Happy Belated Osmosis

 I have just come back from an

Our ship blew up and everything.   

  

NOW LOOK AT THESE HARD.

First we have the  

And I mean there you are. Feel the Hawaiian emanations.  

This was a welcome wagon-type publication. It was meant to go on souvenir racks in restaurants, military bases, corporate vacation resorts, supermarkets and hotels. It wasn't cheap; for fucks' sake it cost 2.95 in 1971. That's 29.77 in 2024 dollars. Pfft. 

Oooo clip art!  Look at these happy haoles out underneath the coconut palms!! SO TIKI! Cue the Rockabilly tunes!  

Here those folks are in real life, learning the Finger Method.

The first recipe in this book?  Is probably NOT Hawaiian. That's just me guessing. But yeah.

                                  Looks tasty though - and it makes three dozen pupus. 

                                                   Thats a lot of pupus, my friends.




This is pretty much Polynesian Palace - type food straight from the 1940's.  Choose a protein and then add pineapple and a few maraschino cherries, maybe some mango, maybe a little soy sauce. There's nothing very remarkable going on. Blessedly, there aren't any outright atrocities either.  Take this excellent recipe for Char Siu. Which is Chinese, but China is near Hawaii...right? Sorta?

 

The Biker does an excellent version of this with a whole pork tenderloin.

We get a cautiously positive assessment of poi...

                                     

My dad and mom were stationed in Hawaii during the war, and they liked poi, so if it didn't kill a backwoods Fin and an Irish Greek, you should probably be OK.

                                   

                                              And finally, this outrageous assault on the liver:

I have to add that they're talking about a 1963 pineapple, those huge things the size of a cat, not the little dudes they sell nowadays. You'd need a huge pineapple to deal with all these jiggers. It's the honey that does it for me, though. It's like a Satanic Daquiri.

Fine fine fine now here we have Nine Thousand Ways to Serve Pork:

...I mean, close enough. Sixty Ways To Serve Ham. Whatever. 

Ham produces heat = ham makes you hotter. 

Try it.

Try a slice of ham under each armpit. 

Mmm.

And this is what you get. Ham with eggs. Ham with toast points. Ham and cheese. Ham and vegetables. Ham in a tin diaper pail. Egg, bacon, sausage and Ham. Ham ham ham and ham. 

Oh go ahead and sing it. It's in your head now.

We get a Ham Chart, too! Now you see, you never knew you needed one and here it is.  I think it would make a great decoration to hang in the kitchen, but unfortunately, it's the size of a postcard.

This little cookbook was a courtesy premium. Local, too!

OK OK one more:

I mean look at that. 1937! There is no way I could pass this up.  I've never found this specific booklet complete with the string hanger until this one, so I might have squealed a little when I discovered it at the Humane Society Thrift Store.

You know what I wonder? I wonder what happened to this hand-embroidered tea towel. It is to swoon.

This book is as useful today as it was back in the 1930's. They give you a whole section on the basics before they start in with the recipes, and it's excellent.

Then we get to the good stuff!  This was the most used page in the booklet, and I fully agree with Ms. Long Ago Cooks' choice. 

Feel that Deco vibe!

Now check out what happened. This was the first time I'd opened the book, and here in the middle, held in place with the string hanger, was an old, tattered recipe! I definitely squealed. Then I took the pictures.

Looks like it saw some use.

It's how to stretch your wheat flour supply by using cheap-as-dirt potato flour. I wonder if this handout, and this little cookbook, were given out with your weekly Relief Food Allotment. (Also a good chance that it was something you picked up at the county fair, or were given in Home Economics class.) That program was still going on out here in the county by 1937, so who knows?

How many times have you been frustrated with the way old recipes are written? Ever asked yourself 'The fuck is a slow oven?'  Here's the temperature conversion information. Now you know.

And let's not forget - all this information was given to you for free by Big Baking Soda. 

You bet I'll be keeping this one. It's a gem!

_____________________

Now here is your Leftie reading list. 

You sit down and read that. 

I'll be over here avoiding my next-door neighbor, who is a three-ring circus, and is chatty, and huggy, and belches so loud it sounds like she's bringing up her spleen.