Here’s how to give them and yourself an evening in hell.
Best Foods / Via vintage-recipes.livejournal.com
A bologna shell? Wtf? You scoop out a lump of baloney and stick smashed peas mixed with mayonnaise and jello in the hole?
People did this?
Look at those poor sad people in brown uniforms approaching the door, all eager for the treat, not knowing what they’re going to get. Look at those fiends greeting them with cheery waves.
Remember Kraft® TV commercials?
They ALL had MiracleWhip and miniature marshmallows.
Hey, this was during rationing. Bologna stuffed with peas and mayonnaise WAS a treat, during the era of the Crown Roast of Spare Ribs.
Then there was the Ritz Cracker Mock Apple Pie…
Oh, I guess you’re right – for some reason I was thinking it was the ’50s, and I thought I was joking about the uniforms, but the guests really are in uniform.
Still. I’d rather have baloney with mustard (was mustard rationed?) and some peas than that horror show.
Oh, and I totally missed the “grow more in ’44” button. Doy.
James Lileks has some unpleasant political beliefs but his Gallery of Regrettable Foods is hilarious.
First of all, where do I go to get ahold of a 1.5 lb hunk of bologna?? And those brown uniformed guests? Probably pesky Salvation Army “missionaries” that the householders got tired of seeing at their door whenever there was a knock.
“This’ll get rid of ’em.”
Yes, Al (7), the Gallery of Regrettable Foods is great, and as a side dish, I would recommend Steve Don’t Eat It (http://www.thesneeze.com/steve-dont-eat-it/) from The Sneeze, and for dessert, a small helping of Cracked.com (http://www.cracked.com/funny-3174-why-other-countries-hate-us-chicken-in-can/). Ah, Sweet Sue…Whole Chicken in a Can!
Some of the pictures from that last analysis are missing, but most of them seem to be from here, if you’re interested: https://web.archive.org/web/20090426052346/http://ihatemymessageboard.com/2009/04/23/a-whole-chicken-in-a-can
This product has many fans:
http://davescupboard.blogspot.com/2012/06/sweet-sue-canned-whole-chicken.html
Best deadpan comment: And by the pic you posted, you seem to have gotten a good one.
People are strange animals O_O
And for dessert: A Lime Jello Marshmallow Cottage Cheese Surprise!
Yeeee-ikes. Also aieeeeeee. And people wonder why there was no obesity epidemic in the Good Old Days.
lol that’s for sure. “No, thank you, I couldn’t possibly, that was plenty.”
I am pleased to report that I survived the entirety of WWII without eating:
1. Bologna cooked in any form.
2. Campbell’s tomato soup in any form.
3. Canned peas in any form.
On the other hand, I did have to endure:
1. Margarine.
2. Miracle Whip.
3. More turkey than anyone should have to consume.
@7
Yes James Lileks has plenty of stuff like this. He also has sections about regrettable architecture and regrettable fashions that utterly cringe-worthy.
What do they do with the scooped out centre of the bologna? Feed it to the goldfish?
I third the vote for Lileks, which I was going to link to if someone hadn’t beaten me to it.
Decker @13
They could have made soup out of it.
Its says to use the scooped bologna for sandwiches. I’ve seen a women’s mag from 46-47 which was loaded with recipes just as gut-churning. My grandmother remembered the post war streets swarming with pregnant girls, trying to be domestic goddesses after war rationing and the depression.
I imagine the effect was even worse in England, where rationing continued for years after the war.
@16 johnthe drunkard,
“I imagine the effect was even worse in England,”
Yes, it was, I can remember immigrants from the UK who had arrived in the 1950s saying how amazed they were at the amount of food available, particularly fresh fruit. In October 2013 the Red Cross launched the first emergency food aid program for Britain since WW2 because so many Brits have been impoverished by the government’s ‘austerity’ program. Incredible!
are you supposed to eat this, or use it as a Halloween decoration?
it’s a lot scarier than any damn pumpkin, that’s for sure.
uh, you’ve never been to a deli?
Mayonnaise?!?!? BARF-A-RONI. I would have starved to death in the 1940s if that’s all there was to eat.
Yes, people did eat that sort of thing. I’ve had a whole lot of variations on that theme. If your hungry enough it isn’t half bad. It didn’t kill me.
Slightly before my time but in the 30s a whole lot of people were glad to have food of any description. You also might remember that during the war there was rationing of pretty much everything and a lot of families were limited in their choices by low pay. In 1944 a single buck private made $420 a year. Given the tax breaks and deductions it comes to about $3.600 in todays money.
From:
http://www.usmm.org/barrons.html
So those folks smiling and happy to get fed Super Salad Loaf are likely in the military. The low pay was the reason most military posts had their own housing, theaters, barbers, grocery stores and exchanges. On military pay they couldn’t afford to shop on the civilian market. On base a movie was $.15 and a sandwich and a drink $.25. Off base it was two or three times that much.
In the 40s it wasn’t uncommon for a lot of guys to save but $5 or $10 out of their paycheck for folding money and send the rest back home to support their folks. Until the 60s bases were essentially self contained communities where an enlisted man could live very cheaply. You slept in a barracks so no rent, got your meals from the mess for free, uniforms were provided, and most everything else a young an might need, outside booze, gambling and female companionship, was cheap. Poor pay did more to promote clean living than an army of scolds and preachers. After that first weekend with money burning a hole in your pocket it was straight and narrow for most.
I can top that crown roast of spare ribs. In this cookbook http://www.amazon.com/Culinary-Arts-Institute-Encyclopedic-Cookbook/dp/0399513884 (both my mother’s 1962 edition and my 1982 edition) there is a crown roast of wieners, with a string poked through them at the top and bottom, tied so they form a palisade that curves attractively out at the top like those fences around gated communities. I made one once because it was so amusing to me reading about it when I was a kid, and filled it with hot German potato salad. With top-quality sausages it was not that bad, but what a silly recipe.
Also, I can think of better low-ration-point things to do with spare ribs, but I would totally eat that Burgundy-marinated stuffed beef heart in the corner of the page, being a fan of organ meats in general and beef heart in specific.
I was inconsolable – cried for hours I’ve been told – when National Margarine was withdrawn in the late 40s. By today’s standards it was probably horrible but I’d rarely tasted butter: what I did know then was the small, hand-made batch from a local farm and then shared, but rarely available as milk production and use was part of the war effort. That very fresh butter has a far sharper taste than “shop” butter.
The elaborate and aesthetically challenged constructions began, probably in the urban C19 but were boosted in the 1930’s as a means of making a meal look grander and more substantial than it actually was – the eye fooling the digestive system. To do that you either go heavy – lots of starchy carbs which the body tires of – or fancy but with little substance. Also, there is some nourishment in gelatine!
Recipe books of the mid-twentieth century still amaze me and I lived through some of it.
I made about $300 a month as a single buck private in 1971. That was about $3600 per year in 1971 money!