Purgatory Smith and his Ailing Leg

 Here for Jon is my next post - THE WATKINS COOKBOOK!

Is it the Rawleigh Cookbook?  No it is not. Now, I have owned the Rawleigh Cookbook in the past and I might have one now, but that would mean getting up from Command Central here and digging through my bookshelves, which I am not going to do because I am snuggled in with my modern Jazz and my Big Ballard.  Anyway I already took the pictures for the Watkins one.

                                       

              

Oh no wait it's the Rawleigh one. OK then.

So anyway, Rawleigh. It was a door-to-door sales outfit that purveyed ink, veterinary nostrums, patent medicines, cleaning agents, herbs, spices, extracts and whatever else shit.  Their old bottles are pretty collectible. I've owned a few over the years, in fact - a Beef Extract and

- well who gives a shit. Anyway, if you put in an order, they'd include one of these cookbooks for free!  

They put a lot of thought into them, too.  Rawleigh assumed very little cooking experience, expecting that new brides (who presumably didn't know squat) and cheap mother-in-laws (who couldn't be bothered to buy a birthday gift for the trollop who married their angel, oh but look I've got this thing lying around, I'll just wrap it for the bitch) would be the ones most appreciative of this offering . They also assumed total ignorance on the part of the buyer with the concept of 'flavor' - and once again, they nailed it. If you lived someplace like Pollock, California, Spangle, Washington, or Lastine, Oregon, this being the late 1950's, you were very unlikely to have grown up eating much other than Vegetation and Things in Cloudy Water.  Consequently, these recipes are dead simple.  

Incidentally, all the same things can be said for The Watkins Co. Cookbook. It's around here somewhere.

BAM SHAKALAKA we got a message from the desk of hang on. 

We got a message from the president of the company!!!  

I mean read this over. If they still wrote copy like this I'd have an empty bank account.  All these years later I'm thinking 'My, what a nice fellow.  OO and look, company letterhead!'  You can also see the date of publication - 1959.

Now let's get to the recipes and pictures. Mainly the pictures. 

This is a classic of advertising photography IMHO.  And the staging - it doesn't get more 'Heartland, home and family' than this stuff.

Let's begin with the absolutely dead basic

ROAST BEEEEEF.

Behold - roast beef!  You wipe it down and throw it in the oven. Just add a sprinkle of salt and pepper.  Rawleighs pepper.

Pork done well develops it's best flavor. You know why? Because it kills all the roundworms. Nobody wants raw roundworm. You gotta cook pork well done because pork in the 1950s is crawling with trichinosis, which is roundworm, and it'll crawl out of that underdone meat while you're still chewing and eat straight through your cheeks.  Incinerate that pork so you don't die of encephalitis, which is when roundworms crawl around in your central nervous system and your brain and eyes and shit. No, like, they actually shit, and lay eggs, and chew holes in your brain, and die and float around in you. 

Why are we cutting and slashing and doing this stuff with pineapple juice to this leg of lamb?  What provoked this?  And listen - I live in Dilly freakin' Oregon. Population 301. Where do I come by Dry Burgundy out this way in the 1950s? 

Nowhere. That's where.

Let's take a second look at the finished product.  I mean...

OK this might not be a triumph of food photography.

Yikes sorry sorry sorry that was frightening. OK. Here. Look at this nice ham on this pretty dinner table. And breeeeeeeeeeathe.

 

Ah, but then....we have THIS ^^^. What the fuck is this.  Why does it look like a giant tick.

WHAT THE FUCK IS THIS.

 

Now here is Mr. Rawleigh getting all Ethnic on us. 

We are not going to dwell too much on the olive plate to the right. We are not juvenile. 

It's just an oval.

 It's fine.

Here we are back again in the Land of the Bland WTFs. I hope none of you are from Maryland. That is not how that recipe is supposed to go.

I know this is an emotional roller coaster.

Now see, this is pretty. I like this.  I don't know what to think about the dish of tiny weenises to the lower left there, but it's not all weenises, and look; there's a dish of crudites, which is French for 'hard throbbing vegetables.'  

It is. 

That's what it means.

And here is the recipe.  And also a recipe for freakin' LOBSTER SAUCE.  You know what, Rawleigh, I live in Wapato, Washington and it's 1959. 

Where the fuck am I supposed to come up with LOBSTER SIR. 

For BASS. 

FOR BASS.

Shh shh OK I'm fine, I'll calm down. See?  Here's some nice average stuff that your mom might make you for lunch, and you would be happy.

Ignore the Ham Salad Mousse.

Ignore the Molded Vegetable Salad, and particularly ignore the Jellied Vegetable Salad. 

IGNORE IT.

Here we are again at a wonderful piece of food staging artistry. I love everything about this picture.  I love the butter bowl and I love the rolling pin, and I love the shiny, shiny bread products, and the tablecloth.  The recipe is fine. It makes the slightly gloopy kind of white bread that Franz Bakery used to make back in the 1960s. I figure that's due to the shortening.

Aw, it's Easter!

And Peter Rabbit is out there with the Hot Cross Buns and the marmalade and the strawberry jam! He's headed straight for the butter!

With his tongue hanging out, mad as hell, ready to chew some human faces, followed by his band of  beakless baby fowl!

I put this in because Blueberry Pie is my favorite pie.  

 

At the very end you get a page on how to use spices, which is adorable.

You also get two pages about vitamins.

Unless you are standing in a meadow literally chewing on a cow, your food is falling far short and its mostly your fault because you cook, and cooking sucks. 

Vegetables are not your friend, they do not like you, they deliberately belch all their food value into the aether leaving you with nothing but a wad of plant cellulose while the god of plants laughs at your plight.  

Even the Sun hates you. 

Malnutrition looms.  

Listen. You live way out in the country and its 1959. You already have a lot to worry about when it comes to recognizably human offspring. See, and here you don't even realize that you're nutritionally deficient and a menace to the future, you ignorant clodhopper. But you are.

Do you want to have mutated babies? Do you want to have a kid that looks like a possum?  Or a clam? Because you will - if they make it nine months. Thats right. 

YOUR BABY IS PROBABLY GOING TO CROAK.

Why can't Johnny read? Look at the shit you let him eat. 

You see Grandpa over there suffering from lactation, infections, worry, fear, pregnancy, lack of sleep, rapid growth, fractures, surgery, and change of climate??? BITCH HE NEEDS OUR VITAMINS.

So yeah. 

This is the back cover. 

And this is a pair of salt and peppers that look like dolphins, and the salt comes out of a hole in the middle of the dolphins' face.

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The Rawleigh Company is still in business!

    

Same content as Ken but way less classy

Why in God's name is Trump fucking with Canada?

    Welcome to our political nightmare, world. The inmates are in charge here and we are freaking out.

Canada is fantastic. Canada is beautiful. I honestly do not know a single American person who is not secretly jealous of the Canadian system, the social supports, the free health care, and the positive reputation of her citizens. It's why we lie and say we're Canadian when we travel abroad - particularly these days.  The people of Canada are our neighbors and friends!  Shit, your dog can wander into Canada, and the Mounties will help you look for it!  This actually happened to me! Thats how excellent and chill the Canadian people are!
                                         

  15. "It’s like being a kid and witnessing your father in a drunk stupor trying to fight your best friend’s dad. It’s embarrassing and horrible."

-Buzzfeed, 'Americans Are Sharing Their Unfiltered Thoughts About Canada During This Wild, Political Beef Going On, And It's Jaw-Dropping'     

I am ashamed as an American and as a human being that the vile, posturing lunatic currently in office has stooped to rattling his tiny sabre toward our Canadian neighbors. Trumps' appalling public pronouncements and outbursts are NOT emblematic of what the vast majority of the American people think, and are certainly not representative of the way that we view Canada. Nobody hates Canada! These comments from Buzzfeed say it all, and I agree with it all, including the thing about geese.

 

18. "I believe the whole Canadian tariff and 51st State thing is a false flag to cause outrage and distract us all from the actual crimes and destruction of our democracy. It’s a coup, folks, and nobody is stopping them." 

-Buzzfeed, 'Americans Are Sharing Their Unfiltered Thoughts About Canada During This Wild, Political Beef Going On, And It's Jaw-Dropping'  

We here in the U.S. know and agree that Trumps Canadian attacks are bullshit, utterly senseless, cheap, and demented. 

We also know that the hand up that orange muppet's ass belongs to Putin. We know Trump is and always has been nothing but an attention whore, a criminal and a tool, a wealthy, balding Karen addled by painkillers and cortizone injections, nothing but a mouthpiece for the foreign interests who invested so heavily in his campaign and bought him the Presidency. 

                                                                     I speak for the majority. 

Not the sullen, diabetic misogynists who peaked in high school, not the daddys' girls wearing 'Grope Me Mr. President' hats as they march up the aisle in their camo bridal gowns. I mean the 99 percent of us. The people who have actually read a book.

 

   "His Holiness the Pope surrounded himself with none but craven guzzlers, gross pretenders and a host of fawning dignitaries who grimaced through their days at court with no more grace than beggars I had entertained in days gone by — though they had neither choice nor wit to rise above themselves and in that they had a reason.

Oh that I had ways to surely serve their putrid masquerades and twittery to make a dragon from the very menagerie within the Vatican itself."

-Leonardo Da Vinci, who knew a fraud when he saw one      

Canadians out there past and present, you are right to be offended. We're with you. I'm with you.  

                                                                RESIST THIS PRICK!

A Big Ol' Heap of Genitalia

Here are some chicken boobs.

                                         I mean dang, those are some chicken boobs right there. 

I really wish I'd spent more time polishing the last two posts, but I felt that if I didn't get it out there for the record, I would have skipped over the whole thing and posted some stupid shit about villainous breakfast cereal  or the super chunky results you get when you search nonsense words like mabooga.  That would have been in character. That would have been so easy to do. 

I don't like to come here and reveal a lot about myself. I was guilty of that shit at times back in the day, I'll admit, but by now, I figure if you don't know me by now, you will never ever ever, ever ever know me. I have moved the fuck on; and now here I am with a pile of unread cookbooks and this immense transformative experience that just happened to me.

So let's recap quickly.  I went through eighteen years of hell. Mental, physical and sexual abuse and neglect. You want details; shit, visit any website devoted to childhood abuse, read the accounts (or maybe don't because ew) and pick any three horror stories. It probably applies to me.

What I've been mostly silent about is that the bullshit did not stop when I was eighteen, nor did it stop after I was officially kicked out of the family when I was 25. No, my parents handed that job over to my cousin here in town, who enthusiastically maintained a campaign of petty harassment against my husband, my daughter and myself that lasted from 1985 until that man's death two years ago. 

No shit.

It was nothing more than a lot of low-level invasions of privacy over the years, but always intrusive enough to make me aware of the fact that he was still out there, the sniggering prick, fucking with me on behalf of my family of origin.

    This dude ^^^. President of an investment/personal finance company, philanthropist, occasional member of city government, net worth in the millions. This grown-ass man with multiple degrees stooped to the level of stalking my daughter, among many other things.

   

Meanwhile, I was in therapy.  There was a big emphasis on 'ceremonial acts of closure' back in those days. Doing things like writing letters to dead abusers, naming objects after memories or events and then burning them, revisiting the scene of the crime and destroying an object from those dark days there.  I'd always sneered at that idea because it sounded too much like religion to me. It turns out, those symbolic gestures are important. That hindbrain stuff has to happen. I was drawn to write that memoriam in defiance of whatever dignity I retain. Certainly despite my better judgement. Once I got started it just rolled out of me unstoppably. And I hit 'post'.

Then came the next day, when, in an un-self-conscious state of mind, a shadow over me that I had not realized was there simply peeled away and left me forever. I was high for the rest of that day, and all through the next, and the next, and I am now; on what I do not know, but I am different, and lighter.

 Maybe there are some of you out there who need to know about this. That's why I'm revisiting this event for emphasis. I want to tell you people out there, I want you to know, you adults who were tormented as children, that yes, goddammit, there comes a time that you not only know, intellectually, that it's really done and over, but that your body finally realizes that it's over too, and releases all its clenched muscles and bug-out plans and hypervigilance, and chills the fuck out; and you FLY.

ANYWAY.   

On to the big ol' heap of genitalia.  

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Big ol' heap of genetalia

OH HOLY SHIT oh goddamn oh fuck I did not expect whatever that is.  Don't look at that. 

But that's what comes up when  you search 'Big ol' heap of genitalia'. 

This is close to what I was expecting to find:

Did you ever imagine in your youth that there would ever, ever be such a thing as cartoon animal porn?  I mean look at this mess. This is all alien blue-veiner and pterodactyls and buttholes of something.

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HOLY CRAPBALLS BATMAN or whoever

 The most amazing thing has happened to me. Absolutely amazing. Utterly amazing.

OK so I wrote that last post, and I was all verklempt, because writing that 'memoriam' had taken a lot out of me.  You can tell that I was rattled when I posted. The writing is not well thought out and I'm all over the place. That whole fucked-up 'thing' that had been hanging over my life gave me a last few feeble kicks that evening, is what happened.

I slept out the last of it in some sad dreams that night. 

I woke up the next morning and began my day, and did my ordinary stuff, and then, as it closed in on 2:30 in the afternoon

IT ALL JUST DIED AND LIFTED AWAY.  

It was the most astounding sensation you can imagine.  When people say 'the weight of the world suddenly lifted off my shoulders' that shit is literally what it feels like. It is a real sensation. Everything slowed down, one, two, three, as a huge, huge, huge psychic weight simply rose up off me and dissipated.

Today I am still walking around in that astounding head space. Everything looks bigger. The world feels wide open. I can see everything.

 Years ago, I fell in love at first sight, and that is exactly what this feels like - minus the falling in love part, but the feeling of all the doors and windows of the world being opened.

   

Pastrami on rye with kosher dill pickles:  Peak spiritual experience 

So you know what I did?  I pulled the trigger on that Star Trek Cooking manual. 

Fuck yeah. I'm worth it. 

Unpleasantly unpleasant

 

Well, I went ahead and did it.  I had been promising myself I'd do it for decades. What I did was leave a painfully true 'In Memoriam' on my fathers' obituary page.

I feel small and mean spirited at the same time that I feel decades of women and girls inside me cheering wildly.

I won't post a link to it here because who needs that shit.  I've done enough posting for one evening anyway. I wouldn't even have done it except that I read the other 'memoriam' post and it was, just, a complete work of fantasy.  Some random niece  looked at what a lifetime of dissimulation and familial denial wrought and wrote a spun sugar account of my parents marriage and my late fathers' character - and it lit me OFF. Just thinking how this kid had bought the whole, alcoholic family LIE.  Thinking about all the shabby, shitty treatment I've endured over the years from this revolting group of people - like I said, it lit me off.  

My feeling is, OK. That side, they had their say.  Now I've had my say.  And only six people have visited the site since he passed away so what the fuck does it matter in the long run.

Honestly, I have been having a wonderful life these days. I never think of this shit, or if I do, it's without bitterness. It happened a long time ago and I spent a lot of time in therapy getting straightened out, and it worked. 

But damn.  Just DAMN. 

Bat Soup With Quinoa and 1 Bug in it

 Where have I been?  Freaking the fuck out about Trump is where.   

The cost of things has absolutely skyrocketed.  Many social services are at a standstill.  Businesses are firing people. 

And we're about to retire in a few months. 

                       !!!! SO LETS TALK ABOUT COOKBOOKS !!!

This month I said to myself 'Self, let's buy you a Valentines gift' so I bought myself a pile of used cookbooks online yesterday and now I can't remember the names of them all.  Well, I remember one - Sunset's Kitchen Cabinet cookbook from (1935?)

I collect vintage Sunset cookbooks, and this one has been on my list for years!

Tell me you wouldn't buy this. HA. You can't. You would totally buy this. 

    

Thing is, I was supposed to buy a baby shower gift for a friend of mine.  Off I trotted (figuratively) to her online baby registry, which refused to co-operate and pissed me off, and now I have to wait and try it again in another week, don't ask me why. I may just buy her a gift card and send it snail mail. ANYWAY.  So there I was looking at my credit card balance, and I thought to myself 'Self, you can't take it with you.' And then...I must have entered some sort of fugue state. 

Yeah. That sounds good.

Thing is, I have two in my cart over at Abe Books, marinating, waiting for that 'Hey Nations! Get 20% off what's in your cart if you purchase now!' notification.  Well worth waiting for are these:

The Biker and I are rabid Tony Bourdain fanatics and this is going to take a place of honor our bookshelves!

I have been wanting this since the freakin' 1970's, when I could have bought it for a buck ninety five, it looks like. Now? I am spending way, way too much money on it and I don't care.  

Yes it's available for free online. 

THAT'S NOT THE SAME.

And remember, I have all these waiting on me too:

I guess this is a predicament I look forward to having. 

WHAT ARE YOUR FAVORITE COOKBOOKS?  Answer at length in the comments!!

...or the passive aggressive twat who drives this car that I spotted in Lynden will come chew on your doorknob at night!

Time to chill

                                                   

  It's time to chill and get my tits together, y'all    

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Now I love an indoor Inauguration as much as the next person, but I'd feel a lot better about this one if this bitch >>>

lovelovelove kizzeskizzeskizzes

  ...were the ho about to get the Golden Presidential sceptre/Bamix.  

 Because Lady Bunny is NOT going to be the next President, I am expecting the next four years to be retrograde fucking progress for 3/4 of the citizens of the world, because it's still a sad but true-ism:  whither goeth the USA shalt the rest of the hithers go.  

_______________________________________________________________________     

OK FINE FINE FINE.

OK.

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Were you thinking of car detailing as a nice side hustle?

Consider the downside before you invest!

"Just a sec," sang Dee "Judy's checking out my rack!"

"Here's a wet-wipe," said Desiree. "Now try to act surprised when they get here." 

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      Last summer (what evocative words!) I purchased a number of very carefully selected books that I was going to read over this Winter. Have I read them?  I've read one.

Halfway.

You wanna see a picture of the rest?

  All those books stacked up on the floor ^^^. And no, I didn't stand around and wait for the TV to float me a provocative bit of subtitling - it just did it itself.    

So yeah. 

You know what I have read?  A lot of vintage Sci-Fi, is what. Lummox-heavy, female-denigrating, actually-bullet-shaped-rockets with little fireworks-fins on them spaceship-flying Science Fiction, 

- oh and let's not forget! SCIENTIFICALLY FUCKING WRONG science fiction. With bad illustrations.

Ate that shit up.

ATE IT UP.

Oh and hand me that complete Riverworld collection.

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Another thing I did was get way into a genre of music known as Yacht Rock.  

"Holy God Olaf we are rockin' in the free world on this yacht."

"Yes Ivy, this is the Good Life indeed, with a capital 'Cocaine'.  It's why I shaved my legs."

Yacht Rock is 1970's - early 1980's happy, poppy rock that did not require you to sit in a dark room with a bunch of candles going, but did require that you have a shit-ton of posters and they were of peace signs, mushrooms and wizards. 

Hello I'm k d lang.  

Top yacht Rock groups are Hall and Oates, CSNY, Toto, and Ambrosia.

The song "Baby Come Back" by Player is a Yacht Rock anthem.

The song "How Deep Is Your Love" by the BeeGees is quintessentially Yachty in tone.

Anything by Atlanta Rhythm Section is Yacht Rock.

 

Why the yacht?  Because. 

Picture it.  It's 1978. It is a beautiful day. You don't have any communicable diseases, and you're hanging out on your yacht. It is quite possible that you've had a couple of cocktails and the hint of a spliff; and you need some tunes, and "Oh hey dude leave this on, I love this song by Firefall/Toto/ Little River Band...."

Ahhhhh.  

Listen to the whales. 

Scrape some barnacles off your hull.

Yacht Rock.

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                In direct competition with Jon, I present my own Camp As Tits video selection:  

                                   Yachty as fuck 

                                             FATHER FIGURE 

                                                          by George Michaels

                                               

Yeah!  I can feel that tide rising, kids. The gulls are calling and the buoys are rockin'! Other nautical puns! Now if you will excuse me I am going to hang out on this yacht and pretend that Trump isn't president again! DAMMIT OLAF BRING ME A NEGRONI