Food Friday: Cooking with the General Petroleum Girls Club

Today's recipes are from the Cooking in General cookbook from the General Petroleum Girls Club (Los Angeles, 1951).

What is  the General Petroleum Girls Club? To be honest, I have no idea. It appears to have a connection to a gas company. My guess is Mobil Gas since the Pegasus icon is on the title page.

Their explanation about  the proceeds from the cookbook make it sound as if  the group had something to do with a company.

Tamale Pie sounds good right about now and this cookbook provides a few pages of recipes. The first says "Very Good" in the title line and notes that it has been served to club members and they all want the recipe. The last one includes canned tamales, something I grew up with, and raisins. The recipe says to remove the husks on the tamales but in the canned tamales that I have had, that would actually be a plastic wrapper. I have ate  a similar casserole at a bowling league potluck once but it was a mixture of  canned tamales and canned chili.

Were you or someone you know a member of the General Petroleum Girls Club? Please leave a comment below. I would love to hear more about this group.

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Food Friday: Chocolate Drops and Newspaper Recipe Contests

I'm envious of those who are lucky enough to have inherited their grandmother's or even great-grandmother's handwritten recipe cards. I'm not so lucky but I have had the pleasant surprise of finding these treasure in cookbooks that I own or that have been given to me.

The New Delineator Recipes cookbook was published by the Butterick Publishing Company in 1929 and unlike most of my Food Friday entries, it is not a community cookbook. Chock full of recipes, this cookbook not only provides you with ideas for what to cook, it even includes food facts like how to use recipes and testing fat for frying. Pre-planned menus help to take the guess work out of meal planning. And like any good vintage cookbook there are some great recipes like Pigeon Casserole.

My parents found this cookbook at a yard sale and bought it for me. Inside was about a handful of recipes written on scraps of papers and index cards. While some include the first name of presumably the woman whose recipe it was, most do not include any kind of identification.

I do know that this cookbook was owned by what looks like a  Mrs. A. L. Shermoley. I love her signature with the flowing ends.

One of the recipes included is a newspaper clipping for the column Recipe of the Week. Of course like any good newspaper clipping (like an obituary) this is closely cropped and reveals nothing about the date this article was published. However, flipping the article over reveals a drive-in movie schedule including such classics as Caine Mutiny with Humphrey Bogart, 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea with Kirk Douglas, and Her Twelve Men with Greer Garson. All movies  from the year 1954.

Today's recipe is Chocolate Drops submitted to Recipe of the Week by Mrs. G. Joel of Pasadena.

Today's Food Friday is a good example of how women's names can be found in the newspaper but not always where you think they should be .

For more on newspaper recipe contests, see my article on the GenealogyBank blog entitled "Newspaper Recipe Contests: Was Your Ancestor a Contest Winner?"

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