahem.  I was thinking that for the autumnal season, I should have a theme.  I mean, an additional theme on top of the Vintage Recipe theme and the Bad Cooking theme.   And what says Fail Fall more than jelly-moulded foodstuffs?  Nothing does! (Ok... probably lots of things say Fall more than gelatinized foods, but I'm going to pretend they don't exist for now.)


There are so many jelly salads and aspics in my recipe books, it would make your head spin!  So, for the next few weeks I'm going to showcase a different jelly-moulded something every week until the end of fall or until I get distracted by something shiny... whichever comes first.  I hope you're just as horrified and delighted by the prospect as I am!


Watch for my first one tomorrow!

Fluffernutter Sandwich

Don't adjust your monitor settings...
I was experimenting with the "antique" filter in iPhoto.

Mini food post!!!  This is one of those foods that is more on the kitschy side of my Venn diagram than the disgusting side, but (as with most things on interweb, and in life) your mileage may vary.

Cookbook Art: The Health Value of Bee Hive Corn Syrup

So, I'd just like to start by apologising for not posting on the weekend... or on Monday... or Tuesday.  I was attending to family issues out of town on the weekend, still exhausted by Monday, then it was grocery shopping after work yesterday.  Not that you should care.  I just like to post a tidbit of awesome cookbook art when I haven't been on-the-ball enough to do a proper recipe like a good little blogger.

So, without further ado, this is the centerfold of the Budget Recipes For Every Day of the Year cooking guide from Bee Hive Brand Corn Syrup and the St. Lawrence Starch Co.  (There is no date on this pamphlet, but I'd estimate early 1960's).

Ok... let me tell you all the things I love about this image:

Savory Meat Loaf

Care for a slice of heart attack?

Uhgggh... there is just soooo much wrong with this dish, I hardly know where to start...  It is a solid brick of greasy meat with a surprising (and not in a good way) core of hard boiled eggs. I have so many questions... Why??? Why does this exist?  For the love of god, why are there hard-boiled eggs in the middle of this culinary monstrosity? What sort of sick joke was the Homemakers Research Institute pulling on humanity?  Were heart attacks not a cause for concern in the the 1960's?  When a person dropped dead with blocked arteries at 41, was that considered a full lifespan instead of a cautionary tale? 

Cover Art: Tasty Table Treats

This is the cover artwork of the Tasty Table Treats cookbook, published in 1947 by Southern Publishing Association:

"Darling, I baked you a pie!  It's made of concentrated nightmares!"

Oh god.  I am afraid of this woman.  She really creeps me out with that psychotic leer.  And the room looks all dark, like she's baking pies at night... in the dark... with her hair perfectly coiffed. Also, the background is at an off-kilter angle, which is cinematic code for waking up tied to a chair.  Your head hurts and the room is spinning.  Did you hit your head?  Were you drugged?  Why are you tied to this chair?  Why is there a wadded-up oven mitt stuffed in your mouth? The room is dark except for the glow of the oven light.  A strange woman enters the room, takes a pie out of the oven, and grins at you. 

We've all been there!  Amiright?  But who wants to relive that horror?  I mean, that was the frickin' worst meringue I ever ate!

Baked Mushroom Noodle Ring

Ok.  Do you see the picture from the cookbook?  You can see why I'd want to make this, right?  I mean, it's noodles glued together into a moulded ring and a pool of mushroom sauce in the center.  It's a bundt cake of noodles!

The Original

Unfortunately, mine did not turn out as nicely as the one in the cookbook...

Happy (late) Labour Day!

So yesterday was Labour Day (labour has a "u" in it when you're Canadian... cuz that's how we roll), and I didn't post all weekend because I was in Victoria visiting with my family and the husband's family.  It was a fun weekend, but the logistics of fitting in all the visits with all of our various family members was as much as I could manage.  Also I have strep throat, which is considerably less fun.


I know all of you are probably getting twitchy from missing your weekly fix of cookbook-related absurdity and sass.  Don't worry.  I won't leave you hanging!  Remember how I mentioned a cookbook called His Turn To Cook in last week's post?

So, check out that red-faced Ken doll guy who is clearly in the throes of some sort of intense meatgasm. I mean, we can clearly see where both of his girlfriend's hands are, so I guess he just really likes skewering meat. Welp... Rule 34, guys. 

Anyhow, if I'm feeling up to it, I may post a mid-week recipe. Thanks for being patient.

Saucy Fish Pie

Under the sea...

I thought this would be a really fun recipe.  There is a black and white picture of the Saucy Fish Pie in the cookbook, and it looked so cute with the piped potato outline and the little olive slice bubbles.  When you think about it, what we've got here is fish that's been cooked, flaked, suspended in a sauce, and then poured into the shape of a fish.  It's fish in disguise... as fish!  There's something endearing about that!