JB's Warehouse & Curio Emporium

Tired of making the same old poultry-based appetizer when the gang come over? Take some advice from Janet Evans' Personal Cookbook from the pages of Canadian Homes and Gardens (1956) and "take time to decorate a chicken salad." The secret? Stiff mayo icing! French Clock Chicken Salad To serve 10 or 12 people, you will need: 4 cups cut-up chicken, 3/4 cup blanched slivered almonds, 2 cups finely chopped onion, 2 cups chopped pineapple, 3/4 cup mayonnaise, 1/3 cup thin cream, 1 teaspoon salt, 1 teaspoon celery salt and 1 teaspoon paprika. Mix cream and mayonnaise together. Put all ingredients together in a bowl and stir together well. Place salad in the serving bowl. Press it down smoothly. Ice it all over the top with stiff mayonnaise. Hard-boil 6 small eggs. Cut them in half. Use small thin slivers of green peppers to put the hours from 1 to 12 in Roman numerals, one on the yolk of each half egg. Put eggs in order around your clock salad. In centre of the clock, p...

It's that time of year again...time to take a trip back into the often terrifying world of 1960s cookery. Better Homes and Gardens Casserole Cookbook (1968) was well used at home growing up, mostly it contains one of my favourite comfort foods, steak and noodles (or, as the cookbook calls it, Round Steak Sauerbraten). Here's the recipe - I figure I should serve up the tasty before the the tacky. 1-1/2 pounds steak, 1/2" thick (we use sirloin instead of round) 1 envelope brown gravy mix 1 tbsp dried onion 1 tbsp brown sugar 2 tbsp wine vinegar 1 tsp Worcestershire sauce 1/4 tsp ground ginger 1 bayleaf 1/2 tsp salt 1/4 tsp pepper hot buttered noodles (extra broad egg noodles preferred) Cut meat in 1" squares, then brown. Remove meat from pot, add gravy mix and 2 cups water. Bring to boil, stirring constantly. Stir in next 8 ingredients. Add meat. Pour into casserole dish. Cover and bake at 350F for 90 minutes. Remove bayleaf. Serve on noodles *** I...

Back in 2003, I looked at some of the divine dishes to be found in 1960s Better Homes & Gardens cookbooks due to be purged during Christmas housecleaning. I hung onto 1967's Jiffy Cooking for pure novelty value, as well as how much it reveals about its era. Besides the dishes mentioned in the original entry, consider these for your next shindig. Shockingly, none of today's recipes involve frankfurters. Canadian Bacon Stack Ups - layers of ginger-infused mashed sweet potatoes between slices of Canadian Bacon, topped with canned cranberry sauce. "...served with crisp relishes and asparagus spears make a picture-pretty dinner for the hungry family." Dip A La Spaghetti - dry pasta sauce mix, sour cream and green pepper, recommended as a dip for "crisp vegetables" and Fritos. Tamale Hero Sandwiches - canned tamales tossed on top of sub buns. The picture above is described as "An informal teen-age record party - teen-agers will devour the...

Being from a family with strong culinary genes, there are a ton of cookbooks lying around the family homestead. Most have eye-catching, mouth-watering looking recipes. The further back you go in the collection, the more the eyes pop out at some of the dishes that passed the publisher's test kitchen. One of the larger series we have is various versions of the Better Homes & Gardens cookbooks. Volumes from the 60s are telling in how much opinions about tasty, economical foods have changed through the years. Key findings: 1) Every other dish was a "bake", "strata" or "hodgepodge". 2) Spam (and its knockoffs) was the monarch of the kitchen. This wonder of science could be used in every way imaginable. 3) Other kitchen basics: creamed corn, lima beans, sherry, the number of the nearest heart surgeon. 4) Anything was fair game to be an exotic dish. 5) Velveeta is the king of cheeses. 6) Frankfurters are as diverse in their uses as Spam. L...