Cookbook #217: Crockery Cookery, Mable Hoffman, H. P. Books, Los Angeles, CA, 1975.
I just now realized: This paperback book has the same title and cover photo and publication date as my hardcover book Crockery Cookery. This paperback is from my own collection, while the hard back version was my mother’s. I didn’t mark or note any of the recipes in the paperback. The information on the use of different brands of crockpots is the same in both, but some of the recipes are different. And, the hardcover edition is better illustrated.
In all, I have eleven crockpot cookbooks in my database. See my first crockpot blog entry for a little on the history of crockpots.
Before I realized that this cookbook was a duplicate, I spent some time poring over the recipes. This time they struck me as “definitely severnties” in content. For better or worse! To me, seventies style foods can be both comfort foods and over-fatty over-packaged over-salted foods to avoid. Today I will take them as comfort foods. I choose to make “Hungarian Goulash”, with ketchup, Worcestershire sauce, brown sugar, mustard, paprika, and garlic and onion.
The recipe calls for beef stew meat, but I have a quantity of pork loin in the freezer so I decide to use that instead of beef.
Hungarian Goulash
serves about 4
- 2 pounds beef or pork stew meat (I used cut-up pork loin)
- 1 large onion, sliced
- 1 clove garlic, minced
- 1/2 cup ketchup
- 2 tablespoons Worcestershire sauce
- 1 tablespoon brown sugar
- 1 teaspoon salt
- 2 teaspoons paprika
- 1/2 teaspoon dry mustard
- 1 cup water
- 1/4 cup flour mixed into a small amount of water
Put the meat in a crockpot and then add the onion. In a bowl or measuring cup, combine the garlic, ketchup, Worcestershire sauce, sugar, salt, paprika, mustard, and 1 cup water. Stir to combine,then pour over the meat/onion mix in the crockpot.
Cover and cook on low from 9-10 hours, or on high for 4-5 hours, until the meat is very tender. Taste and add salt and pepper to your taste. Then, with the crockpot on high, add the 1/4 cup flour mixed with a small amount of water. Stir in, then cover and cook on high for 15 minutes, until the sauce is thickened.
Serve over noodles or rice.
This was very good. I’d make it again!
I am going to recycle this paperback, though. The hardcover version is more pleasant to use, largely because of the color photographs.
I bought the Handbook of the Nutritional Contents of Foods for myself new or used, I think sometime in the eighties. Around that time, I was developing a basic “eating plan” for myself, or maybe I should say “dieting plan”. You see, for years, I would diet strictly for months, eat sensibly for a short time, overindulge for weeks, then repeat the cycle. I drew up my first plan based on a diet given to me in the early seventies, before I left California. Later, 
One thing I recall about looking up calories in this book is that it was difficult to find the calories in meats. I think maybe it was because I didn’t have a kitchen scale at the time, and would have to estimate the calories from the meat package label, using the amount sold (raw) and estimating the size of the portion I cut for myself.
And it baked into a beautiful loaf. Here is a slice, showing the blue hue and the great texture:
I sniffed the loaf like I always do. Pee-yoo, it stinks! Something about the smell really turns me away. I ate a big bite and it tasted like it smelled. Yuck.
My Simac Pastamaker MX700 was a gift from my husband in 1998. I had been making my own pasta for years, using a Kitchenaid mixer to mix the dough, and a manual Marcato pasta maker to roll the dough and form the noodles (see my post, the 
It’s a lot of fun! And time-consuming, yes. A decade or so ago I stored the Pastamaker down in the basement to make room for other things on my countertop. I don’t think I’ve used it since then. Now I have a great excuse to pull it back up, clean it, and make some great pasta. (I love retirement!)
My note tells me that I used King Arthur Flour “pasta blend” the last time I made make the dough in the Simac. The reference to the water-egg measuring “cup” means that I used the package instructions for measuring the proper ratio of flour to egg-plus-water. The “cup” was shipped with Simac; it’s a specialized plastic measuring cup with levels marked for water and egg. BUT: these markings do not correlate with ounces, milliliters, or even cups. I never wrote down the exact capacity of that “measuring cup”. Each time I wanted to make pasta in the Simac, I had to locate this single-purpose utensil. I’m glad I wrote that note to myself! – now I know the proper ratio of wet to dry ingredients and can use a regular standard measuring cup.
I carry the Pastamaker upstairs and find the dies (hidden in a pottery jar upstairs). Some of the dies are crusted with dried dough. Oh, I remember, it’s hard to get the dough out of the tiny slits and holes. Sometimes they clog during use, or the dough doesn’t feed properly through them. Hmmm. I better set aside an afternoon for my re-experiment with my Pastamaker.
I decide to make macaroni, because I can make spaghetti and flat noodles any old time in my Marcato.
Boil for 30 seconds and check for al dente; boil another 30 seconds if necessary. In Colorado, though, I cooked my macaroni for 3-4 minutes and it was perfect.
I discussed electric fry pans in 
Look at all the Sunbeam appliances! Mixer (see my 
I liked these! But, my dining partner wasn’t impressed. The Southwestern Chicken was enough for him. I think these would have been good with syrup, as suggested in the recipe. I would like them fried in less oil than I used. This is a good recipe for very easy corn fritters; I just need to figure out how to include them in a dinner – or breakfast – plan.
Here is my Osterizer mini-jar:
It still works with my current Osterizer blender. I should try it sometime!
Did you catch that last paragraph? “In general, you can be suspicious of all new products, those advertised on television or in magazines, and those in flashy boxes.” Can one even find a package of food these days that is not in a flashy package??
First vegetables include acorn squash. I mention this because when I was babysitting a couple weeks ago, my 7 month old ate acorn squash – so it can be my “recipe” for this blog. My daughter put an acorn squash in the oven, and I took it out 45 minutes later. All I did was take it out and let it cool, then fed some to little Kekeli. He liked it!
I like this: “Needless to say this is just an occasional splurge and one not to be eaten by babies.”
The tomatoes need to be peeled, seeded, and chopped, and Beard has directions for this on page 16. In a class at the 
I am inspired by Beard’s “Pasta with Beans” recipe on page 90. The ingredients are: white beans, bacon, onions, carrots, herbs, canned tomatoes, and elbow macaroni. I have some great home-cooked 
Beard is big on cheese. But, I don’t have a lot of good, chunk Parmesan cheese in my refrigerator – and I’ve decided to make this meal with what I have on hand. I sniff all my cheeses, grate up the last (hard) chunk of Parmesan, add a bit of another sharp white cheese, and use the last of my pre-shredded Parmesan.
I made a loaf of 
And as in the 1955 edition, it is a woman who is doing the cooking, or at least reading the cookbook.
The first section is Appetizers and Spreads. Mother marked several: Crab Meat Canapes, Salami-Julienne Spread, and Cheese Onion Balls. These are all made with cream cheese, cottage cheese, and/or sour cream, with additions of canned or frozen products. During the 50s, and especially during the cocktail hour, these types of appetizers were a mainstay of American cookery.
Here is a photo of some of the appetizers:
Next is Salads. Mother put a check mark on “Carrot and Red Cabbage Salad”. I thought about making this salad, since I like the combination of carrots and cabbage, but this recipe has more sour cream than I think I’d like. A “Full Meal” salad mixes leftover cooked meat with canned or fresh vegetables and a lot of cottage cheese and sour cream. Not for me. Nor are the molded salads. I guess this whole chapter is just not for me!
Next is a rave for all the good things about yogurt, hoop cheese, and milk. “Looking for New Ideas? Ways to use cottage cheese” lists a page of ideas. The following one is my favorite. “The men like this with old-fashioned hot potato salad.”
“Looking for New Ideas? Ways to use sour cream” is next, and here is my favorite from that list. “Gourmets babble?”
The first issue I need to address in baking these muffins is the “2 cups prepared biscuit mix”. Biscuit mix, or “Bisquick”, was a staple in American kitchens in the 1950s. It is still available today. Should I purchase a box of Bisquick to make this recipe? I think not. I have no other use for it, and in general, I like cooking from scratch, so that I know my ingredients. Luckily, at some time in the recent past I had copied from the web search results for a substitution for biscuit mix:
These were a lot better than I expected! I was concerned that the cherries would not lend enough flavor to the muffins, but I was very wrong. Also, I often use vegetable oil in muffins, but used butter in these. Same calories, but what a difference in texture! These almost taste like pie crust.
This booklet of 26 recipes must have come with our Weber gas grill. I have forgotten all about this cookbook, since soon after getting the grill I purchased Weber’s Real Grilling, a large cookbook with tons of recipes.
These tasted great! The yogurt marinade makes them not only well seasoned, it also makes them very tender. (I put the blackened side down for the photo. They would have been so much prettier if I hadn’t tried something experimental!)
I took the eggs out of the carton in the same order and laid them on a cloth with the upper ends to the right for each egg. Note how hard it can be to find the flatter end – sometimes both ends look the same.
Below is a close-up of these same eggs. I am tilting one egg, flat side up:
Poked hole:
As careful as I was to remove the eggs from the carton properly and poke what looked like the flatter end, one of the eggs had been put in the carton upside down was thus in the wrong orientation (the upper left egg in the pattern of six). Instead of bubbles, white goo came out when I lowered it into the boiIing water. I removed it immediately. Here is the gooey egg white coming out of the hole in the upper left egg:
Conclusion: In my opinion, the 15-minute eggs were a bit undercooked. Here is a close-up, with a 15-minute egg on the left, and a 20-minute egg on the right:
Neither has a dark green discoloration on the sides of the yolk.
No author, no publisher, no publication date! This is the only cookbook in my collection with none of that information. It is a 
I read through this entire book, and am impressed with the author’s work. She (I assume it was a woman, at least) set up each section with an entire menu of recipes for the particular international cuisine. She referenced a sauce from one section (a raspberry sauce) that might go with a recipe from another section (a pecan torte). Because of the consistent writing style and the cross-references, I think this book was all written by one person, although she may have collected ideas from friends of different cultures. The recipes call for canned or processed items, like bean sprouts, canned shrimp and crab, and cake mixes; canned coconut milk was not available; there are several gelatin salad recipes; and microwaves and food processors are not mentioned. All of these facts lead me to believe it was produced in the sixties or seventies. Plus, it was prepared on a typewriter, not a computer.
Hungary: Hungarian Gulyas (like a goulash), Wilted Cucumbers, Cole Slaw, Cream Apples.
I put the rolls on 2 parchment-lined half sheet pans and let them rise about 20 minutes (my kitchen was warm). I learned from experience that the rolls bake up best if you tuck the pointy ends under the rolls.
A “yum” for this recipe! These are soft and tasty, and fun to make. The bread machine method worked great. I put some of the rolls in the freezer for later use. Yes, I’d make these again!