Porcupines

 On a busy day you just want to through together something easy with ingredients you have on hand. I found this recipe in the Dishes Children Love pamphlet from 1955. It is part of a series put out by the Culinary Arts Institute from Chicago.

I'm sure having the ingredients mixed in with the directions was suppose to be helpful for kids but I found it annoying. I like to know everything I am going to need before starting the recipe.

Everything I already had in my house. Yeah!

I will play in cookie dough all day long but I hate making meatballs. I hate getting ground beef under my nails. They looked kind of sad, drowning in tomato soup.

Gotta love the old Pyrex!

They turned out kind of cute. Porcupines!

These were great meatballs! Nothing overly special but easy and tasty. Surprisingly, the rice cooked all the way through (even the one meatball I couldn't fully submerge) and the tomato soup created a delicious sauce. Just add mashed potatoes and a veggie and you have a great comfort meal.

My Rating: Yummy and easy! I would make again.

Friends and Family Rating: "Weird looking but not bad."

Poppy Seed Cookies

It looks like warm weather is finally starting to get here. I decided to spend the bright summer-like day outside and I am paying for it with a bright red sunburn. No regrets! It's difficult to bake on a hot day but these seemed like a great light bite. They are from The Modern Family Cook Book by Meta Given, 1953.

That is a lot of poppy seeds for a cookie! I won't be taking any drug tests today.

The ingredients are typical but there seems like a lot for what little you get.

Poppy seeds look like little bugs to me. hehe. The dough was very very soft and had to be chilled.

Rolling out this damn dough was a pain in the butt! Chilling it only gave it a little bit more structure and it stuck to everything. I could only cut out one or two cookies before the rest of the dough started to stick to my mat. Not fun! I only used half the dough before giving up.

They don't look too bad!

Sadly, these were bland, unexciting cookies. So bland that I had to add a lemon icing to some of them and that still didn't help. I'm certain the amount of flour I had to use to cut the cookies out added to the problem. They may have worked as a drop cookie but I was so frustrated by that point I didn't feel like trying. I almost feel guilty asking other people to taste these.

My Rating: Boring. Will not make again.

Friends and Family Rating: "Not my favorite." "I like the icing."

Tomatoes Stuffed with Rice and Cheese

Since I had to have something to go along with my 'drumstick' dinner I thought I would stay in my 1950's childhood and try some stuffed tomatoes.

I grabbed a recipe from the same cookbook.

I had to grab some tomatoes. Sadly not in season. And I'm not a big fan of canned mushrooms but I thought I'd give it a chance.

Looks like it needs more cheese.

Digging the guts out of tomatoes. Fun Times! Just gotta figure out what to do with them...

They look so pretty!! and fancy.

And smelled so good!
This recipe went together easy with ingredients you probably already have around. The tomatoes took a little bit of time but it wasn't difficult just annoying. They tasted pretty good but a little bland. Needed more cheese and they probably taste better with in-season tomatoes. I'll have to bribe a few fresh tomatoes off of my gardening friends and try these again. It was an easy base recipe that looks simple to modify.

My Rating: Not bad. Not special.

Drumsticks

Sometimes I feel like making something fancy and sometimes I like to go easy. With this crazy weather I thought I'd explore this pamphlet looking for a new comfort food.

 Comfort food is usually something from our childhood so there must be something here! I went with: Drumsticks...not made from chicken.

Very common ingreideints except for the dreaded MSG! After a bit of online research I went for it.

I was able to dig into my rather large collection of takeout chopsticks for the sticks.

My drumsticks started to fall apart as soon as I put them in the pan.

My drumsticks didn't look exactly like that.

Parsley brightened up the dish!

These came together and cooked up very easily. They are basically mini meatloaves on sticks. The sticks ended up being useless because the meat just fell off of them as they cooked. I'm guessing that the sticks were suppose to make them more interesting for kids. They tasted okay. Nothing exciting or special. Just bland. I was only able to eat 2 bites before adding toppings.

My rating: Blah. Nothing I would make again.

Brandy Gump Cocktail

This evening I was feeling lazy and looking for an easy cocktail recipe. I came across this one in the Savoy Cocktail book. I have to admit the only thing that drew me to it was the fact that I had all the ingredients.

It used the end of my brandy. I had never heard of a 'hooker' as a measurement so I looked it up online. Helpful hint: Look up 'cocktail measurements.' Do not look up 'how much is a hooker.'

Yep. I love my radio.

It's kind of a drab peachy color. I'm not overly impressed with the taste. It's a little too strong for my taste as I am not a big fan of brandy. A brief search online reveals that most modern interpretations of the drink include more grenadine and less brandy. That definitely sounds more appealing. I may try that another day once I restock my brandy.


My Rating: Just okay