Picture Post: My Mother's Old Betty Crocker Cookbook

I've had this one planned for awhile now, but it was kind of hard to start for a few reasons.

It's partly because I've got quite a lot of pictures to use here, and partly because I've been legit short on time, and there's a bit of natural overlap there. I have 20 pictures to work with here, so this is going to be a long post by the time it's all said and done, so I may as well get started.

I'll start off with the front cover, because that's the most sensible place, right?

I'm pretty sure this edition is from the 70s, judging by the cover and the brief conversation I had with my mom about it. I've got another item later that will demonstrate that further. But this unit's been around awhile, because the binding's all bleached out from having faced an open window for quite a few years. It's also gotten quite a bit of use over the years because there's some good stuff in there, as evidenced by the bookmarked pages.

An example of that would be the herbs and spices chart on the insides of the front and back cover.

These aren't exactly the greatest pics ever, but they do get the point across well enough, I think.

The facing page in that first picture has photos of various Betty Crocker Test Kitchens from back in the day, some of which may have been fairly high-tech for the time. I quite like that middle one on the bottom, built into the counter with a flat-grill section. Looks cool. I like the saucepan on that one, too.

They also tell us a little about what went into this thing on the next page.

The gist of it is that they really put the work into it, and it really comes through in the finished products. My family and I have been using these recipes for ages, and they're good. And that built in cooktop in the top picture there looks awesome.

There's also some info about cooking tools that were still more relevant back then.

The one that stands out is the bit about the double boiler. The general concept, as I understand it, was that it was supposed to give a little better control over heating and/or temperature. Not sure I've ever used one in this sense.

The various sections had some interesting photography to introduce them. A good example would be this one for the appetizer section:

That kind of thing takes some serious artistry and skill on levels that I'm just not up to. It's kind of why I went more into the writing side of things when I went to journalism school in the late 90s. Between the photography seen here and the occasional bits of art I post, it's safe to say I don't have much of an eye for that sort of thing. I do like the little poem that comes at the start of this section:

A lot of interesting things there, but it's been ages since anyone I know has had the time, inclination, or reason to do any of them. Kind of like the beverages in this picture at the start of the next section:

They certainly all look nice. I'm pretty sure some of them are adult beverages and some are not, but don't quote me on that. For all the nice art we see in this thing, there are also tabbed pages between sections to make finding the appropriate one a little easier:

This one's for the breads section, and it's in relatively good condition, all things considered, but not all of them held up so well, as seen by the repair work on a few of the tabs there.

I only have this one picture from the desserts section, but that strawberry shortcake does look nice:

I got a couple more from the egg section because I like eggs even if I don't eat them so often any more.

This first one's some basic assistance with cooking simple egg recipes, with pictures of their own. I like this next one, though.

That puffy omelete looks delicious. These next two are here mostly because I think they're cool pictures.

There is one recipe we at least used to use on a fairly regular basis because my dad and I used to do a lot of fishing, and this is how we cooked the fish for years:

At the top of the post, I was mentioning that there was something in this book that dated it more than the cover, and this is it. This tells how to send off for more information on canning from the US government printing office.

And it only cost fifteen cents. I'm pretty sure that stuff isn't available in that sense any more, and even if it is, it costs substantially more.

These next couple are the cover pages for the Soups and Stews and the Sandwiches sections respectively. I didn't really get any recipes from these. I just liked the pictures.

There is one I'd like to try, and I might still, even though I didn't get a good picture to put here:

It's a bit much for one guy, especially with my weight issues, but I guess I could always prep some of that stuff in advance and have it ready to go, since I do like spicy stuff.

But yeah, that's pretty much it for this little adventure. All that's left is the back cover, and that pretty much dates this as much as just about anything else in the book:

I'm sure the more modern versions would be updated for the significantly newer technology we use these days and have more gender-neutral language to match how the world's changed since then. There are male homemakers now, as I understand, or single folks like myself who use some of this stuff.

So this is where I'm going to end this particular story. It's been an interesting thing to do, but a lot of work, which is why I don't do things like it very often.

See you soon with something a little less labor intensive!