I sometimes wonder why we Baby Boomer are so obsessed by food. We idolize the Top Chefs and love to try new food at trendy restaurants. We spend our nights watching the Food Network and we search for the ultimate hot sauce. But why?
It all began to make sense to me recently when I decided to clean out the hall closet. That’s where I found a box that I stored there when my mom moved into my sister’s house. The box was labeled “recipes.” My mom, an avid reader of magazines like “Redbook” was an inveterate clipper of recipes, and reviewing the contents of this box was like going through our dinnertime menus from the 1960s.
With a jolt, I remembered the “Seven Seas Casserole.” A staple on meatless Fridays, it consisted of canned tuna, canned salmon, canned peas, minute rice and cream of mushroom soup. According to the recipe, the addition of crushed Cheetos on top made it “special enough for company!”
Was this really how we ate vegetables 40 years ago? I found a recipe for “cabbage toss” made with shredded Brussel’s sprouts and Velveeta and “cauliflower surprise” made with mashed cauliflower and canned baked beans. (Surprise!) I vividly remembered the 7-layer salad made with peas, zucchini, celery, carrots, iceberg lettuce and vast amounts of Miracle Whip. Many of these recipes attempted to disguise vegetables as something else so “the kiddies learn to eat healthy!” which involved boiling fresh vegetables down to mush and then sautéing them in bacon grease and sprinkling bread crumbs on top.
I remember my mom went through a disconcerting phase where she put raisins into everything she cooked. During this unfortunate era it was not unusual to bite into a meatball or a forkful of mashed potatoes and discover a raisin. I always wondered at the roots of this but then I found a recipe advising the “daring cook” to “dress up everyday veggies” by throwing in a handful of raisins. The same article advised her to “entice the kiddies to eat their liver” by drowning it in maple syrup.
Apparently the 1960’s housewife was on a quest for the perfect meatloaf: I found an entire binder of meatloaf recipes. The meatloaf layer cake (layers of meatloaf with mashed potatoes in between and on top) speaks for itself, but a standout was the “Gay Summertime Meatloaf” in which whole hard boiled eggs and bananas were cooked inside the loaf for a “whimsical summertime treat!”
Nowadays, the mere mention of “casserole” can make me gag, and seeing the number of recipes for casseroles made me realize why. These were generally horrid combinations of ingredients that even the producers of “Top Chef” would never consider, all held together by a can of Campbell’s Cream of Something soup, and usually with crushed breakfast cereal on top.
By far my favorite recipes were the ones that Americanized foreign cuisine. This was how I found a recipe for shrimp curry made with applesauce and cumin, and what was billed as a “Korean Dinner” which was basically canned Chun-King vegetables over Minute Rice with a fried egg on top. This was where I also found a recipe for “Fiesta Tacos” made with Wonder Bread and catsup (salsa had not yet been invented) and “Poor Man’s Gazpacho” which was Campbell’s tomato soup with the addition of raw onions and carrots and celery, served cold.
Alternately laughing and shuddering at these recipes, it suddenly became abundantly clear to me why we Boomers are so adventurous when it comes to food. After the vile swill that we ate as kids, we’ll try anything.