Oh, The Glamourous Life!

Dear Constant Reader,

It’s my birthday tomorrow and I have a gift for you!

When I made Sub-Gum Chop Suey from The Mandarin Cook Book, I also made Pineapple Salad. It was too weird to pass up! Usually I only share these vintage cooking videos with my Patrons, but thanks to my kind sponsor, Emporium 32, I’m making this little bonus video public! Enjoy!

If you want more like this, consider becoming a Patron. With more Patrons, I can get some better video equipment, like the microphone I clearly need.

Pineapple Salad
Original Recipe
Boil 3 cups bean sprouts in pineapple juice. Cover with mayonnaise dressing, flavored slightly with Chinese sauce. Sprinkle with chopped nut meats and garnish with Kumquats cut in quarters.

Mina’s Version
Simmer 1 cup bean sprouts in 1 cup pineapple juice until tender. Drain and let cool. Blend 3 tablespoons mayo with 1 teaspoon soy sauce and add enough to the bean sprouts to lightly coat. Sprinkle with 1 tablespoon toasted slivered almonds and garnish with citrus sections.

These writings and other creative projects are supported by my 15 Patrons. Thank you so much! To become a Patron, go to my Patreon page. Or you can just tip me if you liked this.

Dear Constant Reader,

One of my Advisor Committee tier supporters on Patreon, Adrienne F.,  requested a recipe from the 1920s. I first grabbed a Photoplay cookbook, full of recipes from movie stars of the era, but no dish jumped out at me. Then I remembered I had another Jazz Age cookbook.

The full title is Mandarin Chop Suey Cook Book containing authentic translation of the best recipes of leading Chinese chefs and directions for preparing various popular and healthful Chinese dishes exactly as they are prepared in the Orient. You can take all that with as much salt as you like… It was published by The Pacific Trading Company in Chicago in 1928.

Once again, I have made a video of cooking this dish for my Patrons.

You will need meat (I used boneless pork chops), oil, celery, water chestnuts, bamboo shoots, green pepper, mushrooms, pimentos, soy sauce, corn starch, water, and almonds.

Everything should be sliced thinly,  then brown the meat in a pan with some oil. Then add the celery, water chestnuts, and bamboo shoots and cook for ten minutes. I though this was excessive, and feared the meat would get tough, but followed the instructions to the letter.

Then add the green pepper and mushrooms. At this point the recipes says to simmer until tender. There’s no liquid to simmer. I wonder if you were supposed to add some stock as well, as is done in some of the other chop suey recipes in the book.

Next we add the pimentos and some “Chinese sauce”, which I assumed to be soy sauce, as well as salt and pepper (I skipped the salt because the soy sauce should be salty enough). Lastly some cornstarch in an unspecified amount of water, which would thicken any liquid, but there wasn’t any. Again, an argument for adding some stock earlier in the cooking process. 

Serve with chopped almonds on top or mixed in.

It was pretty good, but I would make a few changes if I cooked it again. My fears that the meat would become tough from overcooking were realized and the entire dish really wanted to be saucier. Some of the other recipes in the book said to cook the meat until “half-cooked” and then add the vegetables. Others added half a cup of stock after the vegetables. Both of these would be an improvement. I’d probably also add onions and bean sprouts (and skip the green pepper!), but that’s just my personal taste.

Here’s the original recipe, exactly as writ.

Sub-Gum Chop Suey
(4-6 persons)

1 lb. meat (pork or beef)
1 green pepper
1/2 can pimentos
1/2 cup chopped celery
1 doz. water chestnuts
1 doz. almonds
1/2 cup bamboo shoots
1 doz. white mushrooms
3 tablespoons Chinese sauce
1 tablespoon cornstarch

Meat should be cut real small, also all the vegetables.

Have your skillet well greased and hot before you fry the meat. When meat is brown put in the celery, water chestnuts and bamboo shoots. Cook for ten minutes, then add green peppers, mushrooms and let it simmer until tender. Lastly, add chopped pimento, Chinese sauce and a little salt and pepper. Mix cornstarch with cold water and add to the chop suey. You can sprinkle the chopped almonds on top or mix it in the chop suey.

These writings and other creative projects are supported by my 15 Patrons. Thank you so much! To become a Patron, go to my Patreon page. Or you can just tip me if you liked this.

Dear Constant Reader,

Earlier this year I came across The Nineteenth Amendment Centennial Cookbook: 100 Recipes for 100 Years. I was thrilled to discover it contained the recipe for the original Girl Scout cookies. I was a Girl Scout for some years and selling cookies was a huge part of it. In fact, one year every girl in my troop had to each sell 200 boxes to help finance a trip we were taking. I can’t imagine baking the cookies as well as selling them! But I had to see what they tasted like.

If you’re one of my Patrons, you can see a video of me baking and then trying these cookies.

You need…

flour, sugar, butter, baking powder, eggs, vanilla, salt, and milk.

Cream the butter and sugar together. Beat the eggs and stir in. Add the milk and vanilla, and then the flour, baking powder, and salt. Mix well.

Wrap the dough in plastic wrap and chill for an hour.

Roll out the dough and cut into shapes. The recipe says trefoils, the Girl Scout emblem, but I don’t have a trefoil cutter and I wasn’t going to free-hand it with a knife. I used a heart-shaped cookie cutter Scratch made for me (awwwww….). The dough was really sticky and I needed a fair bit of additional flour to roll it out. After I cut the cookies, I decided to throw them in the fridge for 15 minutes to firm up before baking.

I sprinkled the cookies with a little sugar and popped them in a 375F oven until the edges browned, 8-10 minutes, then let them cool on a rack. They had spread a little bit in the baking and the heart shapes were no longer so distinct.

How did they taste? Well, like sugar cookies. Crispy around the edges and soft in the middle. Perfectly delicious sugar cookies. If I made them again (and I might), instead of rolling out the dough and using cookie cutters, I’d form the dough into small balls and flatten them with the bottom of a glass dipped in sugar.

Original Girl Scout Cookies
1 cup (2 sticks) butter
1 cup sugar
2 eggs
2 Tablespoons milk
1 teaspoon vanilla
2 cups flour
1 teaspoon salt
2 teaspoons baking powder

Cream butter and sugar.
Add well-beaten egg.
Then add milk, vanilla, flour, salt, and baking powder.
Refrigerate for at least 1 hour.
Roll out dough, cut into trefoil shapes, and sprinkle sugar on top
Bake in a quick oven (375F) for about 8-10 minutes, until edges begin to brown.
Cool and serve!

EDIT: I’ve since found the original recipe, without commentary from the above cookbook. It omits the salt and the directions are:

Cream butter and sugar; add well-beaten eggs, then milk, flavoring, flour, and baking powder. Roll thin and bake in quick oven. (Sprinkle sugar on top.)

This amount makes six to seven dozen.

These writings and other creative projects are supported by my 11 Patrons. Thank you so much! To become a Patron, go to my Patreon page. Or you can just tip me if you liked this.

Dear Constant Reader,

Today is Memorial Day, when many people usually have a barbecue or potluck to celebrate the start of summer.* That’s not going to happen so much this year. I’m going to make a few canapés and hors d’oeuvres for two to enjoy in the backyard with some cocktails. This recipe takes me back to my childhood.

When I first had these tasty bites, they were made by Mary Browne, a friend of my parents. Mary was a great hostess and many of her dishes that guests praised highly were simpler than you might think**. This was one of them. It’s so simple, there isn’t even really a recipe.

You need cocktail rye, chopped onion, mayonnaise, and Swiss cheese.

Spread some mayo on a slice of the bread. Sprinkle it with chopped onion. Top it with a piece of cheese the same size as the bread and stick the whole thing under the broiler until the cheese bubbles. That’s it!

Serve them piping hot. Something magical happens when you heat everything up. Even if you think you don’t like mayonnaise or raw onion, you might like these.

You can, of course, use any kind of bread you have, but cut an average-sized slice into quarters. Similarly, use any kind of sliced or shredded cheese you like. No onion? Any allium will do (but go light if you’re using garlic). I’ve seen variants on this that add seasoning the mayo or add other ingredients (like crumbled bacon!) to the onion, but I’m kind of a purist.

I think I’m also going to make a few Bedroll Specials and some White Bean Dip to have with crudité. Are you making anything special today?

These writings and other creative projects are supported by my Patrons. Thank you so much! To become a Patron, go to my Patreon page. Or you can just tip me if you liked this.

* I have nothing against a holiday weekend celebrating the start of summer; I just wish it wasn’t the day we are supposed to honor our military dead.
**The exception was her amazing angel biscuits. She even gave me the recipe and I couldn’t get it right.