Food Friday: Food for the Sick from 1876

One of the great things about those 19th century cookbooks is that they had a little bit of everything. Yes, they had recipes for food but they also had household hints for cleaning, laundry, and medicinal recipes. These books served as an all-in-one household guide for women.

Since I am now sick with the same thing that has plagued by family for a month and many of my friends, I decided to check out some recipes geared towards feeding the sick.

I don't know about you but all I remember eating if I was sick as a child was chicken noodle soup. I think it's possible my mom served me milk toast one time but typically the food of choice was canned chicken noodle soup.

Earlier generations had all sorts of ideas about what would make you well. Some look similar to what we might suggest today. Take for example some recipe ideas found in the following cookbook.

This section starts off with oysters then continues on with the non-appetizing gruel recipes.

While other recipes utilized alcohol to help the sick person.

Let's see, oysters and wine  sounds like something that would either cure you or help you forget you were sick.

What was  served  to the sick people in your family?

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Food Friday: Valentine's Day 2014

Happy Valentine's Day!

From the collection of Gena Philibert-Ortega

Are you going out tonight or just making a cozy meal at home? Valentine's Day is one of those special food "occasions" that requires something different and often extraordinary.

In case you are staying home, here's some recipes courtesy of two editions (1925 and a later edition that has no date)  of The Metropolitan Cook Book (Metropolitan Life Insurance).

I have to admit that ever since I first saw the movie When Harry Met Sally I've wanted to have coconut cake with a chocolate sauce poured over it. If you have that hankering as well, here is a Chocolate Sauce from 1925.

If you believe in the power of oysters then you may want some ideas on how to prepare them.

Our ancestors ate oysters more frequently than most of us do. I've written about oysters on this blog and the GenealogyBank blog.

I would love to hear about your Valentine's Day food (or even that of past generations). Please leave a comment!

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Food Friday: Everyday I Write the (Cook) Book 1970s style

Last week I featured a  "homemade" version of a community cookbook. This week, I decided to feature another example.

This week's Food Friday recipe comes from Teacher's Pets from the staff at Berlyn Avenue School (1971-1972). There is no city indicated in the cookbook but it was purchased in Claremont, California and there is a Berlyn Avenue School in the nearby city of Ontario.

The cover of this book may have been made by the school children. It appears to be created from a paper grocery sack and then decorated with crayon and paint.

This is what the inside of the cover looks like.

As one would expect from this era the pages  have been duplicated using a mimeograph machine.

Today's recipe has two things I love, sauerkraut and chocolate, though I hadn't really considered putting them together.

Has anyone tried this cake before?

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Food Friday: Easy Squash Casserole

Today's unique community cookbook is courtesy of my friend Lee Eltzroth at Hunting and Gathering. (Thanks Lee!)

The Northfield Garden Club of Livingston. Favorite Squash Recipes from Garden Club Members is a thin volume with only 15 pages of recipes.  Today's Easy Squash Casserole sorta reminds me of Green Bean Casserole. Heck, maybe you can throw a can of soup on other vegetables, top it with fried onions or cheese and you have a new family holiday tradition.

Note that the recipe calls for the casserole to be baked for 3/4 hours.

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Food Friday: Luncheon

Who doesn't like a luncheon? Typically a community cookbook has individual recipes and sometimes a few menu plans. But in the case of the Maturango Museum Luncheons Cook Book (Ridgecrest, California 1981), it's all about the luncheon.

The first pages of the cookbook include a history of the luncheons that ran for two years in the early 1970s. Luncheons were a fundraising effort for a building fund for the museum. I would think that any fundraising from the subsequent cookbook was a success since my copy is the fifth printing done in 1981.

This cookbook doesn't include names with each recipe, but we do get some names in the acknowledgements that probably represent many of those who submitted recipes.

Each page or two is a different luncheon menu with the date included. For Food Friday I'm including the complete menu for May 19, 1975 which includes some of my favorite foods, Chicken Salad and Deviled Eggs.

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Food Friday: Chinese Egg Rolls from New Jersey

From the collection of Gena Philibert-Ortega

Today's Food Friday is from a community cookbook that has a similar look to another one I own from Vermont. From Ridgewood Kitchens sponsored by the Women's Guild of the West Side Presbyterian Church Ridgewood, New Jersey, 1945 has a metal coil binding and uses handwriting and drawings to illustrates recipes.  As I scanned the recipes contained in this cookbook, its age shows since some of the drawings are caricatures of various ethnic groups.

From the collection of Gena Philibert-Ortega

Interestingly, there is a very small notice on the title page that states "This Third Edition Is Produced in Full Compliance With The Governments Regulations For Conserving Paper And Other Essential Materials."

The beginning of the cookbook includes a drawing of the church and a six page history.

From the collection of Gena Philibert-Ortega

Today's recipe I am including because it not only has the woman's name (in this case her married name, Mrs. Walter A Dodds) but her city and state, she is from Laramie, Wyoming. Like many "Chinese" recipes of this time period, the end result is a little off. In this case it seems more like an omelet than an egg roll.

From the collection of Gena Philibert-Ortega

This cookbook has some great stuff in it including a recipe from Cuba and the ads. Oh the ads. Everything from "scientific facials" to the local cemetery. We will revisit this cookbook again.

Do you have any similar looking community cookbooks in your collection? I'm curious whether the drawings were clip art that the cookbook editors chose to go with each image. I haven't had time yet to compare the two I own.

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Food Friday: Working Mothers' Casserole from the LA County Fair

Ok, true confession time. Many years ago I won a few blue ribbons for some flavored vinegars I submitted to the Los Angeles County Fair. So you can imagine my excitement when I came upon today's cookbook at a library book sale. While this was prior to my fair winnings, I love the idea of a cookbook that includes all of the award winning recipes. Each recipes includes the  prize awarded, names, and cities.

Today's cookbook is the Los Angeles County Fair Award Winning Recipes 1988. Compiled by The Home Arts Department.

For today's recipe I chose one of the winners in the Working Mothers' Casserole category. This recipe includes an ingredient from my childhood, canned tamales.

In case you have a hankering to go to the Los Angeles County Fair to eat some fair food and gaze at prize winning entries, the fair runs for another 9 days. Check it out at their website.

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Food Friday: Death by Chocolate

It has been HOT and humid here in Southern California. So my general feeling is that it's better to make reservations during this time of extreme weather than to actually cook. But when I saw this recipe I thought I wouldn't mind someone making this for me.

Today's recipe comes from American Buffet. Favorite regional recipes from members of the General Federation of Women's Club. (1993). This cookbook is everything I love, regional recipes and historic women's clubs.

And then there's chocolate....

Thank goodness for Gladys O. Smith for showing us the true beauty of a community cookbook, chocolate recipes.

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Food Friday: Forest Home Women's Auxiliaries

I was very lucky to have found two great community cookbooks a few weeks ago at a yard sale. The first is today's Recipes From Our Home To Yours. Forest Home Women's Auxiliaries. While there is no date on the cookbook, it looks to have been published in the late 1990s.



A history of the Forest Home Women's Auxiliary can be found on the first page of the cookbook.

The following is one of the recipes from this cookbook. A few changes in ingredients and it would resemble a dish I've had called haystacks. (Basically tortilla chips, lettuce, tomatoes, cheese, onions, meat and beans, sorta like a tostada.)

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Food Friday: Cereal Coffee from 1914

One of the benefits of friends knowing your interest in community cookbooks is that they sometimes bring one to you. Such is the case for me last week while I was on the Gena and Jean Genealogy Journey speaking tour. At my presentation at the San Fernando Valley Genealogical Society my dear friend Donna Chellew gave me,  Our Favorite Recipes. South Fernando Valley Historical Society (Mission Hills, California, abt 1977).

I chose today's recipe because I liked the note that precedes it. "Recipe handwritten by guest at Mother's wedding shower, 1914"

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Food Friday: Ring of Plenty

Today's Food Friday comes from Evansville's (Minnesota) Favorite Recipes. Compiled by the Ladies Aid of the Presbyterian Church (n.d.).

Unlike recipes that include the names of actual ingredients, this recipe appears to refer to the ring mold that you cook the macaroni and cheese type dish in.

This cookbook, like other community cookbooks does feature other content as well such as advertisements.

You have to love a cookbook that advertises either a cemetery or a monument company. Don't see that much anymore.

It also provide some dieting menus for those who want to eat lighter including one for those who eat out a lot.

Has anyone ever made the Ring of Plenty?

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Food Friday: Olives

I love olives and figured some 1950s appetizer recipes were perfect for a  holiday weekend. I especially like the idea of bacon wrapped fried olives.

The following are from last week's cookbook Cooking in General.

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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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Food Friday: The Problems of Skinny Children Solved!

I love the title of today's cookbook, Food 'N Folklore. Really when you think about it, it's not just the food that's important in our family histories but also the stories about the food.

As I was looking through this cookbook, I came to a section on home remedies. In an era before increased access to physicians, women's abilities to heal their families was vital. Most women had recipes for different types of tonics and salves that could help their family with whatever ailed them.

One of the recipes for a home remedy in this book reminded me of a remedy my own maternal grandmother had.

You see, when I was a child we would go and visit my grandmother every year at her home in the mountains of Arizona. We would stay a week and enjoy the cooler weather, slower paced life, and family gatherings. One year, my grandmother decided that my brother had worms.

Yes, worms.

Not the kind of worm that has burrowed in your skin but like a worm that was inside his stomach causing him to be be too skinny, in her estimation.

I will preface the rest of this story by letting you know that I personally have never suffered such an ailment. So I was never in any danger of having to consume this remedy.

(c) 2013 Gena Philibert-Ortega

So my grandmother told my mother that she must feed my brother a dosage of salt. Yes, salt. Like take a spoonful of salt, or more,  to get rid of his "worms."


Now, my brother owes my mother big time because she refused to give him salt for his "worms." I on the other hand was begging my mother to listen and honor  her mother by feeding my younger brother salt. I was about middle school aged at this point and it sounded like a good way to torture my younger brother.

So imagine my surprise to see this cure for children's worms.

Makes taking a spoonful of salt seem not so bad.

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