#6: Nancy Drew and the Case of the Disappearing Appetite

Cooking Prep: Nancy Drew is a bit of a prodigy.  She has spent the last 80 years doing anything and everything she can to solve mysteries for her 'clients': climbing through secret passageways and staircases, chasing ghosts, being chased by evil robots, deciphering puzzles, following strange maps, and 'poking her nose in places where it doesn't belong' - to name a few.  She has solved over 500 cases, and always works pro bono.  Probably because of child labor laws.  According to Wikipedia, later on in her 'career', Nancy was 'often chloroformed into unconsciousness, or rendered defenseless against chokeholds'. I think after the first time I got chloroformed by a stranger, my mystery-solving days would be over.  If I was Nancy Drew, I think my resignation letter would read something like this:

 Ms Peterson,

Sorry I couldn't solve your Mystery of the Tolling Bell. You see, I was poking my nose where it didn't belong - at your bidding mind you - and some fucking guy came up from behind and chloroformed me.  With a goddamned handkerchief...or it could have been a neckerchief.  I'm out.  Done.  You don't pay me enough to put up with this shit...oh wait, you don't pay me at all!  In fact, all you've given me is a lingering chloroform headache and an irreconcilable fear of strangers. Good luck with finding your Old Clock. The real mystery is why you asked a 16 year old to solve this, instead of calling the cops like everyone else who isn't creepy.

Nancy

PS - To what address should I forward my ambulance hospital transport bill? I just learned that my insurance company doesn't take gratitude as payment.

PPS - Try turning off your alarm instead of hitting snooze. Tolling Bell mystery solved.

Later on, when it became 'cool' and 'acceptable' for her to do so, Nancy Drew went off to college, and dragged her boyfriend Ned Peterson along.  It's unclear what she was majoring in, because she spent most of her time away from campus, solving crimes and getting chloroformed.  Hopefully she was able to get her degree and parlay all that sleuthwork experience into a job that pays the bills.

Perhaps the biggest mystery Nancy Drew ever solved was finding the time to write a cookbook.

Cookbook:

Nancy, looking on in disbelief at her own recipes

If I've learned anything from this cookbook, it's that the 70s were a very different time in the kitchen.  For example, food coloring and Worcestershire sauce are core ingredients in almost every recipe. Aside from the occasional onion, 95% of the recipes are fresh fruit or veggi-free.  Tomatoes? Nah, let's throw in a stick of butter, some flour, a cup of sugar, a little Worcestershire sauce, and maybe some chicken, and we have dinner! Oh, don't forget the food coloring! I think a catchphrase for 70s cooking might have also been, 'if it's not canned, it's banned' - in lieu of fresh produce, all the recipes called for mostly canned ingredients. Probably a throwback to the Cold War era - I think any of these recipes could have been made just as easily in a bunker 25 feet underground as in a normal kitchen.  After reading through this book, I'm positive that today's improved life expectancy has nothing to do with new medications and treatments, and everything to do with burning shitty cookbooks like this in a barrel fire.

The most endearing quality of the book is that all of the recipes are named after Nancy Drew books.  This obviously makes for some strange recipe names, like Hidden Staircase Biscuits, Moss-covered Mansion Fruit Gelatin, and Diary Chicken Salad (sounds a little bit too close to diarrhea to me).  The cookbook is divided into different sections: breakfast, lunch, dinner, picnic & patio get-togethers, dessert, refreshing refreshments, holiday secrets, international recipes, and giveaway treats.  Nancy Drew was ready for all occasions, including patio get-togethers.

After another trip to Americas' Food Basket for groceries, we were ready to go!  In keeping with tonight's canned meat theme, we also picked up a can of BBQ-Flavored Vienna Sausages as an appetizer.  I imagine this probably sounds like a terrible food decision to you - me too! Trust me when I say that I'm no stranger to terrible food decisions. I'm like a moth to a morbid obesity flame sometimes: 

Cooking Soundtrack: The Supremes

Theme For the Evening: Canned Meat Glamour Shots:

Cooking Companion:  Katherine Jacobs - long-time friend and canned sausage enthusiast:

Recipes:

Crooked Bannister Corn Bread

2 cups yellow cornmeal
1 cup flour
1 teaspoon salt
4 teaspoons baking powder
1 large or 2 small eggs
1 1/3 cups milk
2 tablespoons butter or margarine
1 tablespoon sugar

Heat the oven to 400F. Blend cornmeal, flour, salt, baking powder, and sugar, and put them into sifter or shaker. 

Beat eggs. Add milk to them and stir. Slowly sift the dry mixture into the eggs and milk, and stir. Melt butter and slowly add to the batter.

Grease a square 8-inch pan or a muffin tin. Pour in the batter, spreading evenly. Bake 15 minutes for muffins and 18 minutes for corn bread. Cut the bread into squares. Makes 12 servings.

Thoughts: We chose this recipe to pair up with the chili we had planned for the main course.  Since we didn't have an 8-inch pan, we decided to substitute in a frying pan.  This was as close as we were going to get to the actual dimensions.  Don't let the mouth-watering picture on the left deceive you - this cornbread was downright awful.  I take the full blame on this one.  Apparently you can't use normal teaspoons when a recipe calls for '4 teaspoons of baking powder?' As I learned, a teaspoon measurement is more like 1/3 the size of the teaspoon I used.  Who knew?  This means I probably used about 12  'measuring' teaspoons worth of baking powder in this recipe.  If you've ever brushed your teeth with baking soda, then you know exactly how this turned out.  NOT delicious.   F+ for ruining part of dinner.  A+ for a great teachable moment at someone else's expense.  I recommend giving it a shot, just make sure you're a bit more proportional with the ingredients than I was.  I bet we could have added food coloring to this recipe, even if it wasn't required (it should have been).

2.  Mysterious Letter Chili

2 medium onions

3 tablespoons cooking oil

2 cans tomatoes

2 cans corned beef

3 1-lb cans kidney beans

1 tablespoon Worcestershire sauce

1 1/2 teaspoons chili powder

Butter or margarine

Heat the oven to 350F.  Peel and chop the onions.  Heat the cooking oil in a large skillet and cook the onion pieces slowly until brown.  Drain liquid from the beans and combine them with the onion.  Tear the corned beef into shreds and place it in the bean and onion mixture.  Add tomatoes, Worcestershire sauce, and chili powder.  Stir the mixture well.

Rub the sides and bottom of a baking dish with softened butter.  Use a ladle to put the chili mixture into the greased dish.  Bake for 30 minutes.  Serves 10-12. 

Thoughts: Only in the 70s would one make a chili without any fresh ingredients (except onions), and then BAKE IT.  Who bakes chili?  The 'mysterious letter' should have been a cease and desist order to the publisher of this cookbook.  Another mystery was why a chili featuring corned beef was the most appetizing main course item in the cookbook.  Both Katherine and I had a deep affection for canned meat, and so we reluctantly decided to give it a shot.  I struggled a bit getting the canned meat open.  Each can comes with a 'key' that you use to 'crank' open the side.  In theory this should be easy - unless you were raised in a more advanced, progressive era that relied on can openers and pull tabs.  It took me about 10 minutes to access my meat (that's what she said).

It was gross.  Well, not entirely gross, but not quite dinner either.  This was in the same vein as Ted Nugent's Santa Fe Soup.  This chili could have easily been a nachos topping, or even a standalone dip of it's own.  I didn't mind the taste, but I was a mildly repulsed that I was eating an almost entirely canned meal.  Please everyone, just make regular chili and avoid this 70s disaster.

3.  Invisible Intruder's Coconut Custard

1 stick (4 ounces) butter
4 eggs
1 1/2 cups sugar
1/2 cup self-rising flour
2 cups milk
1 teaspoon vanilla flavoring
1 7-oz package flaked coconut
1 cup Worcestershire sauce (just kidding)

Heat the over to 350F.  Melt the butter.  Break eggs into a bowl, beat and add sugar, flour, milk, melted butter, vanilla, and coconut.  Stir well.  Grease a baking dish and pour in the mixture.  Bake 50 minutes. Serves 6-8.

Thoughts: I cannot lie - this recipe was chosen because of it's name.  This intruder was far from invisible, however - it was actually very good! Far better than the custard I tried a week ago.  After two fails during dinner, we were really not in the mood to enjoy this dessert.  This is a great recipe if you like sugar and coconut.  It's a beautiful marriage. Unfortunately I was stuck with a huge vat of it in my fridge, which I proceeded to eat through in two days.  I don't regret any of it - except maybe the midnight custard sweats.

Verdict:

Sometimes a picture says a billion words:

Not even sriracha could save this meal.  Trust me, we tried.  We probably should have ordered pizza, but we're troopers.  And gluttons for punishment.

If I learned anything from this cooking session, it's STAY AWAY FROM ANY 1970s COOKBOOK - it was apparently a very Dark Age in cooking.

Grades:

Cookbook Variety: C- (bad lunches, worse dinners, OK desserts)
Cost: B- (canned food gets expensive!  Thankfully not expensive outlier ingredients)
Ease & Time of Preparation: C+ (it took 20 minutes to open the can of corned beef!)
Taste: F- = (stay away or get takeout)

Bonus Grade:

Baking Powder Consumption: A+

Overall Grade: C- (A- if you're Ted Nugent)