Kitschmas 2021: Pickle-Cheese Pineapple!

 Pickle-Cheese Pineapple

Favorite Recipes of America Vol. III: Salads, pg. 335 2 8-oz. pkg. cream cheese, softened 1/2 c. grated process Swiss cheese 1/2 c. grated process Cheddar cheese 1/2 c. peanut butter 1/2 c. sweet pickle relish Sweet gherkins Combine cheeses, peanut butter and pickle relish; blend. Chill thoroughly. Shape into oval. Garnish with sweet gherkin slices and strips to resemble a pineapple. Serve as a spread for rye bread.

Kitschmas 2021: Jellied Holiday Nog!

 

Jellied Holiday Nog

“The New Joys of Jell-O” (1973)

2 packages (3 oz. each) Lemon Jell-O

2 packages (3-1/4 oz. each) Jell-O vanilla pudding and pie filling

2 tbsp sugar

5 cups water

2 envelopes Dream Whip Whipped Topping Mix

1 tsp rum extract

1 tsp vanilla

½ tsp nutmeg

Combine gelatin, pudding mix, and sugar in a large saucepan. Add water. Cook and stir over medium heat until mixture comes to a full boil. Remove from heat. Chill until thickened.

Prepare whipped topping mix as directed on package. Thoroughly blend prepared whipped topping, rum extract, vanilla, and nutmeg into the thickened pudding mixture. Pour into a large serving bowl or punchbowl. Chill until firm – at least 4 hours or overnight. Garnish with cherries and mint leaves. Makes about 8 cups or 16 servings.

Kitschmas 2021: Gravy Soup!

 

Gravy Soup:

5 Tbsp butter

5 Tbsp flour

7 cups beef stock

1 cup buttered crouton

¼ cup grated Swiss cheese

Melt butter in a deep saucepan. Add flour and stir well. Cook over low heat until deep brown, stirring constantly. Gradually add stock, stirring constantly. Bring to a boil. Cover and simmer over medium heat for 1 1/2 hours, stirring occasionally. Top with croutons and grated cheese.

Kitschmas 2021: Chicken-Cranberry Party Mold!

 

Chicken-Cranberry Party Salad

Anne Marshall, “Cooking with Condensed Soups” (1952)

Chicken Layer:

2 envelopes unflavored gelatin

¼ cup cold water

2 cans condensed cream of chicken soup

¼ cup mayonnaise

1 tbsp minced parsley

Soften gelatin in water. Heat ¼ can of soup; add gelatin and dissolve. Stir dissolved gelatin into remaining soup; cool. Fold in mayonnaise and parsley. Pour salad into a mold which has been rinsed with cold water; chill until firm.

Cranberry layer:

1 can jellied cranberry sauce

1 envelope unflavored gelatin

¼ cup cold water

Crush cranberry sauce with a fork. Soften gelatin in cold water; set in a pan of boiling water and stir until gelatin is dissolved. Mix gelatin and cranberry sauce; pour on top of firm chicken layer; continue to chill until cranberry layer is firm. Unmold; serve on greens. Serves 6.

Kitschmas 2021: Mother's Liver Pate! (Rhymes with Eight)

Mother's Liver Pate

Some chicken livers
a lot of green onions
a lot of garlic
A little half and half
Some dry sherry

Combine chicken livers, green onions, and garlic. Cook on defrost setting in microwave until livers are done. In blender, add liver mixture, half and half, and sherry. Blend until smooth.

Kitschmas 2021: Tropical Tuna Salad!

 

Based on Banana Salmon Salad from "500 Delicious Salad Recipes", Culinary Arts Institute, 1951

3 ripe bananas, diced

1/2 cup diced canned pineapple (about 2 slices)

1 1/2 cups canned salmon

1/4 cup diced celery

1/2 teaspoon salt

1 tablespoon chopped pickle

Mayonnaise to moisten

Mix bananas and pineapple together. Add flaked salmon. Fold in remaining ingredients. Garnish with crisp lettuce or other greens and lemon slices. Serves 8.

Kitschmas 2021: Egg Balls!

 

Egg Balls

Mrs. Charles Waring – Charleston Receipts

(Video above doubles the recipe)

4 eggs

1/8 pound butter

Salt and red pepper

Worcestershire sauce

Celery seed

Bread crumbs

Cream hard boiled eggs with butter. Season to taste with red pepper, Worcestershire sauce and celery seed. Make into balls, put in ice box to set, then roll in rich bread crumbs that have been browned in oven. Equal parts of mashed fish and a few pinches of chopped parsley may be added to creamed eggs and rolled in bread crumbs. Makes 16-18 balls.

Kitschmas 2021: Beet Salad Mold!

"It is very pretty in a ring with cottage cheese in the center." - Mrs. John C. Pogue

Beet Salad Mold

Mrs. John C. Pogue, The Cincinnati Cook Book

1 cup chopped beets

¾ cup chopped celery

1 tbsp (or less) grated onion

1 package lemon gelatin

1 tbsp horseradish

3 tbsp vinegar

¾ cup beet juice

Salt to taste

1 cup boiling water

Dissolve gelatin in boiling water. Add other ingredients. Mold as desired. It is very pretty in a ring with cottage cheese in the center. Serves 6.

Kitschmas 2021: Apple-Onion Soup!

 

Apple-Onion Soup

Mrs. George Elkins, The Cincinnati Cook Book

1 large apple

1 large onion

1 cup heavy cream (hot)

Croutons

5 beef bouillon cubes or 2 Alex Moffat

Cans beef consommé

Curry powder to taste (about ½ tsp)

Grate apple and onion, then boil apple and onion until soft (about 30 minutes). Strain (to make a purée).  Add remaining ingredients and simmer 10 minutes. Serve with croutons.

Kitschmas 2021: Avocado Strawberry Ring!

 

"It's a delight to serve a light green and vivid red delicacy." - 

The Joys of Jell-O

1 package Jell-O Lemon Gelatin 

1/2 tsp. salt

1 cup boiling water

3/4 cup cold water

1 tbsp. lemon juice

3 tbsp. mayonnaise

1 avocado, pared and mashed

1 pint fresh strawberries (or use 2 packages [10 oz. each] Birds Eye Strawberry Halves, thawed and drained)

Dissolve Jell-O gelatin and salt in boiling water. Add cold water and lemon juice. Chill until slightly thickened. Stir in mayonnaise and avocado, blending well. Pour into a 3- or 4-cup ring mold or individual ring molds. Chill until firm. Unmold and fill center of ring with berries. Makes about 2 1/2 cups gelatin, or 5 servings.

Kitschmas 2021: Gourmet Olive Balls!

 

Gourmet Olive Balls! Recipe by Mrs. Robert Stein from The Cincinnati Cookbook (1976)

8 1/2 ounce can black pitted olives

1 8-oz. package cream cheese

1/2 cup halved pecan meats

1/2 cup finely chopped pecans

2 tbsp sour cream

1 tbsp mayonnaise

Soften Cheese, blend in sour cream and mayonnaise. Drain olives well. Stuff each olive with half a pecan. Pinch off a small piece of cheese and wrap around olive. Roll in finely chopped nut meats. Chill til ready to serve.

Kitschmas 2021: Anchovy Eggs!

Anchovy Eggs from "Swiss Cooking" by Anne Mason, c. 1964.

6 hard-boiled eggs

1 lb. tomatoes, peeled

salt and pepper to taste

1 small tin anchovy fillets

lettuce leaves

mayonnaise

Cut eggs in halves lengthwise and scoop out yolks, pressing through sieve into a basin. Cut 1 large tomato in halves and scoop out seeds, then chop the flesh very small. Chop three anchovy fillets and add with tomato to the egg yolks. Blend well together, adding a little of the anchovy oil is too stiff, and season to taste. Fill egg whites with mixture and arrange on lettuce leaves. Garnish with tomato slices and remaining anchovy fillets. Serve mayonnaise separately.

Ann Landers' Save Your Marriage Meat Pie! (Pieathalon 8!)

JUST when you thought life couldn't get any more exciting, along comes the highlight of the late Summer/early Autumn social calendar, Pieathalon! Pieathalon EIGHT if you can believe it. I am, as always, honored to be counted among the participants, especially considering my last post here was (*checks notes) Pieathalon SEVEN.  Thanks to my fellow food bloggers and especially Yinzerella at Dinner is Served 1972 for prompting me to get off my a** and make something for public consumption again.

Because apparently being stuck in the house for a year and a half with literally nothing else to do wasn't enough to get me motivated.

But enough about me, let's make a pie!

The excellent Jenny from Silver Screen Suppers sent me a recipe for "Ann Landers' Save Your Marriage Meat Pie." (Don't panic, my marriage doesn't need saving at the moment. THAT I KNOW OF.)

Being of a certain age, I remember a time when Ann Landers (née Esther Pauline "Eppie" Lederer) and her twin sister, Abigail Van Buren (née Pauline Esther "PoPo" Phillips), in their competing advice columns, dictated the social mores of middle America with their witty, no-nonsense advice. In my early formative years, I had the advantage of living in a home where we received TWO daily newspapers, and so I was doubly-indoctrinated into polite society. (Full disclosure: The morning paper, The Columbus Citizen-Journal, carried Dear Abby and also had a far superior comics' section, so if forced to choose sides I would have to lean towards PoPo).

Ann Landers (left) and Abigail Van Buren

The recipe seemed a bit intimidating at first glance. I'm not much of a baker (I usually recruit Dr. Husband to make my crusts for these things) and the idea of trying to manipulate a crust into a bundt pan made me perspire. (In fairness, my only bundt pan is a pliable silicone thing that makes for easy cleanup but doesn't tend to hold the shape of whatever's in it very well.)

So, my crack Googling skills led me to the idea of little mini-muffin pies.

With my new goal in mind, I made the following modifications:

• I halved the recipe across the board (maybe a mistake – read on)

• I used ground turkey in place of pork – I live in the middle of nowhere and only ever see ground pork as part of a "meatloaf mix" and YES, I could have gone to the butcher and asked for some special order, but everyone is masked and also I don't like talking to people

• I did not use chervil - see above about the middle of nowhere and also I don't know what chervil is and YES, I could have Googled it, but I had already Googled that day and I am awfully lazy

The dough came together very easily and was not nearly as sticky as I was led to believe. 

BUT. 

The dough didn't seem to rise. AT ALL. Maybe something got mis-aligned in my halving of the amounts? I know the yeast activated before I mixed it in, and the dough retained a delicious buttery, yeasty aroma throughout, so ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Likewise, the meat mixture was simple enough, my only regret being that I didn't have the Hamilton-Beach meat grinder that my mother received for Christmas, 1963. (Photo evidence below. If you can manage to keep your eyes from lingering on the fabulousness of the Christmas tree and the television.) 

As far as I remember, my mother used the meat grinder EXCLUSIVELY to grind up leftover ham for ham salad, and it sat in her kitchen well into my adulthood, and though she's no longer with us I'm pretty sure it still exists, intact and operational, somewhere in my own home or one of my siblings'.

Un-risen dough now rested, I shaped it into a muffin tin with varying degrees of success. Not only did it not noticeably rise, but it retained a very springy texture. By the time I had finished shaping one slot, the dough in the previously-completed slot had pulled back from the edges and begun to pull into itself. It was a race against time.

Once filled, I tried to get fancy with the remaining dough, again with varying degrees of success, as evidenced by the shot glass in the background.

I baked at 400 for just shy of 20 minutes, maybe that was even a little too long as they probably got a little too brown on the bottom.

So how did they taste? 

SPOILER ALERT my marriage is safe. FOR NOW

Check out my fellow Pieathletes' creations below, and stay tuned because KITSCHMAS IS COMING

Rum and Butterscotch Pie at Vintage Recipe Cards

Surprise Fudge Pie at Silver Screen Suppers

Tarte a l'Orange at Recipes for Rebels

Chocolate-Crusted Coffee Pie at Grannie Pantries

Osgood Pie at A Book of Cookrye

Tarte au Petite Suisse at The Nostalgic Cook

Ozark Pie at Retro Food for Modern Times 

Dinner is Served 1972

ALSO: Did you know Dr. Husband and I have a podcast? And Dr. Husband even has another one all his own?