A package in the mail

I received a large exciting package yesterday. A fellow member of paperbackswap had picked up a huge lot of cook booklets through Freecycle and had offered them to someone in exchange for some credits. I took her up on it and was completely surprised by the number of booklets. I know there are at least one hundred.There were so many I couldn't get them all in the photo. Most of them are fairly new but there where two 1926 Crisco oil books and several from 1948. There were quite a few special Xmas issue magazines which I happen to collect. It is going to take me a long time to go through them, something I will really enjoy doing.
This recipe is from one of them, a 1968 Pillsbury publication- Pillsbury's Bake-Off Breads Cook Book.
Merry Mince Brown Bread
2 cups cornmeal
1-1/2 cups Pillsbury's Best All Purpose Flour
2 teaspoons soda
1 teaspoon salt
2 cups milk
1 cup prepared mincemeat
3/4 cup dark molasses
Preheat oven to 350 degrees. In large mixing bowl, combine all ingredients; mix well. Divide batter into 4 well-greased 20 oz. cans or well-greased 2-quart ring mold, filling 2/3 full. Cover tightly with aluminum foil. Bake at 350 degrees for 60 to 65 minutes until top springs back when touched lightly. Cool 10 minutes. Remove from cans. Cool completely.

I used to enjoy canned brown bread with a baked bean dinner. The last few years I have been unable to find it in any local grocery stores and have thought about making it. I also have a jar of mincemeat in the cupboard. Mincemeat is usually quite expensive so when I found a jar on deep markdown I bought it. I think this recipe will come quite close to the brown bread with raisins that I used to enjoy so I am going to definitely try it. I just need to get four cans of pineapple and use them up so I will have the cans to bake in. :)

Easter Leftovers? Wilted Spinach-Ham Toss

Here is a recipe that uses two common Easter dinner leftovers, ham and hard cooked eggs. It is from a classic 1979 Better Homes and Gardens book, Pork, Sausage & Ham Cookbook.

Wilted Spinach-Ham Toss
1/2 pound fresh spinach
Whole black pepper
1 or 2 slices bacon
1 tablespoon white wine vinegar
2 teaspoons lemon juice
1/2 teaspoons sugar
1/4 teaspoon salt
1-1/2 cups fully cooked ham cut into thin strips
1 cup sliced mushrooms
1/4 cup sliced green onion
2 hard-cooked eggs, chopped

Wash spinach and pat dry on paper toweling. Tear spinach into bite-size pieces (total about 6 cups) and place in a mixing bowl. Grind a generous amount of pepper over the spinach. Set aside.
Cut uncooked bacon into small pieces. In large skillet cook bacon till crisp. Stir in vinegar, lemon juice, sugar, and salt. Gradually add ham, mushrooms, and green onion to the skillet mixture; stir constantly. Remove from heat; add spinach. Using two spoons or forks, toss the spinach mixture to coat evenly with ham mixture. Turn spinach mixture into serving dish. Sprinkle with chopped, hard-cooked eggs, serve immediately. Makes 4 servings.

A Delectable Comestible

Today I scored several cookbooks from the free box outside the library. Delectable Comestibles by Ester Zane ended up in the box because all the comb binding had broken off. A sad end to a 1964 fundraising book. The interesting thing about it is that it was complied by one person and all the recipes are from her. It is fairly good sized too, 180 pages. Usually fundraising books are committee affairs. It was a fundraiser for the University Students' Cooperative Association of the University of California at Berkeley.
As soon as I saw this recipe in it I knew I had to post it!

Spinach A La Rochelle

2 packages (10-oz. each) frozen chopped spinach
4 tablespoons butter, margarine or bacon drippings
1/2 teaspoon seasoned salt
1/8 teaspoon white pepper
Milk or light cream or undiluted canned milk
1 clove garlic
1/4 cup grated onion
2 tablespoon cracker meal or flour
1 (10-oz.) can mushroom soup
2 hard-cooked eggs, sieved (optional)
Cook spinach in boiling salted water according to directions. Put a clove of garlic in the boiling water before adding the spinach. When spinach is done, remove the garlic and drain the spinach. Reserve the cooking liquid. In a large skillet or Dutch oven melt the butter, margarine or bacon drippings. Add the grated onion and cracker meal. Simmer a couple of minutes. Then add the well-drained spinach and can of undiluted cream of mushroom soup. Blend well and add one-quarter cup spinach liquid and enough light cream or undiluted canned milk to make spinach the consistency you like. It should be soft and creamy but not runny. Add seasonings and taste to see if it needs more salt. Serve topped with the sieved hard-cooked eggs. Enough for 6-8.

Pot Roast, Yum!

I had a piece of bottom round roast that I had bought on markdown in the freezer and It was time to use it or lose it. I don't make a pot roast very often but when I do I just bake it with the vegetables and some broth and then make gravy out of the juice. Yesterday I decided to try a recipe that called for 1 cup of red wine and a can of diced tomatoes. It was so good. You could not tell that it had wine in it, the flavors just mingled so well. I was kind of afraid that the potatoes would turn purple from the wine but they didn't. You could probably cook it that way in a crock pot also. I don't have very good luck getting chunks of meat tender in a crock pot though so I just bake pot roasts or corn beef in the oven for about three hours. I would recommend trying the wine and tomatoes if you don't usually cook a pot roast that way. Pot roast is my husband's favorite so he was very happy with his dinner last night. I was at work so I had to wait until today to have it for lunch, yum.

Paella, Portuguese Style- McCall's Great American

A reader contacted me to see if I had the Paella recipe from the McCall's Great American Recipe Card Collection. I found this one from the Saturday Night Parties section. It calls for 1/2 teaspoon saffron, so it definitely doesn't qualify as a frugal recipe! I clearly remember my Mom making Paella for a dinner party when I was about 10 years old. It was quite a production, taking what seemed like forever to finish.

Paella, Portuguese Style

2 (2-lb.) broiler-fryers, each cut in 8 pieces 1 lb Italian sausages, halved
1/2 cup olive or salad oil 2 medium-size fresh tomatoes
1 lb. lean pork, cut in 1-inch cubes peeled and chopped
2 cups chopped onion 1 bay leaf
2 cloves garlic, crushed 3 cans (103/4-oz. size) condensed
3/4 teaspoon pepper chicken broth
1 teaspoon dried oregano 1 1/2 lb. large shrimp, shelled
2 teaspoons salt and deveined
2 cups raw long-grain white rice 1 pkg. (10 oz.) frozen peas,
1/2 teaspoon saffron thawed
1/2 jar (4-oz.) pimientos
2 lemons, each cut in 8 wedges

1. Wipe chicken with damp paper towels. In hot oil in large skillet, brown chicken, about 5 pieces at a time, until golden. Remove as it browns.
2. Add pork cubes to skillet; brown well on all sides. Remove.
3. To drippings in skillet, add onion, garlic, pepper, and oregano; saute, stirring 5 minutes, until onion, is golden. Add salt, rice, and saffron; cook, stirring- about 10 minutes.
4 Meanwhile, in another skillet, brown sausages, turning on all sides- about 10 minutes. Drain and discard fat. Place chicken, sausages, and pork in roasting pan. Heat oven to 375 degrees.
5. Add tomatoes, bay leaf, and chicken broth to rice mixture, and bring to boiling. Add shrimp; spoon evenly over chicken and sausage in pan. Bake, tightly covered with foil, 1 hour.
6. If mixture seems dry, add 1/2 cup water. Sprinkle peas over top, without stirring. Bake, covered, 20 minutes longer.
7. To serve; Turn Paella into heated, round serving platter or paella pan. Garnish with pimiento and lemon. Serves 10.

Top-Of-The-Stove-Casserole

We have been trying to do some massive decluttering because it looks like we will be watching Emma when my daughter goes back to work. What a horrendous task. I can just kick myself for ever having bought so many books. It seems that we just have millions of them. Boxes and boxes everywhere. All types, cookbooks, fiction, science, self help you name it we have it. It hurts to have to donate things that you paid good money for. I am thinking about having a massive book sale and just selling hardcovers for 1.00 and paperbacks for 50 cents. My husbands eBay business just doesn't sell them fast enough.
Anyway when digging down to a box that hadn't been opened in a long time I found a Southern Living book: Quick & Easy Cookbook- Menus, Recipes & Tips. The book is from 1979 and while flipping through it I realized that it is a perfect example of how tastes have changed. Almost all the recipes would be considered grossly under seasoned by today's standards. When spices and seasonings where listed they only called for maybe 1/2 teaspoon. If made as listed I can imagine a huge outcry that everything was too bland. Here is an example:

Top-Of-The-Stove Casserole
1 pound ground beef
1 small onion, chopped
1 (16 oz.) can tomatoes
1/2 cup uncooked regular rice
1/2 cup water
1 tablespoon sugar (? I don't know about this, to cut the acid of the tomatoes maybe)
1 (16 oz.) can green peas
Salt and pepper to taste
Brown meat and onion in a large skillet; drain. Add tomatoes, rice, water, and sugar. Cover and cook over low heat about 25 minutes or until rice is tender. Add peas and season. Heat slowly until hot. Yield 6 servings.

As unappealing as this sounds I am sure there are plenty of harried women who make a variation of this when they need a super quick dinner. However I am sure they add liberal amounts of Mexican or Italian seasonings to make it better suite today's palates. They probably top it with some shredded cheese too. It seems like every current casserole recipe I see calls for a cheese topping.

Applesauce Snack Cake TNT

Well I got my computer back. But I am quite sad :( that all my favorites are gone and so is my blog reader. I don't know how I am going to find all the blogs I read again. It is going to take a long time. I had a huge list of bookmarked favorites too, last time something went wrong they were saved but no such luck this time. All my old e-mail is gone too and foolishly I had kept lots of old mail for references to passwords etc. I will have to change the way I use my computer. I was lucky though, my husband lost over 150 of his photos. Now if I can just get some more ink for my printer I will be back in business.
I seem to have leftover applesauce fairly often so I usually make muffins with it. The other day I had a larger amount so I decided to make a cake. The recipe I have made before only uses 1/2 cup so I found one that uses more. I adapted it a little and it turned out to be a very good snack cake. I have been enjoying a piece with my dinner at work each night.

Applesauce Cake
2 cups flour
1 cup sugar
2 teaspoons baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
1-1/2 teaspoons spice, such as cinnamon, allspice, nutmeg etc. I use a can I have called cake spice that has all of these
1/4 cup oil
1-1/4 cups applesauce
1 egg, lightly beaten
1/2 cups raisins ( I didn't use any)
Mix together the flour, sugar, baking soda, salt and spice. Add the wet ingredients and mix well. Pour into a greased and floured 9 inch baking pan. Bake at 350 degrees until pick comes out clean about 35 minutes.