I have one comment about those deviled eggs... "Oh hell NO!" It looks like a sick dog took a dump in half an egg. How did the advertisers ever think that this looks appetizing? And the recipe is even worse. Mix with hard boiled egg yolks Durkee's Oleomargarine and Durkee's dressing and stuff in halved eggs. Yuck! Let's get something straight here. I see so many so called Deviled Egg recipes that involve the yolks mixed with salt, pepper and mayo or miracle whip. Those are Stuffed Eggs. Deviled Eggs involve many more spices mixed in so that they have a spicy flavor. As a matter of point, I have a secret deviled egg recipe that has been passed down from my grandmother to my mother and finally to me. It has somewhere around 11 different ingredients and spices. Those are deviled eggs and any time I make them they always disappear at parties. Just to tantalize you I will leave you with a picture of them...
Today we ripped off a blogger named Silly
Dreamer from the blog, My Semi Charmed Kind of Life. We will do it in two parts. Silly does not
say where it is from. But, it was probably stolen there as well.
So, of course, that will be as far as we go. Tracing back our theft's
thieves might take some time. Take the time to comment on other player's posts. It's a great way to make new friends! Link back to us at Sunday Stealing!
21.
A better name for me would be:Alexandrus Septimius Severus Tamas
22.
I have a hard time understanding:The younger generation 23.
If I ever go back to school, I’d:be rich 24.
You know I like you if: I'm drooling 25.
If I ever won an award, the first person I’d thank would be:Myself! Because I actually did the work to get it! 26. If I could bring back a TV show for a reunion it would be:I hate TV 27.
Take my advice, never:Shave a Badger while drunk 28.
My ideal breakfast is:Homefries, Eggs over easy, bacon and a mimosa
29.
A song I love, but do not own is: Derp question 30.
If you visit my hometown, I'd suggest:Going elsewhere, tourists get the tar beat out of them by feral packs of ghetto negroes there. 31. If I could meet a couple of my blog buddies, I'd include:Marvelous Memories and her friend 32.
Why won’t people:grow up 33.
If you spend the night at my house:You're sleeping on the couch 34.
I’d stop everything for:cocktail time, 4pm sharp
35.
The world could do without:Fast Food 36. The last time I got drunk I:I don't remember 37.
My favorite blonde is:Marylin Monroe 38.
Paper clips are more useful than:staples?
39.
If I do anything well, it’s:annoy people with my intellect 40.
And by the way: I can't turn on bold with this question... hmmm
I haven't had the chance to write about vintage shaving yet. Most things I own and use are vintage so of course, I also shave with vintage razors blades. In this day and age it can be quite daunting to find the razor that best fits your personality and face. Since we are all different there is no one do-all razor that will be the best for you. However I have found that in this case, vintage is often better. You can get you 3, 4, or 5 bladed razors promising the closest shave ever and if that works for you then that's great. However most men find these razors lacking when trying to live up to the wild claims they throw out in order to get us to purchase their products. Such razors are great for the first 2 shaves and then what happens? They start pulling or irritating and ofttimes the blades are spaced so closely together that a heavy growth of beard defeats the best blades modern science can throw at us.
My first experience with Bistec is when I was in the Philippines and my mother in law made Bistek Tagalog. Although the Filipinos lay claim to it, Bistec is really an Spanish dish. Essentially just sirloin steak pounded flat and marinaded then pan fried until browned it's the ultimate tasty treat. This recipe for Bistec started when someone stuck a menu for a new Cuban restaurant in my front door. It's wildly expensive so I have no real intentions to go try it out however it fanned the flames of interest in Cuban Cuisine. It's Florida after all and we have such a Cuban community here but I never really entertained a Cuban dinner before now. The real recipe here is for the marinade. Cubans call it Mojito Sauce but the rest of Caribbean calls is Mojo. The real difference is the absence of hot peppers to be found in the rest of the Caribbean Mojo recipes. Cuban cuisine was very popular from the late 30's up until the Cuban Revolution although I don't know how many Americans outside of the Cuban community in Florida would have been familiar with it.
I spent quite a bit of time with my grandparents when I was growing up so this is a meal I became quite familiar with for dinner. My grandfather sometimes called it scrambled egg mess but it is straight from the lean days of the Depression. Usually it contained no meat, however you could include some ham or spam if you had some on hand. Otherwise it was made of 3 ingredients that were rather cheap back then and even cheap now, Onions, Potatoes and Eggs. Ofttimes it was made of leftover baked potatoes from dinner the night before but it was a great way to feed a family for a little bit of money.
I had to laugh when I first saw this bit of wartime propaganda from 1918. Much of the food that was being harvested in that year was being shipped to Europe for the war effort (World War I). So there were a number of drives to get people to eat fresh fruits and veggies instead of canned. This one has to take the cake. "Eat plenty of green corn..." I'm assuming in this case they're referring to young corn. If you eat plenty of that you better take a good book into the bathroom because you're going to be there awhile. The ad is actually making a point of cooking and how it makes the corn palatable. True, but cooking tends to do that with alot of things but I digress.
I went looking some time ago for a really traditional fajita recipe. Actually the only real recipe you need is for the marinade as everything else is just straightforward. After sifting through many many marinade recipes I finally came across one that was supposed to have originated in Northern Sonora in the 1920's. It blends in at least 2 ingredients that definitely mark it as Norteño cuisine, Red Wine Vinegar and Worcestershire Sauce. You can use any cut of steak you wish, but skirt steak is the most traditional although it may be out of the price range of some people (including myself). I chose to use Organic Sirloin and it came out excellently so don't be too worried about using a cut other than skirt steak. You will need to grill the steak to get the optimal flavor.
The first time I saw this ad I thought to myself,"self, what is a winy coffee?" Is this a coffee that sounds like Jerry Lewis? Perhaps it complains too much about being ground up and thrown into hot water? Perhaps it sounds like Al Sharpton whenever he's outraged over something. Well you sort of get an answer is you read the ad itself. Apparently "winy" coffees were the acidic coffee beans imported from Arabia. Well that sort of explains it, winy in this sense must have been an older way of saying tannic, since this ad is from 1928. Apparently Maxwell House was made of a mix of over 100 different coffees from tropical countries. Quite the mix actually. Also the artwork is quite interesting to spin a story off of. Mrs. Filibuster has not been feeling well lately. Her investments have taken quite the loss ever since the real estate market fell through in Florida. "Never you mind Mrs. Filibuster," her account says, "We'll make up the loss in the stock market. It's going up like a rocket and we just can't lose..."
Buttermilk has 2 flavors, true buttermilk, sometimes called sweet buttermilk is the water extracted from cream during the process of making butter. Cultured buttermilk has been treated like yogurt and allowed to ferment. All recipes that I have encountered, even the old ones, refer to cultured buttermilk which is well because sweet buttermilk is impossible to find unless you make your own butter. The secret of good buttermilk fried chicken is the soak in the buttermilk itself. The acidity helps to tenderize the chicken making it oh so juicy and delicious. The chicken can be pan fried or deep fried but there's no getting around the fact that you need hot oil to cook it. If you have an aversion to fat I can't really give you a low fat recipe for buttermilk chicken as it will not truly be Southern style any longer. My advice is to live your life. Eating fried foods once is awhile isn't going to kill you, eating them every day on the the other hand is not healthy.
I don't know what the guy in this Coke ad from 1907 is looking at, perhaps checking if anyone is around before licking out the glass. Or maybe he's ashamed of being a coke addict. Who knows? I love how Coca~Cola will "Quench your thirst and put vim and go into your tired brain ad body". There's a word that has fallen out of the vernacular... vim. I remember my grandmother sometimes using vim & vigor but she had to be the last one I remember doing so. Even myself, Captain Vintage Vernacular, never uses vim... although that can change in the near future.
I got to thinking about what I was going to post today and after looking over the recipes I realized it's been awhile since I did a dessert one. I made this cake back in February for Dad's Birthday but it's been sitting in my folder ever since because I was rather chuffed when I posted the picture to the Blog's Facebook Page as everyone was more interested in the red coffee pot than the cake. I think that's why it took me so long to get around to posting this recipe. The recipe for the cake comes from a 1933 advertisement for Baker's Chocolate. You should know my modus operandi by now, I hate and despise anything that comes as a mix in a box, Devil's Food Cake is no exception so I was quite happy when I found this recipe and decided to give it a go and see how it turned out. I was rather pleased by the result and I think you will be too.
We've been on something of an old movie kick lately, Casablanca, Key Largo, The African Queen all great movies to sit down with a bowl of popcorn and enjoy. This got me thinking though about popcorn itself. The stuff in movie theaters now is absolutely horrible stuff with the texture of packing peanuts usually drowned in a greasy substance masquerading as butter. It wasn't always this way though so I went on the hunt to see how popcorn was made and sold in the 1930's and learned a little about popcorn history along the way.
Ah, coffee in the morning what could be better? How about coffee and chicory? Adding chicory to coffee is a New Orleans tradition since time immemorial. It started during the French Revolution when coffee imports were less due to the British blocade so the French took to roasting chicory, a native of the endive family, grinding it up and adding it to coffee. It added a sweet flavour and has a laxative quality when drunk in larger amounts.
I've made this recipe on a number of occasions but I have not yet had the chance to post it on the blog. I once heard it said that Hungarians have more ways to prepare cabbage than any other Eastern European ethnic group and none of them involves boiling. Hungarians actually hate boiled cabbage and prefer to fry it in lard or eat it raw like this coleslaw. I've never been a great fan of coleslaw, I dislike vinegar based slaws and Marzetti slaw dressing makes me run away in fear. What makes this recipe different is it's sour cream based rather than mayonnaise based. Hungarians have a special love for sour cream and you'll rarely find a recipe that doesn't include it or have it on the side. You will need a slaw shredder or mandolin slicer to get the cabbage into nice thin strips.
Crab meat must have been much cheaper than it is now back in the old days because I see quite a few recipes that use it, even in the Depression Era. Few of these recipes are anything resembling a crabcake, mostly they are some sort of deviled crab in a can doctored with more butter and a few spices. I come from Maryland so I certainly like crab but the thought of canned deviled crab gives me the heebee-jeebee's. This particular ad is for a company that I can't even locate anymore. The ad is from 1912 so it's not surprising. The company is located in Hampton Va. so it's almost certainly Smith Island crabs. There's been a bit of a "war" down there for over a century between Marylanders and Virginians over crabbing rights in the waters around Smith Island. These days I don't think it matters much anymore. The last time I purchased a can of claw meat it was sourced from the Philippines, sad... really sad.
Today and tomorrow I will be spending time with family and of course with the stove as we prepare to celebrate Easter. I'm taking the weekend off from the blog because I need a break. I'll be back Monday, have a happy Easter!
Noodles and Pot cheese is a meal that my dad has been talking about for awhile now. He remembered as a kid growing up in New Brunswick, NJ his parents going out to the dairy farm down the road and one of the things they would buy every so often was pot cheese. It took me a bit of looking but pot cheese in essence is just a curdled milk cheese, a way for farmers to use up leftover milk after the cream has separated and been skimmed off. While skim milk is what is traditionally used in this recipe, it's important to remember that unless you've had organic skim milk you've never really experienced what real skim milk is. The commercial dairy skim milk is little better than powdered milk mixed with alot of water and lacks the taste and richness of true skim milk which is closer to 2% milk in flavor and richness. So if you're going to do this, go organic and get some organic skim milk. You will also need some cheesecloth and a colander. 1 quart of milk makes enough pot cheese for 4 servings and it needs to be used up within a day as it doesn't keep well.
"Salads should dress for dinner" proclaims this 1938 ad for Heinz vinegars and Olive oils. I heartily agree, what's the use of eating a salad if it doesn't have a dressing made from the best ingredients? However it can be daunting finding the best ingredients for whatever you're cooking and so much noise is generated by the marketeers trying to sell you sub-normal garbage. It's ever more important to read labels today and find out what's really in your food and, I'm sorry to say this, but if it's cheap it's probably garbage with no taste and no nutritional value. It's not all bad news though as there are always tasty options and over time you're going to find that they're not as expensive as you might think.
