Common Cored

The Common Core Standards Initiative, adopted in many states in the last decade, has been criticized for turning formerly simple and well-known approaches to math that have been employed for centuries into Kafkaesque problems whose very existence causes mental anguish among not just the poor students subject to mastering them, but to their hapless parents as well.

Instead of performing a simple arithmetic task — subtraction, say — by subtracting the smaller number from the larger one, students now have to break the numbers up into chunks and draw squares and put them all back together again to produce the answer. It takes far longer, defies logic, and is more likely to result in a wrong answer.

14? Right?

I can speak from personal experience; my fifth-grader, who has a natural affinity for math, can often be found in tears when confronted by the need to do his homework the way the teacher insists, rather than just getting the right answers. I cannot explain to him why he needs to do this. I shrug and we do the problems the old-school way.

In the spirit of the Common Core, I would like to illustrate this with a Glazed Ham Ring from 1969.

Imagine the math problem as a pig. A delicious pig. Think of all the lovely ways you could eat this pig: pork chops; ham; bacon; barbecued ribs; slow roasted shoulder; pulled pork sandwich; sausages; crackling. All are relatively simple in that the pig is broken down into various parts and cooked, and then served. The parts still look like they came from an animal on the serving platter, and indeed, on your plate.

Now imagine taking some of this wonderful pig and grinding some of it into a pink mush. Mix the mush with bread, eggs, and onion. Take this mush and form it into a ring mold. Invert the oiled mold onto a baking tray and bake. Afterwards, cover it in a bright red glaze, and fill the hole in the middle with a mixture of half-peeled potatoes, peas, and cream. Serve with red apples and a generous helping of parsley.

Write a word problem for this pig that takes into account having turned all the ingredients for this dish into spheres. Then, solve the problem, showing your work. Use a #2 pencil.

Congratulations: according to the Common Core, you are now ready to apply your knowledge in the workplace.

Meat Cook Book, Better Homes and Gardens, 1969

Also from this book: Kitchen Nightmares

Coup de Grâce

One would not ordinarily relish being asked to apply a coup de grâce, which is a blow of mercy to end suffering.

It is mystifying then, that someone who has nearly murdered a dish — such as this ham and lima bean concoction — would apply their own coup de grâce in the form of the grated cheese (or whatever that is) that makes it finally, and completely inedible.

Meat Cook Book, Better Homes and Gardens, 1965

Also from this book: Beware the Franks, Salami Bouquet

Ham Cabbage Mold

Before the 1890s, the world was entirely black and white and shades of grey. If you wanted to know what something looked like, you had to use your imagination. People had very vivid imaginations, so that was OK. Well, sometimes it wasn’t. Sometimes people got it all wrong and lots of folks got killed as a result.

People had no idea what an orange was. They’d ask their grocer for a dimpled fruit yay-big and were handed a melon instead. Or a lemon. That depended on the literacy of one’s grocer, which in the 1890s was iffy at best. The banana was widely thought to be an urban legend until Carmen Miranda rendered all urban legends obsolete. But I digress.

The first color photograph was of a tartan ribbon. The ribbon thought it was posing for a normal black and white portrait and refused to pay. In 1855 a Scottish person named James Clerk Maxwell invented the eyeball by reducing the known universe to red, green and blue. When he mixed them together, he could make every hue there is, but when regular people mix them together all they get is brown. It is not known whether his genius was prompted into being by being hit on the head with an apple or an orange.

People think there are no words that rhyme with orange, but try rhyming anything with apple. People named Hugh are colorblind, a twist of fate they can’t even appreciate. I made that up. There are no people named Hugh.

One hundred years after Maxwell figured the eyeball out, Americans learned to mix anything with lemon Jell-O and set it in a mold to enchant their guests. This lead to the extinction of guests. Hundreds of cookbooks with whole chapters devoted to what to serve unexpected guests had to be torn up and thrown on the fire.

Today it is as unfathomable for us to consider a world without color photography as it is to imagine eating a ham cabbage mold. Never have so many been so thankful for black and white photography as we are now, right this minute, when we look at the top of this page.

Salad Book, Better Homes and Gardens, 1969

Also from this book: Salmon Avocado Mold, Banana-Cheese Dressing, Wash Your Mouth Out With Soap

Frankfurter Salad

The root of the word “salad” is sal, or salt and dates in this form from the 14^th century, right around the time that the piquant seasoning of the southern Latinate languages had blended with the old native Northern European ones to form a pleasing effect on the tongue. Salads then were vegetables made tastier with brine, salty water.

Salads today encompass a wide variety of foods, with anything that consists of a mix of ingredients combined with a dressing of some sort. Salads no longer have to be green, though the word has become synonymous with leafy greens eaten raw, such as lettuce, spinach, arugula, watercress etc.

Shakespeare has Cleopatra musing to Caesar (that other salad) on her misbegotten youth by saying “…my salad days, / When I was green in judgment, cold in blood…,” thereby introducing us to salad as metaphor, inexperience being, like young shoots (and salad leaves), green.

If you happen to suffer from chlorophobia, a fear of the color green, then a nice leafy salad is probably not for you (chloro being the same root as chlorophyll, the green in leaves). In which case, you may enjoy this Ham and Frankfurter Salad, and its array of pinks enlivened by the color red, which is about as far from a green salad as one can possibly get.

Grand Diplôme Cooking Course, Vol. 13, Danbury Press, 1971

Also from this series: Sweetbreads Niquette, In Your Face!, Your Goose Is Cooked, Vatel’s Haddock Up To Here

Ham Strata

Geologists date the ham strata to 1969, when similar deposits of meat product were laid down all across the country between layers of soft bread. The large, pink stratum is generally found next to a very thin mustard stratum and a few yellowish strata which scientists have suspected consist of margarine and mayonnaise. A separate group claims that one of the pale strata is in fact Miracle Whip. On occasion, a butter strata has also been detected, though this is rare.

Of interest to stratigraphers is the similarity between the ham strata and the hamburger strata, though the latter is characterized by the presence of dill pickle, onion and ketchup strata. Students of stratiography are encouraged to unearth local samples for study following their introduction to the lunchmeat strata in general before moving on to the far more complex muffeleta strata.

For those wishing to pursue stratiology at the doctoral level, the University of the Sandwich Islands offers competitive fellowships.

Ground Meat Cook Book, Better Homes and Gardens, 1969

Also from this book: Top-Notch Turkey Loaf, Cooties Especial, Hamburger Helper?, Meaty Surprise!, Peppy-Sauced Meatloaf, Tangiers Hash, King-Sized Balls

Wikiwiki Ham Bake

In the year 77, Pliny the Elder produced the western world’s first extant encyclopedia, the Naturalis Historia, a summary of everything the Romans knew. Sadly, the Romans didn’t know that Vesuvius was going to erupt and wipe out the charming seaside town of Pompeii, ending Gaius Plinius Secundus’s career as a know-it-all in a fatal downpour of scalding ash.

It could be that Nature was displeased with his dedication which seems to praise its author rather than its subject: “Hail to thee, Nature, thou parent of all things! and do thou deign to show thy favour unto me, who, alone of all the citizens of Rome, have, in thy every department, thus made known thy praise,” and smited him accordingly.

Perhaps Nature was disappointed in his grasp of anthropology, which declared that naked menstruating women had the power to scare away hailstorms, whirlwinds and lightning and that anything they touched turned sour, sterile, and withered away. They could even calm a storm at sea by stripping. One can imagine Mother Nature lighting the fuse under Vesuvius to show Pliny what a real female can do when she has lava at her disposal.

I know this because I looked it up on Wikipedia. Twenty years ago, I would have looked it up in the Encyclopedia Britannica, but the internet has killed off the need to crack open giant tomes in search of knowledge. The word “Wikipedia” has an interesting genesis — it’s clearly based on “encyclopedia” but with a very modern twist. The Greek word enkyklios means “circular, recurrent, required, regularly, general,” which makes sense because this is what “cycle” means. To “encycle” and “encircle” therefore, is to repetitively cover everything. Paideia refers to the education and rearing of a child. Combine the two, as early scribes did, and you have an instrument which seeks to educate on all matters constantly.

Do not feed this to diabetics

The trouble with books is that updating them in a world that is constantly changing is a bitch. Books, especially a complete set of the Encyclopedia Britannica, are expensive. Wikipedia, however, is free (much to the chagrin of its founders whose appeal for funding periodically graces the banner). A wiki is an interlinked  website page that can easily be updated with html markup language, allowing for constant editing by multiple users. This is very useful for an online compendium of knowledge which actually keeps pace with current knowledge, fulfilling the original purpose of an encyclopedia. The word wiki is Hawaiian and means hurry up, as this recipe tells us. The guy who invented the wiki, Ward Cunningham, was inspired by the name of the Honolulu airport bus — the Wiki Wiki Shuttle. Honolulu is another charming seaside town. Well, it was.

The Hawaiian Islands are a chain of volcanoes in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. They might be a world away from the Bay of Naples, but they are not a world apart; Mother Nature apparently decided to use the lure of the volcano — which once knocked knowledge on its head — to restore knowledge to the world.

Pliny the Elder, when setting sail directly into the eruption to see it up close, claimed that “fortune favors the brave.” Would fortune favor anyone brave enough to eat this Wikiwiki Ham Bake?

Family Circle Casserole Cookbook, Rockville House Publishers, 1972

Also from this book: Bullshit, or Baked Bologna Jubilee

A Connubial Breakfast

Once upon a time not so very long ago, people married almost total strangers. Sure, they’d been on a few dates, dinner and a movie, and there was probably some chaste kissing at the lady’s doorstep at the end of the evening. After a period of engagement a wedding was had, followed by a reception and then the newlyweds retired to a hotel room to consummate their union before setting off in the morning for a week’s honeymoon.

Imagine the shock of sex after a really busy and emotionally draining day full of relatives in some strange bed with a guy you’ve never seen naked before but with whom you will have to spend the rest of your life even if the sex is horribly bad. Imagine discovering as you lay there all sore listening to him snore like a freight train.

When they return from their honeymoon the groom will pick up his bride and carry her over the threshold of their new home. Suddenly, married life begins without any practice at all and she’s probably already pregnant.

If she’s lucky, she will have been given a household management guide by her mother, which was an encyclopedic compendium of advice and reference for everything the new wife would face in her role as head of the household. Everything from how to buy furniture to how to make curtains to how to clean and what to wear, to cooking and being a hostess was described in detail. Mrs. Beeton had this pretty much covered in the tome that came under her name and was the absolute authority when it came to all things of the matronly persuasion.

If she’s less lucky she will have gotten married in 1965 and been given Happy Living! A Guidebook For Brides courtesy of Sibleys of Rochester, a department store hoping to cash in on all the purchasing it suggests you do. To help, it comes with a Bride’s Gift Record wherein one can list all the gifts one receives and keep track of whether you’ve acknowledged them of not. It’s ambitious; there are numbered lines for 256 gifts.

Among the truly revolting dishes it presents in nauseating Technicolor is this Apple-Beef Ring With Green Bean Succotash that resembles a dog bowl. Husbands must have recoiled in horror.

On the facing page is a recipe for A Connubial Breakfast of ham and eggs because “the bride, unsure of her mate’s morning preferences, might well serve them, for they bring that proverbial bliss.”

We all know what her mate’s morning preference is for "proverbial bliss," but curiously the guidebook doesn’t say anything about that whatsoever.

Happy Living! A Guidebook for Brides, American Bride Publications, 1965

Also from this book: Three Courses (Of Course), Creamed Eggs In A Corned Beef Crust, All For One And One For All!