Over the past few weekends we have been clearing out all the old, unused ‘stuff’ that has accumulated here over the past 12 years. We started with bedroom closets, moved to the dining room storage area, then to our office/study, and then on to the kitchen area. I have been looking at my kitchen floor-to-ceiling bookcase full of cookbooks, and recalling the many that I have been given over the years that I haven’t really used.
Possibly one-half of an entire shelf contains cookbooks put out by various organizations, containing obviously unedited recipes submitted by their members for inclusion in their group cookbook. Three of them were from different churches, one from a snooty southern Junior League, one by Mennonites suggesting ways to cook using less of the world’s limited resources, one from a nursing home, and one about cooking from the Roman Empire. I would guess these are sold as fundraisers – mostly back to the people who submitted the recipes in the first place. They get to see their own recipe and name in print. It’s like when organizations send offers to your high school seniors offering to include their name in the latest volume of a Who’s Who of the (insert here: Smartest, Most Athletic, Hottest, Cutest, Funniest, etc). The catch is that you have to pay $100.00 to be included in the book, THEN you have to buy a copy of the book, besides! Buying your own way into vanity print is expensive.
I decided to finally look through some of these cookbooks to see if I could glean any useful, homemade recipes from any of them. What I found often had me rolling around and laughing uncontrollably as I read some of them to spouse, Paul, while asking him if I should cook some of them for our dinner sometime. I will list some of the more interesting recipes I found in these books and you can decide if you think you’d like to try any of them.
The first recipe is from a 1985 church cookbook from my Mom’s church. She gave it to me for a Christmas present that year. This particular recipe is for Liver Tacos. I did not know there was such a thing. The person who submitted it has a very Germanic name, and who would know more about an authentic taco than a German?
Liver Tacos
2 pounds of liver
2 chili peppers, cut into strips
1/2 tsp garlic powder
salt & pepper to taste
2 Tbs lemon juice
2 Tbs. fresh parsley, chopped
8 toasted tortillas (6-inch size)
Cut liver into long strips. Coat with garlic powder, salt and pepper. Brown liver strips in smoking hot oil over moderate heat. Toss with chili peppers, vegetable oil, lemon juice, and parsley. Divide evenly in the tortillas. Makes 4 servings.
By my calculations, that is 2 tacos for each serving containing a full 1/2 pound of liver per person. Gulp. I bet every dog in the neighborhood will be panting outside your kitchen door when you cook up these tacos – guaranteed!
The other interesting recipe in this particular cookbook was for something called Bible Bars. I found it listed in the Sandwich, Beverage, and Miscellaneous section.
Bible Bars
1/2 cup Leviticus 3:9
1 cup Jeremiah 6:30
1 Isaiah 10:14
2 cups Exodus 29:2
1 tsp. Exodus 13.7
1 tsp. Chronicles 9:9
1 tsp. Kings 10:10
1 tsp. Exodus 13.3
1/2 tsp. Leviticus 2:13
1 cup Numbers 17:8
1 cup Samuel 30:12
Amos 4:8
Combine first 3 ingredients. Add the next 7 ingredients. Cook 1 cup of Samuel in the Amos. Follow directions in Jeremiah 7:18. Bake at 350 for 20 minutes.
I couldn’t tell you what this is because I don’t have the time to look up all these Bible verses to figure out the ingredients. But, I don’t think it is a sandwich or a beverage.
I saw this next one in the same church cookbook.
John’s Favorite Omelet
4 eggs
1/3 cup mayonnaise
1 cup onions, chopped
1 cup mushrooms, chopped
6 strips thick bacon
1 cup cheddar cheese
Saute bacon strips, onions and mushrooms together until softened. Beat together eggs, mayonnaise, and cheddar cheese. Add to sauteed ingredients and scramble together until eggs are done. Serves 1-2 people. John must have had arteries made out of stainless steel!
I saw this statement in the front of one of the other church cookbooks. “Its not the size, its condition, its outward appearance, or its brand that makes a church refrigerator a true church refrigerator. Like people, a refrigerator shows it true self when one looks inside.” I suppose this is true about any refrigerator.
I found these next few recipes in a book from a Retirement (Nursing) Home cookbook outside of Minneapolis, Minnesota. Many of the home’s residents contributed some of their favorite recipes (as best they could remember them). I can forgive them a lot, as no one had access to any of their family cookbooks in the nursing home, so they were submitting them purely from memory.
Pumpkin Cheese Ball
8 ozs. cream cheese
1 can pumpkin
1 can crushed pineapple
2 cups cheddar cheese, shredded
1 pkg dried chipped beef, finely chopped (this is NOT a typo!)
1 Tbs. onion, chopped
celery leaves
Beat all ingredients except celery leaves together in a bowl and shape into a pumpkin. Put celery leaves on top for a stem. Serve with crackers. The special note said that no one would believe there was pumpkin in this cheese ball! Let me know if that is true.
This next one MUST be a mistake.
Pepsi Chicken
1 stick margarine
1 cup Pepsi
1 20 oz. bottle catsup
1 chicken, cut up
salt and pepper to taste
Melt margarine in electric skillet. Place chicken pieces in the skillet and pour the Pepsi and the catsup over the chicken. Cover and simmer for 2 hours. (especially if you are cooking an old rooster) Serves 4.
Really???? There is no way I could have ever thought up this recipe.
This next one is listed as a Main Dish.
Egyptian Noodle Bake
2 pkgs. thin egg noodles, crumbled
2 Tbs. butter
1 Tbs. corn oil
2 cups hot water
1 cup short grain rice
1 tsp salt
Brown noodles in butter and corn oil. Add salt and hot water. Bring to a boil. Add rice. Stir then cover tightly and simmer on low until done.
You will not find this in an Atkin’s or South Beach cookbook so write it down next time you want a main dish of pure carbs. I am also unsure what about this recipe qualifies it as Egyptian. Maybe it is because with all those noodles and rice and only 2 cups of water, it must be as dry as a tomb in Khartoum. Maybe that’s why it is called Egyptian.
I found this recipe in the Mennonite cookbook.
Campfire Pocket Stew
Prepare a large bed of coals in the bottom of your campfire.
For each person to be served, wash and thinly slice:
1 potato
1 carrot
1 onion
1/4 green pepper
Add:
several 1/2-inch chunks of some kind of cheese
salt and pepper
Wrap the above ingredients in 2 large cabbage leaves then aluminum foil, shiny side inside. Cook the foil packets on the coals for 15 minutes on each side.
I haven’t tried this but I can’t imagine these pockets of ingredients would do anything other than burn to a crisp. I once tried cooking baked potatoes in the coals of a campfire and when I unwrapped the foil, the potatoes had turned into hard, blackened lava rocks. There must be some missing instructions for cooking food wrapped in foil in campfire coals. I think next year I should go with my friend, Lori, to the Becoming an Outdoor Woman weekend camp and sign up for the campfire cooking seminar. Oh, never mind. I should probably just stick to cooking in my house on a real stove at my age.
There is also a 2-page, fine-print list of instructions in the Mennonite book for making my own cheese. This might work next time I can set aside 2 full days to get the cheese started, then 5 months of turning it daily on a cool shelf waiting for it to be ready to use. This cookbook will definitely go into the yard sale pile.
The southern Junior league cookbook has actually been quite useful over the years. It is called A Cook’s Tour of Athens (as in Georgia) and it was given to me by my then new mother-in-law in 1964. I have cooked and served several recipes I found in it for many, many years. Thanks, Caroline, for contributing to our family’s food enjoyment for the past 49 years. I will definitely put this book in the ‘keep’ pile.
This last cookbook is really a souvenir I bought at the gift shop at ruins of Pompeii in Italy. After spending the entire day climbing in and amongst the ruins of this ancient, unburied city, I was eager to take home this book to try some recipes from it. I wanted to see what the ancient Romans dined on centuries ago.
I had a hard time selling some of these to my family. Many of the ingredients are not even available in the modern world. These are listed along with substitute spices, etc. that are still around. For instance, the Romans cooked with a lot of a substance called ‘liquamen’ which was really just fermented liquid fish juice. The closest things we have to liquamen today are the Asian fish sauces. The Romans must have really liked this flavor as it was in most every recipe in my book in some form.
Another lost ingredient was a plant called ‘silphium’ which grew in ancient Libya. It was a wild plant that grew on the fringes of the North African desert but is now extinct. The legend is that the last precious specimen of this plant was given as a gift to the Emperor Nero. It disappeared from the face of the earth like a lot of things Nero had a hand in. Modern people substitute a similar plant, asafetida, which grows in Pakistan and Afghanistan. It has a very strong, bitter flavor, and is used only in tiny pinches.
I found a Roman recipe that said it was very popular at dinner parties. See what you think. It has an elegant name.
Patina Cotidiana
Cow brains
Liquamen (substitute with Asian fish sauce)
onion
carrot
fresh ground pepper
cumin
garlic
Marsala wine
milk
eggs
Sadly, there are no amounts of anything listed. It is an actual recipe that was found in a cookbook called De re Coquinaria IV.ii.1, by the famous Roman chef, Apicius. He did have directions listed, though.
Soak brains in cold water for 1 hour. Boil them in salted water along with the onion and carrot. Simmer for 20 minutes. Put brains back in cold water and then skin and trim them. Force them through a sieve and add all other ingredients except the milk and eggs, blending well. Beat eggs lightly with milk and add brain mixture. Pour into an oiled mold of some kind and set this in a pan of hot water in a wood-fired oven and bake for 1 hour until the mixture is quite firm. Turn out onto a plate and sprinkle with pepper and serve.
Some of the desserts listed in this book sounded quite acceptable – almost like custards and rice puddings. Their only shortcoming was the generous addition of black pepper sprinkled liberally over them just before serving. Apicius warns against omitting the pepper, as he says it adds a lot of extra flavor to the dish.
Anyway, it is fun to look through these books and I will definitely keep some of them. The one from Pompeii is special to me since it is filled with memories of our Italian trip. Who knows? Someday I may have a Roman dinner party and invite some of our foodie friends over and challenge their palettes with something truly ancient and unique.
It could be fun?
carpyharpy 