The Noble Sandwich

 

When I was growing up, sandwiches were for lunch, never dinner. And were, according to my father’s rules about table manners, the only food you picked up with your hands (we never, ever had fried chicken). But today, my family enjoys a good hearty sandwich for supper. And with summer coming, we’re looking for lighter meals. We may be fooling ourselves about lightness, but it’s a change from casseroles or meat and potatoes.  Here are some of our favorites—note that these are what I call knife-and-fork sandwiches and wouldn’t be good picnic fare. I have excluded a Dagwood because it’s complicated, and I think I’ve shared it before. These suggestions are all for one sandwich.

The Colonial Open-Faced Sandwich

I think this is pretty universal, but I always associate it with Colonial Country Club because that’s where I first ate it more years ago than I care to remember. I haven’t been there for quite some time, but last I knew it wasn’t on the menu, but you could ask for it.

Ingredients:

1 slice rye bread

Sliced ham

Sliced turkey

Sliced Swiss cheese

Thousand Island dressing

Sliced hard-boiled egg.

Layer ingredients in the order listed. Whether to toast the bread or not, is up to you. At Colonial, it’s served with a pickle spear and cole slaw.

Sub sandwich Alter/Burton style

This is a copy of our favorite sandwich at a local chain. We vary the ingredients to suit each person’s taste.

Ingredients:

Hoagie roll coated with mayonnaise, mustard, Thousand Island dressing, ketchup, whatever you want. I prefer mayonnaise.

Meat – your choice. Jordan, Christian and Jacob like turkey and pastrami; I prefer ham and capricola or mortadella; you can sub deli roast beef, roast lamb, salami, whatever you want.

Cheese – we generally use provolone, but you can use Swiss, cheddar, etc.

Shredded lettuce

Chopped tomato (except for Christian)

Splash of red wine vinegar

Scattering of dried oregano

Parmesan

Layer it in the order given

The Marshall Field Sandwich

Growing up in Chicago, Marshall Field and company was a magic place. I’m pretty sure I ate this sandwich in their restaurant called The Verandah. I was delighted to come across it recently.

Ingredients:

Thousand Island dressing

2 Tbsp. butter

One slice rye bread

Shredded iceberg lettuce

2 slices Swiss cheese

3 slices deli turkey breast

1 slice tomato

Pitted black olives (I omit because olives and I are not friends)

Sliced hard-boiled egg

8 slices bacon

Butter the bread and then layer ingredients as listed through turkey breast. Cover with Thousand Island dressing

Use tomato, egg, olive (speared on a toothpick) and bacon as garnish

Roast beef sandwich

This has a more descriptive name, but I can’t remember it and can’t find the recipe.

1 slice rye bread (you can easily make this a regular sandwich with two slices bread or a hamburger bun; we found the recommended brioche bun was too much bread.

A couple slices deli roast beef (lamb would be good, if you like it)

One or two slices cheddar

Sliced tomato

Thousand Island dressing

Sauteed shallots – I keep quick-pickled red onion in the fridge and found them tastier than the shallots. But to sauté shallots, slice very thin. Spread olive oil in skillet and put sliced shallots in cold skillet. Raise heat to medium high and cook, stirring frequently, until they are browned and caramelized. They burn quickly, so don’t step away from the skillet. Drain on paper towels before using to garnish sandwich.

Quick pickled red onion

Slice one red onion thinly, making uniform slices if you can. Pack into a glass jar. In a small pan, heat 1 cup white vinegar, 1 cup water, 2 Tbsp. sea salt and 1 Tbsp. sugar (you might increase sugar, depending on your taste). Heat until sugar and salt are melted. Cool slightly and pour over sliced onion. Let sit uncovered until room temperature. Then add cover to the jar and refrigerate. Will keep in fridge for some time.

Thousand Island dressing

These sandwiches call for Thousand Island, and I never ever buy commercially prepared. You do you, but here’s a basic recipe:

1 cup mayonnaise

2 tsp. Dijon mustard

1 tsp. apple cider vinegar

½ tsp sugar

2 Tbsp.  chili sauce

2Tbsp. pickle relish

1 tsp. Worcestershire sauce

1 hard-boiled egg, minced

Salt and pepper to taste

Spring is salad time

Panzanella

With flowers blooming and trees leafing out, days growing longer, and weather warming, my mind turns to lighter foods. Much as I love them, I pretty much put stew and casserole recipes aside to wait for next winter. Salads are high on my menus. In the household of my childhood, we had a green salad with homemade vinaigrette almost every night. Fortunately, my family likes salads. I always have leaf lettuce on hand for a quick salad to round out a meal, but lately I’ve noticed that we aren’t eating as many green salads. On the contrary, we’ve enjoyed several no-lettuce salads. Here are two of my favorites (note that you have to prepare some ingredients in each well ahead of time):

Pea salad

This is strictly an adult discovery for me, not something I grew up eating. I first found it at the deli counter of local grocery stores, but I soon learned that making my own was better. Commercial versions have bacon bits which I consider a discordant taste, and the cheese was often small chunks of processed cheese like Velveeta. So I adapted the recipe to my tastes, specifically adding hard-boiled eggs. With cheese, eggs, and peas, this can qualify as a light lunch that hits the major food groups.

Ingredients

1 lb. frozen peas (petite are best)

½ small red onion, sliced

3 hard-boiled eggs, chopped

½ small bunch parsley

2 oz. sharp cheddar, grated

¼ cup sour cream

¼ cup mayonnaise

1 Tbsp. apple cider vinegar

1 tsp. Worcestershire

1/4 tsp, each salt and pepper

Directions:

Let peas thaw on counter for about three hours.

Put sour cream, mayonnaise, vinegar, and Worcestershire in large bowl. Add remaining ingredients. Stir thoroughly to be sure all ingredients are coated with dressing. Chill at least four hours before serving.

If you want to add bacon, I would suggest frying 6 slices; drain and crumble into salad just before serving.

Panzanella (or Italian bread) salad

This is another one I’ve only discovered in recent years. It speaks to my love of croutons that soak up a good vinaigrette. The recipe I have serves 10-12, way beyond any entertaining I can do in the cottage. I have halved it here.

Ingredients

4-5 cups cubed artisan bread

4 cups (one large or two medium) heirloom tomatoes, chopped

1/3 cucumber, sliced

½ medium red or yellow bell pepper, cut in bite-sized pieces (I omit this—bell pepper and I are not friends)

½ small red onion, thinly sliced

¼ cup good olive oil

1/8 cup red wine vinegar

1/4  tsp. salt

Pepper to taste

1 tsp. dried basil or ½ cup thinly sliced fresh basil

Directions:

Spread bread cubes in a single layer on a cookie sheet and let sit on counter, uncovered, overnight to dry and harden. Or, you can bake them at 300^o F. for 15 lor 20 minutes, stirring a couple of times.

Chop the vegetables, An extra trick: soak onion rings in cold water for ten minutes to soften their bite.

Combine bread and vegetables in a large bowl, preferably non-reactive like glass. Pour vinaigrette (oil, vinegar, salt and pepper) over mixture. Be sure to mix thoroughly.

Let salad stand at room temperature anywhere from half an hour to four hours, stirring occasionally. Add basil just before serving.

Leftovers do not keep well.

I’ll be keeping an eye out for other salads for your spiring enjoyment. Happy eating!

 

 

An old-fashioned breakfast that makes a great dinner

 

Picture courtesy Freepik.com

Today’s recipe, Farmer’s Breakfast, is a memory from my mom’s kitchen. As many of you know, I’m slowly putting together a cookbook of food we ate in the fifties (my teen years), and I’ll call it, I think, Mom and Me in the Kitchen. It turns out so far to be a whole lot of recipes from my mom and, in truth, a tribute to her. So a bit about Mom is maybe appropriate.

Alice Marie Peterman Peckham MacBain was born in Kankakee, Illinois, in 1900. Grandpa Peterman was an engineer on the Illinois Central line and Granny (Anna) was a housewife. The couple were first generation Germans. Mom never talked about her childhood much, but I gather the food was heavily influenced by German dishes. I know she loved sausages and hated sauerkraut. I think today’s recipe traces back to her childhood. I can easily imagine Granny Peterman cooking it, though by the time I knew her Granny did little but sit in a chair.

Mom lived through the Spanish Flu epidemic, two world wars, and the Depression. The Great Depression left an indelible mark on her. I never heard her mention what life was like in those years. But when I was with her in the kitchen, I saw the clear signs. We saved bits of string, tied into one huge ball; bits of foil, rolled into a ball for the war effort in the Forties though I have no idea where or how she delivered these treasures.  We massaged color pills into blocks of—lard, I guess. It was white, and those little red pills were supposed to turn it the color of butter so we would be fooled. In her new 1950s kitchen, Mom had a special space for storing used paper towels—she would wipe a counter with a clean towel and then stash it; next time there was a floor spill, she pulled out that once-used towel. She countenanced no waste: when I had my own home, feeding a family of six, I didn’t save tiny bits of leftovers—it was pointless (until I learned to make soup). Scraps wouldn’t feed all of us, but when visiting Mom would say sarcastically, “I know. Just pitch it.” In her last years, when we moved her out of her house, we found tiny baby food jars in the back of the refrigerator with who knows what—whatever it was, much of it had begun to mold. I am, by contrast, not a frugal cook but sort of living alone, I save leftovers for lunch and hate to see food wasted. Mom’s saving ways definitely have had an effect on me.

Soup of the week illustrates Mom’s frugality. She put those saved leftovers to good by using them in what I came to call soup of the week. A dab of this, a bit of that meat, a few spoonfuls of a casserole, some fresh vegetables—it all went into the soup pot, perhaps augmented with chicken broth or canned tomatoes. I used to do that for my kids. Even though it almost always turned a muddy brown in color, they liked it.

Mom had a lot of sadness in her life, but she kept a positive outlook on life. Through the death of one husband, the loss of an infant of six months, the prolonged death of her sister due to cancer, Mom mostly kept a wonderful sense of humor. I can still see her telling stories of when all the aunts and uncles were young—tears of laughter would roll down her cheeks as she told those stories. And I have my own stories of Mom’s laughter in the kitchen—it is probably my best memory of her.

One of the frugal dishes I remember was what she called farmer’s breakfast. Mom fried some bacon, then fried potatoes in the grease. She added sliced green onions and grated cheddar cheese and then stirred up some eggs and poured them over the mixture. Once the eggs solidified and held together, she served it. I loved it, and when it came my turn and I served it to my children, they too loved it. What’s not to like? I somehow forgot all about it until a recent email from America’s Test Kitchen (one of my favorite sources) featured Bauernfrühstück (German Farmer’s Breakfast). There it was—Mom’s dish. So, here’s my adaptation of the recipe, a blend of my memories of Mom and the amounts recommended by America’s Test Kitchn (not all ingredients are the same):

Farmer’s Breakfast (serves four)

Ingredients

4 slices bacon

Four green onions, chopped

2 llbs. Yukon Gold potatoes

1 cup cheddar, grated

6 eggs, beaten

½ tsp. salt

¼ tsp. pepper

Ketchup

2 Tbsp. butter, if needed

Directions

Fry the bacon until crisp. Removed from skillet and drain on paper towels.

Peel the potatoes or not—Yukon gold have such thin skins. I’m sure, however, when I was a teen, we never heard of Yukon gold and Mom used good old Russet or Idaho potatoes which she would have scrubbed and peeled. Dice the potatoes (you might want to sprinkle an extra bit of salt on them) and fry in the bacon grease, getting as good a crisp crust as you can. IF there is not enough grease, add a Tbsp. of butter. Stir in green onions and sauté briefly. Stir in grated cheese.

Separately add salt and pepper to eggs and beat until well blended. Over medium heat, stir eggs into potato mixture, stirring to make sure the eggs are well incorporated. While they eggs cook occasionally use a spatula to lift up the mixture and let uncooked eggs run under it where they will cook. When eggs solidify to the point you want (don’t get them too hard), crumble the bacon in and stir again. Serve hot immediately with optional ketchup.

This is like spoon-feeding your family cholesterol, and I recognize it’s not a dish any of us should eat often. But sometimes, it’s just perfect. A few of our neighbors occasionally get together for an event we call “Brinner” (breakfast as dinner). The next time we do, this is what I’ll bring.

 

 

 

 

 

Calf fries and sauerkraut soup

 

Before I ask how you weigh in on either of these dishes, let me give you a bit of history: About 1912, a young immigrant arrived in New York from Macedonia (a country now gone that was in the Balkans). By the 1920s, Theo Yordanoff had opened a “hole in the wall” restaurant on Exchange Avenue in Fort Worth, close to the packing houses. When a customer asked for calf fries, which were not on the menu, Yordanoff did some investigating and found that the packing houses would give him, at no cost, all the calf testicles he wanted. He battered them like chicken-fried steak, served them with cream gravy, and his restaurant immediately became part of Fort Worth history.

Confession: I have never eaten calf fries. I have eaten turkey fries and enjoyed them—obviously much smaller. But neither one are what I remember about the Saddle and Sirloin. I went there a few times in the Seventies and Eighties, before it closed, and had the sauerkraut soup, called kapusta. Loved it. Today, Riscky’s Steakhouse has replaced the Saddle and Sirloin, but they still serve calf fries and kapusta.

My history with sauerkraut: I never tasted it until I was grown and away from home. My mother was of German ancestry and apparently had to eat sauerkraut as a child. She despised it but loved German sausages. In my twenties, my brother was married to a woman who caramelized kraut in a skillet, slowly and patiently cooking it with butter and sugar. It was delicious. Since then, I’ve learned to love kraut on hot dogs, sauteed kraut with onions and wine, Reuben sandwiches, kraut almost any way you can fix it.

My friend Mary V. comes for dinner every two or three weeks, and bless her, she eats whatever my experimental dish of the day is. So one day I asked if she liked kraut, and she replied that she loved it. I fixed something with kraut (now I can’t remember what) and had a lot left over. So I decided that next time she came for supper, I’d fix sauerkraut soup. I studied online recipes for kapusta but didn’t find any that sounded just right. Most didn’t have the tomatoes that I remembered. So I printed off a basic recipe and decided to take off on my own. I’m not a chef who writes recipes, but I do often adapt. In this case, I adapted both quantity (I aimed for two servings, ended up with three or four) and taste. Here’s what I did:

Sauerkraut soup

Ingredients:

1 Tbsp, vegetable oil

1 small onion, diced

½ lb. ground beef

8 oz. sauerkraut, drained and rinsed

½ cup white wine

1 cup beef broth

1 14 oz. can diced tomatoes, undrained

Salt and pepper to taste

½ tsp. sugar

Sour cream for garnish

Brown onion in oil until soft and translucent. Add meat, breaking up into crumbles. Brown and drain if needed. Add remaining ingredients except sour cream. Bring to a boil and simmer, covered, for 45 minutes to an hour.

Serve hot in soup plates with a dollop of sour cream. Rye bread is a nice accompaniment.

Jo étvágyat

Aunt Amy’s Giant Hamburger

 

A reunion of New York and Texas Alters
April 2017 in Tomball, Texas

We were in a classy Italian restaurant, contemplating the selection of appetizes with the thought of some shared plates. But when I suggested meatballs, I was astounded that my friend said, “You go ahead. I don’t eat ground meat. Thoughts of all she was missing ran through my brain. We eat a lot of ground meat at my house, partly because it’s easy on the budget and partly because of its versatility.

Aunt Amy’s Giant Hamburger is a recipe that has stood the test of time for me—like probably fifty years. It’s written in Amy’s careful hand on a 5 x 8 notecard which now makes me wonder if she was in school when she wrote it. The card is yellowed and stained with splashes, the ink fading and smudged. It’s a recipe that I’m glad to share with you because sharing puts it into my computer and a more permanent form.

Aunt Amy is the wife of my late ex-husband’s only brother. Despite divorce and death, my family has stayed close to the New York Alters, who live in the Bronx. I have not been to NYC since Mark and Amy’s wedding which has been a lot of years, but my children have all visited them. And the New York Alters (almost the entire three generations) have been to Texas for reunions at least twice. I’m not sure Amy knows I still cook her giant hamburger, but I will send her this column.

A word about technique: if you have a fish grilling basket, that makes it easier to make this hamburger. Double bonus if you can do it on the grill and get that good smoky flavor. But don’t despair if you don’t have the grill or the pan. Broil the burger on both sides, being careful with the flipping process. I’d suggest using a couple of plates rather than trying to flip it with spatulas as you do a smaller hamburger. I’ve also discovered that many dishes, like meatballs or salmon patties, hold together better if refrigerated before cooking. My mom’s trick was to throw in a handful of dry tapioca, but I can’t find that on the market these days. Also you’ll note the recipe calls for a three-oz. jar of chopped mushrooms, which dates it. I gave up buying canned or chopped mushrooms years ago—just chop a quarter lb. of fresh mushrooms. I’ve also written out the margarine in favor of butter.

Ingredients (makes six servings):

2 Tbsp. butter

1-1.5 cups seasoned herbed stuffing mix, crushed (about ¾ cup)

3-4 oz. chopped mushrooms

1/3 cup beef broth

¼ cup sliced green onions

¼ cup sliced almonds, toasted (I don’t like nuts in a lot of things and omit these—you do you.)

¼ cup snipped parsley (also optional)

1 tsp. lemon juice (do not omit—makes a big difference)

1 egg, beaten

2 lbs. ground beef

1 tsp. salt

Directions:

Melt butter in a medium saucepan. Remove from heat and add stuffing mix, mushrooms, beef broth, onions, parsley, almonds if using,  and lemon juice. Thoroughly stir in the beaten egg. (Add it last so that other ingredients will cool the butter and not let it cook the egg.) Set mixture aside.

Combine meat and salt and divide into two equal portions. On sheets of aluminum foil, pat each half into an 8” circle. Spoon stuffing over one circle of meat, leaving a half-inch margin at the edges. Top with second circle and peel off the top piece of foil. Seal the edges of the two patties by pressing together. Invert the meat pattie onto a well-greased grill basket or sheet pan and peel off remaining foil. Grill over medium coals 10-12 minutes on each side or until done. (See above for doing in the broiler.)

Cut into wedges, like a pie, and serve with ketchup. Aunt Amy suggested warmed ketchup, a nicety I’d never thought of. Potato salad would be a good side, because it seems like a picnic meal.

And on another note: Did you know you can still buy original Tupperware? Simply search Heritage Tupperware on Amazon. Now if Amazon would only do that for Corningware!

 

A Sunday night supper

 

 

My Canadian daughter and her husband leave Tuesday for their move to South Carolina. They plan to drive it in one long day, since they will have two young and rambunctious doodle dogs with them. God speed their journey. I have been to a large-ish farewell party for them but felt I wanted to do a more personal goodbye. I figured by Sunday night their kitchen would be packed, and they wouldn’t want to cook. So I’d invite them for happy hour with heavy appetizers. At first I thought I’d serve cheeseburger sliders and bean salad, but that somehow didn’t sound right. So I’ve settled on a big antipasto platter. And that got me to thinking about charcuteries, cheese platters and antipasto, the differences and the similarities.

I think of these as versions of the same dish. All three are easy to put together if you plan ahead and have the ingredients. A cheese platter may be the easiest, but with the price of good cheese these days, it may not be the least expensive. Charcuterie is the traditional meat platter of France. Antipasto is traditionally the first course of a formal Italian dinner, but in this country, it has gone from the seated table to the happy hour coffee table. You often find the same ingredients on charcuterie and antipasto platters. The key to all three platters is variety in taste, texture, and eye appeal.

 Cheese platters: You can choose from four basic types of cheese: aged (cheddar, brie, gouda, goat, various types of Swiss); soft (camembert, Havarti, feta); firm: Manchego, Parmigiano, Pecorino; blue: (blue, gorgonzola, stilton). For a small gathering of perhaps four people, three choices, one each from three of the groups, are probably enough. Count on a third of a pound per person. Offer a choice of crusty breads and crackers. I’d put each cheese on a separate dish or board, so they don’t “share” flavors, and be sure to put out a separate knife for each.

Refrigerate cheese until two or three hours before serving; bring to room temperature.

Possible accompaniments: honey, chutney, artichoke hearts.

[Note: a favorite treat a young friend recently introduced me to: put a bite of blue cheese on a cracker or slice of apple or pear and then drizzle just a drop or two of honey on it. Delicious! You can also spread a really thin layer of honey on a slice of feta and bake it briefly.]

Charcuterie:  Traditionally this is a platter of cold, cured, or preserved meats. Once again, you want to mix texture and taste. Use one or more salamis, perhaps a hard and a soft; a pate or terrine; sausage; thinly sliced ham, possibly rolled for easier eating; prosciutto or its beef cousin bresaola. If you include a smoked meat, limit it to one. As one chef says, after a while all you taste is smoke.

[Note: a pâté is meat in a spreadable paste texture. Most people think of duck or chicken liver as pâté and it’s true those are most common, but pâté can be made of beef, game, fish, even vegetables. They are usually richly seasoned with herbs, spices, and either wine or brandy. Often, they are made in a loaf or terrine pan, chilled, and sliced. A terrine is distinguished by its texture. Ingredients are coarsely chopped. Pork is the most common base ingredient but again, game, seafood, poultry may be used.]

Two ounces of meat per person is usually enough, since the meats tend to be rich.

Suggested accompaniments: olives, nuts, a good grainy mustard, cornichons, chutney, or jam. Serve a variety of crusty breads and plenty of forks. Small individual plates are a good idea.

Antipasto: an antipasto platter makes wider use of a variety of foods. Cured meats such as prosciutto and salami may be the basis, but add cheeses, perhaps bocconcini (those mozzarella balls), a hard Pecorino or grana, and a provolone somewhere in the middle. Vegetables are also prominent on the antipasto platter—cherry tomatoes, artichoke hearts, broccoli or cauliflower pieces, sliced sweet onion or whole scallions, hearts of palm, celery slices, baby carrots, capers. If you’re ambitious, devil an egg for each of your guests Bread sticks are traditional but it’s nice to offer bread too, maybe crusty baguette slices.

Garnishes: my mother, a fabulous cook, always told me food is half eaten with the eye. It’s particularly important to remember that when laying out these platters. Tuck a leafy green—radicchio or watercress or flat Italian parsley—here and there among the meats and cheeses. Use grapes as a focal point. Stand back and look at your platter to see if the colors and spacing draw your eye.

Once you get the hang of these platters, you can put one together in minutes. An unexpected or last-minute guest? Just whip up a platter, and you’ll rank high as host or hostess.

I haven’t quite made the final decision for Sunday’s antipasto, but I resisted the temptation to add pickled herring, because I figured I was the only one who would eat it. And I did add liverwurst—we’ll see who eats that. But I hope there’s enough variety for everyone. And, yes, I will devil some eggs—I found a recipe the other day where you put in tiny bits of almost every spice in your cabinet, but it’s for a dozen eggs. Not sure I can reduce it enough for four eggs! I also resisted white anchovies, another taste I love, because I know Sue’s husband Teddy doesn’t like them.

I do hope no one will go home hungry, but I’m a bit worried about Christian. Several things he won’t touch, so I’ve added some sliced roast bison and some black olives specifically for him.

Adapted from Gourmet on a Hot Plate: Tiny KItchen Tips and Recipes: Alter, Judy, Alter, Judy: 9780996993531: Amazon.com: Books

 

 

In praise of peanut butter

 

Image by Freepik

When I was a kid, peanut butter and mayonnaise sandwich was a staple in our household. I loved it, still do, but to this day when I mention it, it’s like I recommended eating liver for supper (that’s not bad either). Most people seem never to have heard of the sandwich combination although truth is it has been a staple in southern America since the Great Depression. The combination of tangy mayonnaise (I do not think Miracle Whip is an acceptable substitute) with salty peanut butter was a cheap and good source of nourishment. Traditionally, the sandwich, like a tomato or pimiento cheese sandwich, was always made with white bread, what I call “cotton candy bread” because of the way it dissolves in your mouth. I prefer a good rye bread with my peanut butter.

Some weird variations have come to my attention over the years. The “Elvis sandwich” adds crumbled bacon and sliced bananas. Some people add lettuce for a bit of crispness—my mom was of the lettuce school. Others add grated cheese—sharp cheddar adds a distinctive flavor, while the milder cheddar gives the sandwich a creamier texture. When really hungry, I’ve been known to add bacon, cheese, and lettuce to the basic sandwich.

The other day I ran across one of those online glimpses into what we ate in the past. This harked back not to the food of the Fifties which so intrigues me but to the wartime days of the forties, when men were recruited as civilian defense workers and air raid wardens. (I remember walking our neighborhood with my uncle, looking for illegal cracks of light peeking through blackout curtains.) Whoever compiled these sandwich fillings meant them to sustain these men, many working outdoors for the first time in their lives.       

Peanut butter was a staple. With chili sauce. With prunes and pickle relish (an odd combination, to my mind). With green pepper and celery (nice crunch and okay if you like bell pepper, which I don’t). With raisins (maybe, but mayo would help). With chopped ham, vinegar, and salt and pepper (no idea how much vinegar, but I’m skeptical).

Cheese was another staple. Grated, with ketchup, onion, Tabaso, and cream (I’m still trying to figure out what the cream was doing in there). Sliced, with ham, Worcestershire sauce, cream, and mayonnaise.. Cream cheese with ham and mustard. Cream cheese with grated raw carrot, a few drops of lemon juice, and salt and pepper. (A digression: as a child, my Colin loved a cream cheese and mayonnaise sandwich, and I can still hear one of his playmates protesting, “But Colin, it has no flavor!”)

And then there were some surprises: Veal salad made with celery, lemon juice, mustard, salt and pepper, and mayonnaise (veal must have been considerably cheaper in those days). Liver sausage salad with pickle, onion, and mayonnaise (maybe popular during the war but probably wouldn’t get many takers today).  Mashed baked beans with mayonnaise. Or add applesauce to those beans. Crab meat salad had pimiento, cucumber and mayonnaise. And then, of course there were egg salad and ham salad.

I don’t expect many to try these odd combinations, but when was the last time you made peanut butter cookies? In the spirit of leaving you with a usable recipe from this weekly column, here’s my peanut butter cookie recipe. I bet it sounds familiar to you but, like me, you haven’t thought about it in a while.

 

Peanut butter cookies

1 cup dark brown sugar, packed

½ cup white sugar

1 cup butter, softened to room temperature—Mom may have used the new margarine, I’m not sure, but I can imagine her using two sticks of butter. I recommend butter, however.

2 eggs

1 cup smooth peanut butter

2-1/4 cup flour

2 level tsp. baking soda

½ tsp. salt

Cream sugars and butter. Add eggs and peanut butter. Add flour, soda, and salt.

Roll a small amount of dough in the palm of your hand to make a round ball. Place on greased cookie sheet. With a fork,  press down on dough ball, first in one direction and then in the other so that you create a criss-cross pattern. This is the hallmark of peanut butter cookies, and they won’t taste the same without it.

Bake at350^o for 12 – 15 minutes or until edges barely start to brown.

PS: A warning. Do you feed your dog peanut butter? I used to slather it on a cracker to hide a pill, but some peanut butters today have a sugar-free ingredient called xylitol. It can be fatal to a dog within minutes. Read your labels when buying peanut butter—or anything else.