Junior Cookbook Thursday- Hotdog Wrapups

The 1978 edition has several variations on how to prepare and serve hot dogs. Maybe they were particularly popular in the 70s, but I'm too young to remember!
This recipe had the advantage of using bread instead of regular rolls, and since we're trying to make food come out as even as possible before moving, anything that doesn't require buying anything additional is good.
Cheese went on the bread, then the hotdogs, and they were baked after having the bread held closed with toothpicks. It's pretty quick, and it makes a slightly different taste to the frankfurters than when they are boiled or grilled.
I thought of my mother's old favorite broiled cheese sandwiches when some of the edges of the cheese were browned. That was never something I cared for, however, but she does! I thought the finished product was all right, not stellar but reasonable.

Really late about Junior Cookbook Thursday!

This past Thursday we made Scalloped Salmon from the 1958 edition. Cracker crumbs and canned salmon made up the bulk of it, and it was surprisingly good when complete. Bluebonnet actually helped get most of the salmon out of the can into the bowl and of course she stirred.

I think can sizes have changed somewhat over the years, because the recipe called for a 7 oz can of salmon and what we found in the store was 6oz. Ergo there was a little too much of crackers in the dish, but that can be easily altered. This might be a good thing to repeat.

Junior Cookbook Thursday- Cocoa

We made cocoa and had it with some toast for breakfast this morning. I don't think I'd ever made cocoa from this recipe before, but it's surprisingly similar to the in-my-head, just-do-it "recipe" I've been using for a few years, with a dash of salt and some vanilla. In my own version, I occasionally substitute almond extract, to make it that much more decadent. Both my husband and I really like almond extract to flavor anything sweet. Within reason, of course. I don't think it would improve peppermint ice cream!

Bluebonnet poured almost everything into the saucpan, and stirred before I turned the heat on. I think she could have safely stirred with the heat, had she been able to reach fromt he angle where she was standing on her stepstool.
I think I would leave out the water from this recipe the next time; it made the finished product taste a trifle thin.

Junior Cookbook Thursday- Orange-Applesauce Salad

Having performed "Lime Jello Marshmallow Cottage Cheese Surprise" for a talent show this past week, I've been getting a lot of ribbing at home and from friends about anything related to Jello. Nevertheless we made "Orange-Applesauce Salad" yesterday. It's very similar to an old family recipe, almost eerily so.
Jello can be prepared with almost any clear liquids, as long as you have one hot and one cold. This recipe called for hot water, applesauce, and a half-cup of 7-up for liquids. Applesauce as a liquid, you say? Yes, it works. The aforementioned family recipe has applesauce as the hot liquid! Along with the 7-up we stirred in chunks of raw apple. It turned out pretty well. I have no gelatin molds, so any jello recipes are made in ordinary bowls around here.
Bluebonnet accorded herself very well by spooning the applesauce from the jar into the measuring cup. I was very pleasantly surprised by how well she did with that.

Junior Cookbook Thursday- Chicken Pot Pies

We made this for supper tonight. Cooked chicken and mixed vegetables went in with a milk-and-flour sauce, and were covered with refrigerator biscuits. Bluebonnet stirred, dumped in vegetables, and helped lay pieces of biscuit over the top. We cut the biscuits in quarters which allowed them to cover more of the casserole dish. The filling was a bit runnier than I'd like, so we had to serve it in bowls. Next time we'll have to reduce the amount of milk or increase the flour.
This is one of those home cookin' meals that feels like rich comfort food, but it really isn't. We use skim milk for most purposes, so there wasn't much fat in it. The chicken was white meat, left from something we'd had earlier in the week.

Two weeks' Junior Cookbook Thursday- Oven-fried Chicken and Lemon Pie

Bluebonnet was exceedingly helpful with supper tonight. The Oven-Fried Chicken consisted of breading the chicken with crushed potato chips, which were mixed with garlic powder and pepper. By themselves that tasted good! If we ever make this again, however, I'll buy baked chips instead of ordinary ones, because there was just too much grease in this. Maybe that wouldn't have fazed Grandmother in 1958 but it sure bothered me! (No offense meant to my grandmothers!) At any rate, Bluebonnet crushed the chips and actually did a fair job dipping the chicken in the breading. We served the chicken with a mixture of green beans and carrots.

Last week was a bit crazy with my in-laws and nephew coming, so the Lemon Pie that should have been that week's Junior Cookbook attempt never happened. No matter, it came around today.
The pie has a crumb crust. Because the graham crackers that were on sale when I bought some were the cinnamon type, I omitted the sugar from the crumb crust and used those. Bluebonnet loved crushing up the crackers and stirring together the crust ingredients. When it came time to make the filling she made a valiant attempt to squeeze the juice from a lemon. That takes more strength than she posesses! We had one whole lemon, of which we used both zest and juice. The rest was from the jar of lemon juice. The filling also comprised of egg and condensed milk. It turned out a little more of a custard than a pie, but it tastes tood.

Junior Cookbook Thursday for 1/1/09- Butter-toasted sweet rolls

This was another absurdly easy idea. All we did was to slice sweet rolls (in this case, some cinnamon buns my mother sent home with us after Christmas) in half, butter them, and toast them in a skillet. Bluebonnet is just learning to spread the butter, which was thoroughly softened. They were pretty good. It was also an "aha" moment about how to make leftover buns taste a bit better!

Junior cookbook Thursday- Lime Fizz

At last, something that Bluebonnet can really help with!
From the "Beverages" chapter of the 1958 edition, we get a rather summery choice for December. Lime juice, sugar, and water mixed together, to which is added club soda/seltzer when ready to serve. Bluebonnet poured the measure juice and water into the pitcher, and stirred to her heart's content. I think we both enjoyed the finished product. We made it in the morning while we were working on other things in the kitchen and had it as our snack.

(She also helped with Daddy's favorite Christmas cookie, which is really more a candy but very good, too. )

Junior Cookbook Thursday- Pumpkin Nut Bread

I think now we can get more or less back to normal. I'll write another entry about the Epples, later on.

Today we did another Junior Cookbook entry, having skipped last week for Thanksgiving (which, by the way, went nicely, with Bluebonnet's maternal grandparents joining us for several days). The recipe made a single loaf, which would easily double to use the entire one-pound can of pumpkin. This is obviously a good time of year to be making things with pumpkin! It called for "pumpkin-pie spice" which I didn't have; we improvised with ginger, cinnamon, and nutmeg in "dump" quantities. (I think I'm going to have to become more precise in my approach to baking as Bluebonnet grows and learns how to bake! ) Bluebonnet has gotten very good at stirring, or mixing, which is what she calls it. She helped to dump in the measured dry ingredients as well.

Having a great deal of quick breads on hand and in the freezer already, I offered the remaining pumpkin bread to My Knight to take to his colleagues tomorrow. Always a good way to dispose of extras! And yes, it was pretty good.

Junior Cookbook Thursday- Saucepan Spaghetti

When they called this "Saucepan Spaghetti" they weren't kidding! Everything was dumped in together. First we browned the meat, then added all the sauce ingredients, and then when the sauce was boiling we added the noodles. They seemed to cook more quickly than cooking in water, but that could be only my perception. Bluebonnet helped by stirring the sauce and by dumping in several of the spoonsful of spices. This made a hit with Daddy as well. We served it with salad and garlic bread (a favorite in our house, made according to my father-in-law's procedure.)

Junior Cookbook- Curled Hotdogs

Or "ock-a-dogs" as Bluebonnet pronounces it! To do this, you had to slice partway through the frankfurters, slicing across, so that they curl when cooked in hot water. I'm not sure of the physics of this one! Unfortunately it was really one which Bluebonnet couldn't help with at all, but it was pretty clever. The cookbook suggests serving on hamburger rolls; we used fresh bread and ate them as something like open-faced sandwiches.

Two days late for Junior Cookbook Thursday- PEter Rabbit Salad

We're back on track with our Junior Cookbook Thursdays, except for my posting!

Peter Rabbit Salads, from the 1958 edition, called for canned pears but since I was already making something else that used fresh pears, we used fresh pears. We put pear halves face down (round side up) on lettuce, and added slices of marshmallow for ears and tail, and cherry for a nose. Optionally you could add whole cloves for eyes.

They looked like mice with puffy tails.

Bluebonnet helped pretty well by arranging the pears on the lettuce and trying to stick the marshmallow slices on the pears. She wasn't too impressed when we ate the marshmallows.

(As a sidenote, she hadn't been with me when my family had visitors from Denmark a few weeks ago and we taught these Danes how to make s'mores. I don't know what Bluebonnet would have thought of those, but the Danes liked it. So did all the Americans who were there.)

Junior Cookbook Thursday- Peanut-Cocoa Shakes

This was from the "Anytime Treats" chapter of the 1978 book. It's a variation under the chocolate shakes recipe, in which you add 2T of peanut butter along with chocolate syrup to milk and vanilla ice cream. The product was still pretty thin; I'm always shocked at how much ice cream and how little milk go into milkshakes! (Actually, I probably don't want to think about it, especially when ordering a milkshake at Nifty Fifties....) Bluebonnet was interested in trying to help with every step, but the only thing I could really give her to do was to pour the milk from the measuring cup into the blender. She did also tell me that the blender was loud.
Bluebonnet and My Knight both really liked these. I found it a bit too sweet but generally liked it; I do love chocolate and peanut butter together.

This is the last Junior Cookbook Thursday post until we've moved. I'll have other posts between now and then but not JCT.

Junior Cookbook Thursday- No-Knead Yeast Rolls

This wa from the Breads section of the 1978 edition. We made them in the morning, so that they would be available for lunchtime. They were similar to many other bread recipes, although if made into a loaf would only make one (one packet of yeast). We heated the butter and milk together before mixing them in with flour and yeast and sugar and salt. Bluebonnet poured the milk in to the saucepan initally.

There was a long rising time, an hour for the first time and a half-hour for the second, but they only bake for 15 minutes. The recipe tells you to use muffin tins for rolls. We did that, and found that the 400-degree oven made a very crisp outside to the rolls. I expect the dough could be shaped a number of ways for other interesting rolls or loaves. And everyone seemed to like them, eaten with peanut butter, for lunch.

Junior Cookbook Thursday- Vegetable Soup

Tonight's selection came from the "Vegetables" section, rather than "Main Dishes," of the 1978 edition. It was very basic and really rather quick, especially as soups go. A broth, water, canned tomatoes, raw potato and celery, some frozen mixed vegetables, and miscellaneous seasonings went in and it simmered for about 20 minutes. I added dried minced onion, and probably would add fresh onion if I were to modify this for "regular" use. Then again, I add dried minced onion to many of my savory dishes and am a great fan of onions in other ways, too!
Bluebonnet assisted by watching and by putting the bay leaf into the pot. My Knight enjoyed the soup, as well as Bluebonnet and I did.

Junior Cookbook Thursday- Oriental Steaks

We made this for supper. I think it was a pretty good example of the mid-century (even 1978) tendency to pretend they were making authentic foods. The soy sauce and rice are the only things that make this remotely Asian! Peppers and tomatoes are stir-fried, then the beef cooked (all in a skillet), then you make a sauce with soy sauce, starch and sugar to cover and coat. The instructions in the recipe tell you to put the sauce in a jar and shake to mix, so Bluebonnet's help was to shake the jar. I found an empty plastic parmesan cheese jar, so I didn't have to worry about her dropping a glass one.
Not my favorite, so far. I guess we'll take the good with the bad here!

Junior Cookbook Thursday- Hot dogs

Okay, so some of the recipes are so simple it's rather silly. Perhaps I shouldn't be married to my plan and should skip some things until such time as Bluebonnet can really do them herself, but if I did, I'd get hopelessly disorganized about it. Eventually we'll come around again.

Truthfully, it's always fun to have something like hot dogs, but I do prefer mine grilled over having them boiled, which was the way they were made today. (Except, of course, the time my uncle ended up with something that more resembled charcoal than frankfurters...brilliant man who generally otherwise can cook fine but that was, er, memorable!

Someone once observed that hot dogs always taste best outdoors. Every time I eat a hot dog (which isn't all that often, honestly), I remember his comment and think he was correct.

Junior Cookbook Thursday- Rasin Oatmeal Cookies

This was from the 1958 volume. First of all, it sounds strange to say "raisin-oatmeal" instead of "oatmeal-raisin". It seems rather like trying to reverse the order in which you refer to another couple by name; if you usually refer to Sam and Janet Evening, it's going to sound pretty strange when you hear someone refer to Janet and Sam Evening.

Now that we've gotten that out of the way! The recipe uses shortening, so it's a crisp cookie and not a flat one, but the flavor isn't quite what it should be. Margarine would also work to keep the texture but add the flavor. Overall they turned out pretty well. Bluebonnet was interested in turning the sifter for the dry ingredients (which did not include the granulated sugar.) She also wore the brand-new apron that was a birthday present from her Great-Grams (my maternal grandmother, fwiw.)

Junior Cookbook Thursdays

We have in our posession two different editions of the Better Homes and Gardens Junior Cookbook, the one my mother had from 1958, and my own, which I got in 1988 but was published in 1978 (got that?). Unfortunately the most recent edition is utterly hideous, cartoony and such. Anyway, every Thursday we make something from one of the two. For now this is mostly just something that *I* do for fun, but it's going to grow into Bluebonnet's earliest hands-on lessons in cooking. So, each week when we've had our Junior Cookbook Thursday I'll post about it- now if I can just figure out how to classify those posts as such!

Today's was Cherry Fill-ups, from the 1958 book. It used refrigerator biscuits, jam, and a mixture of egg, sugar and milk for a glaze. Bluebonnet helped by poking the indentations for the jam to go in the biscuits. They were fairly good but the smell of the baking biscuits lingered far longer than I expected.