While we’re on the subject of recipes and cookbooks, here’s something fun from the Museum’s collection:
It’s a marketing strategy cleverly disguised as a cookbook: each page of recipes or “eating outdoors” tips features a specific product, without which, of course, not only your meal but your whole picnic or camping trip will be a failure. Of course you must use “Karo” brand corn syrup – that’s the only one that will make your flapjacks “outdoor good!”
There is no date on this little cookbook, but it definitely has a late-1950s or early 1960s look to it. Especially the illustration on the page above! Here are a few of my favourite pages (though all 27 contain gems!).
The Hormel Meat page, featuring – you guessed it! – Spam! “The one and only SPAM” (to quote from the book) features in a variety of recipes. Don’t get me wrong, I enjoy the occasional bit of Spam in the right circumstances – but I really don’t think the “Spam-aroni” salad is quite the right circumstance. The recipe:
Combine 3 cups chilled cooked macaroni, 1 can Spam cubed, 1/2 pound American or Cheddar cheese cubed, 1 cup chopped celery, 2 tablespoons minced onion; toss together with dairy sour cream.
“Bisquick goes outdoors!” proclaims the headline on page 24. Yes, I am inclined to agree – I have enjoyed many a Bisquick pancake cooked on a Coleman stove. This page includes the suggestion of “Spam Cakes” – Bisquick pancake batter poured over fried slices of Spam and served with Karo syrup – and I confess I’m slightly less enthused about that idea (though we seem to have Spam theme going here).
There we go! You can’t possibly have a proper cookout or camping trip without your trusty Coleman stove (or, in my case, my Dad’s trusty Coleman stove, which has been serving up family camping meals since before I was born). “Now any cooking you do in the kitchen you can do just as well outdoors! Go farther, see more, do more on your vacation budget by cooking what and when you want on your Coleman camp stove!”
Yep, you can use it to fry up your Spam, but you can also use it to cook a “Fisherman’s Special” roast with vegetables: Season and wrap a 3 or 4 pound roast in 2 layers of aluminum foil. Place on trivet in Dutch oven, cover and cook on Coleman Stove at 1/2 flame for 45 min. Put in 2 ears of corn and 2 potatoes, each wrapped in aluminum foil, and simmer for 3 hrs over very low flame. A whole dinner made in one pot, while you fish!
“Emily Post says…An outdoor meal should be a pleasant, relaxing occasion both for your guests and yourself. Attractive, informal, socially correct Dixie Cups and Plates can help make your outdoor entertaining far more pleasantly relaxed and there fore in the best of taste.”
Well, paper plates and cups are becoming less and less “socially correct,” but the “A la Modes” recipe might be worth adapting for a reusable container: Bake Betty Crocker Chocolate Cake Mix in jelly roll pan. Cut circles of cake as large as bottom of Dixie Cold Drink Cups. Place cake in bottom of cup, top with ice cream, frost with Betty Crocker Chocolate Fudge Frosting Mix. Cover lightly and refreeze. Bring from freezer about 10 min. before serving.