I like to make Christmas special with fancy punch and appetizers. To that end, when I was planning this year’s menu, I turned to my 1967 Good Housekeeping Complete Christmas Cookbook. As always, I found plenty of ideas. Not anything I would actually make, of course. Or even eat, for that matter.
But it’s fun to imagine a punch where the garnish is made from garbage. At least I hope that’s the garnish and not just the ingredients trying to escape.
But the best recipe in the book has to be the Molded – Pate Cheese Balls. (Number 1 in the picture below.)
It is, I am not making this up, made up of gelatin, cream cheese, beef consomme, and liver pate. Nothing says “Merry Christmas” like liver Jello! That’s my motto. And the orange garnish around the bottom of the plate totally brings the presentation home!
Number 2 in the picture (official name: Nibblers Crisp) has a long list of ingredients and instructions, which can be summarized thusly: take a bunch of raw vegetables, put them in a Jello mold, add water until full, and then freeze. It’s basically a big giant ball of vegetable ice. I imagine guests standing at the buffet line with ranch dressing and an ice pick, “Dang it! All I want is a frozen cucumber, but they keep breaking everytime I try to pull them off the ice! CHRISTMAS IS RUINED!”
ahh yes, it was your food commentary that made me fall in love with you a year ago. all those aspic dishes. and this delights as well. frozen vegetables. what on earth were they thinking????
Good lord. I think you should make one of the dishes just for fun.
maybe this is what you fix if you don’t want to be asked to fix anything next year! Then you won’t have to worry about being the perfect hostess, just the perfect guest! I have lots of vintage cookbooks, and I often wonder about some of the things they made back then. Ew.
Mmmmmmmmmmmm. Liver jello and vegetable ice. That’s really funny! Where do you even buy liver pate? Do they take out the bile or is that something you have to do?
kym
Ewwwww.
I just don’t get it- why did they think this would be good to eat?! It is so weird what combinations of foods people think of. I’m not sure if present day is really all that much better: I just recently got an email featuring some somewhat gross ideas.
Letty, was it a Martha Stewart recipe? haha.
Karen My Mom, I have no idea about bile. That’s disgusting.