A Vintage Christmas Menu.

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!”

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Just when you thought it was safe …

I figured that all the scary food had been left behind in the ’60′s and ’70′s.  I was wrong.  Boy, was I ever wrong.  The problem is that I misunderestimated Martha Stewart.  She had a deal where you could order a free trial of her magazines.  And I’ll read anything for free.  I just finished my perusal of her May 2010 issue.

You should know that I am, by nature, a meat eater.  I love meat.  Red meat, white meat, the other white meat.  I love it all.  I even go fishing quite often – I enjoy fishing.  But even I don’t think I could do this.

What kind of person leaves the head on their food when they cook it?!  What kind of person serves meat with the eyeballs still intact?!  The fish is obviously completely horrified by the pork loin.  But, alas, the fish is tied up and can’t escape the nightmare of the pork loin.  Who would force their food to be so uncomfortable?!  Who does that?

And, if that picture wasn’t bad enough, Martha also gave another helpful picture back with the recipe.  Yes, she tied the poor fish up with rope.  Perhaps with those scary eyes staring back at her, she thought the fish would try to make an escape?

So, you see, retro is in.  Sadly for us, that means Retro Food is back in style.  That’s just great.

Hopefully the Retro Food craze will mean we now have more Jello recipes.  I really do love me some Jello.

 

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