It is customary in cultures around the world to greet guests with the best hospitality one can afford. This often means bringing out the best china and linens and treating your new friends to a delicious meal of local delicacies — rather than, say, lobbing a spear at them as they disembark from their ships.
It is a little known fact that in 1492, Christopher Columbus and his men were served this very meal to welcome them to the New World by the indigenous people he met there. It truly celebrates the magnitude of the Columbian Exchange by mixing ground beef with packaged instant mashed potatoes, tomatoes, Saltine crackers, evaporated milk, onions and cheese.
After feasting on slices of this “meat loaf” the company enjoyed cigars and exchanged diseases — syphilis and influenza — which also proved to be vastly successful in their new spheres of influence.
When bidding their foreign visitors adieu, the natives breathed a collective sigh of relief that it had all gone so well, but were frankly happy to get back to their everyday lives knowing that this would be the last they would ever see of the strange white people from afar with the large knives.
You, too, can recreate this remarkable historic meal the next time you have the neighbors over because the Ground Meat Cook Book has finally made the recipe available to the general public — but be sure to have plenty of Purell on hand, just in case, you know.
Ground Meat Cook Book, Better Homes and Gardens, 1969
Also from this book: Top-Notch Turkey Loaf, Meaty Surprise!, Hamburger Helper?, Peppy-Sauced Meatloaf, Ham Strata, Tangiers Hash, King-Sized Balls
Also from this book: Top-Notch Turkey Loaf, Meaty Surprise!, Hamburger Helper?, Peppy-Sauced Meatloaf, Ham Strata, Tangiers Hash, King-Sized Balls
