Sliceable Soup

Some things are liquids and some things are solids and some things are gasses. This is basic science. Some things can go from being one to another under certain circumstances, usually a change in temperature.

Tomato soup, is by its very nature, liquid. If you, on the other hand. prefer yours to be a solid, then this recipe is right up your alley.

Standby Tomato Soup Mold

This recipe calls for mixing canned soup with gelatin, then adding cottage cheese, mayonnaise, chopped celery, green pepper, radishes, walnuts, and green onion. Put this mixture into a mold and let set.

Homemade is Better, Better Homes and Gardens, 1981

Cooties Especial

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

Planned Overs

 Long before Sandra Lee taught us all how to plate combinations of pre-cooked and pre-packaged foods for the “semi-homemade” touch, and Jamie Oliver’s 30-Minute Meals became the UK’s best selling work of non-fiction ever, Better Homes and Gardens jumped on the time-saving bandwagon by giving us Meals in Minutes. The 1973 book was aimed at women who had previously had the luxury of being able to stay home and cook wholesome meals for her family, but who now had to enter the workforce and so had no time to make dinner.

It was a more innocent time that straddled the two extremes presented by Sandra Lee and Jamie Oliver’s approaches; at one end expediency could be found in a tin-opener, and at the other, all fresh ingredients. In Meals in Minutes, it was still expected that most of what went into a meal was actual food, though helped along by the obligatory cans of condensed soup and whipped topping.

Another approach was to think ahead with “planned overs” like these Meat Loaf Stuffed Tomatoes. Just think how many individual tomatoes you’d have to hollow out to feed everyone, though. And in a tradition that gripped the decade with an iron hand, it was not possible to forego the addition of the decorative processed cheese and sprig of parsley.

Meals in Minutes, Better Homes and Gardens, 1973

Also from this book: Ham Sandwich Deluxe, Pacific Rim Job