Mid-Century Meals: Historical Food Fortnightly

And so we begin another fun adventure! When Betsy and Melissa announced the Historical Food Fortnightly, Patrick and I gave it 4 thumbs up and agreed to enjoy, blog, and then print the book for our family. Thank you, Betsy and Melissa, for creating HFF and planning our wonderful Challenges!

The guidelines of the HFF encourage the recipes and cooking methods prior to 1960. Patrick and I were born in 1950 and 1951 and are both 63 years old as we write this. As we reviewed the Challenges and talked about this blog, we decided to honor our parents by re-creating the meals they would have been making at the time we were born into the families. But where to find that information?

By a stroke of pure luck we found a set of 7 recipe booklets on eBay. The Homemakers Exchange Recipes contain the recipes aired on CBS-TV at 4:00PM Monday through Friday. Our 7 booklets cover January 1950 through September 1951.

As Patrick and I create our 1950/51 meals through this year of HFF Challenges, we will also share some bits about ourselves, past and present. Thank you for joining us! Let's get cooking!

The first HFF Challenge is Literature. While it would be fun to find a literary piece from mid-century, we are in the midst of re-reading The Hunger Games. The movie was filmed in North Carolina, Patrick's home state and our current residence. In 2011 we both auditioned for parts for the film. And we got the parts! The economic crash of 2008 was forcing us to rethink our previously successful self-employment and the movie offer came a week after we had accepted a job offer which would take us to Maine. It would be a lie to say we weren't tempted to ditch the job offer and go play in the movies! But off to Maine we went and the movie went on without us.

If you've read the trilogy you might remember that Katniss and Peeta have both been reaped to fight in The Hunger Games - a game to the death. After the reaping they are on a train to the Capitol and Katniss, used to near starvation in her home District, is served her first meal.

The supper comes in courses. A thick carrot soup, green salad,

lamb chops and mashed potatoes,

cheese and fruit, a chocolate cake.

Chapter 3

Patrick and I agree. Let's recreate Katniss and Peeta's first Capitol-style meal. Mid-century style!

A Thick Carrot Soup

Hmmmm. Not one recipe for carrot soup in any of the booklets. So we'll just assume that the District supplying carrots is in rebellion and find a nice substitute. Katniss and Peeta would approve of our resourcefulness.

From July/August/September 1950, a Chilled Cucumber Soup recipe.

Our ingredients:

Green Salad

From April/May/June 1951, an Old Fashioned Green Salad recipe.

Our ingredients:

Lamb Chops and Mashed Potatoes

From July/August/September 1950, Braised Lamb Chops recipe:

And from January/February/March 1950, a Mashed Potatoes recipe:

Cheese and Fruit - all Districts cooperated and this was easy to find.

Chocolate Cake

April/May/June 1950 Chocolate Cake recipe:

Swans Down Cake Flour, America's Favorite Cake Flour Since 1894

Baker's Chocolate, Since 1780

Here is where things started falling apart. It had been years, yes years, since we baked a cake. We found our pans in that dark corner of the corner cupboard that only gets attention when you move. But we found them. Next, the recipe called for "3 squares" of chocolate and the 4 ounce package had 16 rectangular pieces. So a little internet searching revealed that we weren't the only ones who had no idea how much a square was. We learned that a "square" is an ounce, and that unsweetened chocolate is 100% cacao. Bittersweet chocolate is only 67% cacao and the two chocolates cannot be substituted in recipes. So the cake got mixed and baked and smelled great but looked awful! And then it wouldn't release from the sides of the pan!

The nice part of being older is that you pick up lots of tips and tricks along the way. We got the cake out of the pans with some crumbling around the edges, cut off those awful edges, and our 8" round cake was simply cut to 6" round. Moving right along to a chocolate frosting from the April/May/June 1951 recipe booklet.

Sigh. Here we go again. The cooked portion of the frosting just didn't seem the right consistency but we forged on. While the recipe called for 2 cups of powdered sugar it took almost 5 cups. It was already hot in the kitchen and the frosting seemed to melt before our eyes. But we had a cake that a starving District 12 Katniss and Peeta would love!