Welcome to the new site!

In honor of the new site, I thought I would  bring back an old post that everyone seemed to love... The vintage cookbook shots!  This is from my first blog, back in April of 2009.  Enjoy!  There will be some new ones next week.  I promise!

Today at work I was doing a little internet surfing and I came across Miss Retro Modern’s Flickr page.  First, I want to thank Miss Retro Modern for making my day.  She has some of the best and quite possibly funniest collection of vintage ads, cookbooks and other assorted goodness that she scanned in for our amusement.  Miss Retro Modern, I hope you don’t mind, I’m going to borrow a few of my  favorites.  But you get all the credit.  Seriously, I think I we might have been separated at birth.  You are my new internet best friend.

First I’m going to start with food.

I’m going to preface this by saying, I remember some of these crazy recipes from my mom’s old cookbooks.  I was facinated with all the stuff that people suspended in jello.  I always wanted to make these recipes.  I knew I never wanted to eat them.  I just knew I wanted to make them.  With that, it’s on to the first item:

I think I found how the obesity epidemic started.  It’s was with this ad.

I usually like to follow my corn syrup toast with a shot of wheat grass and msg followed by a bacon grease chaser.  If I can’t start my day that way, then there’s no sense in getting out of bed.

Our next item is the lovely green pea salad.

As far as I’m concerned a salad should not “wiggle” and you sure as hell should not have to cut a slice of salad out.   I’m assuming that’s vodka or gin in those glasses because you’d have to be half in the bag in order to eat that.  And don’t even get me started on the stuff in the background.  Georgia O’Keefe is blushing at the innuendo.

This next one I can only call “the hair nipple.”  I don’t think I need to say anything else.

I’m a huge fan of Mad Men.  And I wish I were a fly on the wall back when they came up with this little ad campaign.

It’s ketchup. There’s nothing magical about watered down tomatoes and a whole lot of sugar.  Red Magic sounds like some new illegal drug or an STD.  “Did you hear about Ginny?  She’s got the red magic.   She got it from using a public toilet.  Now no one is gonna want to go steady with her.”  Somehow I think the creole people need to be given more credit.  I don’t think that frying up some sausage and covering it in “red magic” is something they want to take credit for.

Hey McDonalds!  If you want to keep me as a loyal fan of the chicken nugget, maybe you should dress ‘em up a bit.  Maybe it’ll class the joint up a bit.

This next one makes me feel a little dirty.

I just have this horrible image of June Cleaver in the kitchen swearing like a sailor on shore leave trying to tie this babies in a knot.  And what in god’s name is coming out of the ends of those wieners?  I’ve gotta move on, or I’m gonna have to take a crying game shower.

This one is one that probably has “surprise” in the name.

“OK kids!  Gather round.  We’re gonna have cake!  Oh wait… it’s tuna and rice.  Sorry.  Mommy needs another cocktail.”  I have to ask, what the hell is that white “frosting?”  Please tell me that’s mayo.

Apparently we weren’t getting enough protein in our diets.  I present the veal cutlet with bacon and an egg.  I’m assuming that red sauce on the top could only be one thing – red magic.

This next one is from a Good Housekeeping magazine.  And the article was about Hamburgers around the world.  This one was from Denmark.  Why hasn’t someone taken over their country?  This proves they have no right to be left to their own devices.

Let’s be honest, that’s just one large meatball covered in cabbage.  No one wants that.

And speaking of meatballs…

No self respecting restaurant is going to put “meatball yummies” on their menu.  “Bob and I went to that new 5 star Zagats rated restaurant.  Well, we started with a bottle of merlot and an order of meatball yummies.  I swear, you take one bite and you’d think you’d died and gone to heaven!”  Again, who’s the marketing whiz kid who thought up the name “meatball Yummies.”  Again, it sounds like an STD.  “Did you hear about Ronny?  He went to Cabo for spring break and came back with a case of meatball yummies.”

I’ve saved my favorite for last.

It’s called the Broiler Bean-er Wiener.  I call it an ad for Beano.  Or for Poof!  There is something seriously wrong with this dish.  From what I can tell it’s french bread (or if you want to get fancy, say company’s coming over… perhaps the husband’s boss) garlic bread, baked beans, cocktail wienies – cut in half length wise (that’s an important step.  You can’t go any other way.  It ruins the look), squirt in a little yellow mustard (again, if the husband’s boss is coming over I guess you could class it up with some brown mustard, but I feel it would take away from the taste of the pickles. But that’s just me), and some pickles – again, cut in half length wise.   Now that I’ve typed this all out, it sounds delicious.  And it could be an eco-friendly way to heat the house.  All that gas after eating this thing should be able to heat a house of the size of the Spelling Mansion.  You could probably kill someone if your tried to dutch oven them after eating that.

Again, I just want to thank Miss Retro Modern for these images.  I can’t thank you enough.  You made my Tuesday.  Also, if you click on the photos, it takes you to their original Miss retro Modern post.  It’s worth going back and clicking on them just to read the comments that other people had.