1967 Cookbook Features Recipes by the Rolling Stones, Simon & Garfunkel, Barbra Streisand & More

in Books, Food & Drink, Music | February 3rd, 2014

Singers-and-SwingersCover

Am I alone in think­ing that the “dozens of nut­ty, turned-on, easy-to-pre­pare recipes” in 1967’s Singers and Swingers in the Kitchen bear more than pass­ing resem­blance to the fes­tive­ly pho­tographed dish­es in Bet­ty Crock­er’s 1965 New Boys and Girls Cook Book?

Could Son­ny and Cher, Simon and Gar­funkel, and Her­man’s Her­mits — to name a few of the “top scene­mak­ers” Singers and Swingers author Rober­ta Ash­ley des­ig­nates as the “groovi­est gourmets hap­pen­ing” — real­ly shared a com­mon palate with Bet­ty and her child-chefs?

stones recipe
It’s hard to imag­ine 1967’s rock stars” eat­ing this stuff, let alone mak­ing it. The Rolling Stones’ “Hot Dogs on the Rocks” sounds more suit­ed to Mick Jag­ger’s hot pot at the Lon­don School of Eco­nom­ics than the back of a “Ruby Tues­day” era tour bus. I don’t recall Kei­th Richards men­tion­ing them in Life.

(Though take away the recipe’s three mid­dle words, and you’re left with the title of a cer­tain mul­ti-plat­inum dou­ble hits album. Coin­ci­dence?)

 

betty-crocker-rocket

Mov­ing on to Singers and Swingers’ sal­ad course, Mon­kee Peter Tork’s “Mad Man­darin Sal­ad” (click here for ingre­di­ents) sounds like it would taste quite sim­i­lar to the New Boys and Girls Cook Book’s “Rock­et Sal­ad”, above. Canned fruit fea­tures promi­nent­ly in both, but “Rock­et Sal­ad” is way more phal­lic, and thus more rock n’ roll.

 

barbra-streisands-coffee-ice-cream-001

“Bar­bra Streisand’s Instant Cof­fee Ice Cream” sounds sophis­ti­cat­ed, may­haps because cof­fee, like alco­hol, has no place in the Bet­ty Crock­er New Boys and Girls’ realm. It seems like it would uphold the Singers and Swingers’ man­date by being “easy-to-pre­pare”. Dare I say “easy enough for a child to pre­pare”? So my own moth­er told the Indi­anapo­lis Star some­time in the late 60’s. The evi­dence is below. Just like Bar­bra’s, my moth­er’s recipe required marsh­mal­lows and a blender.

coffeemallow

And, oh by the way, don’t miss Simon and Garfunkel’s Pota­to Pan­cake Recipe. It’s to die for…

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

The Recipes of Icon­ic Authors: Jane Austen, Sylvia Plath, Roald Dahl, the Mar­quis de Sade & More

Learn to Make Borscht with Neko Case and Get a Taste of Her New Album

Alice B. Tok­las Talks About Her Famous Recipe for Hashish Fudge

Ayun Hal­l­i­day con­tin­ues to lust after Bet­ty Crock­er’s Enchant­ed Cas­tle Cake. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday

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How Cooking Can Change Your Life: A Short Animated Film Featuring the Wisdom of Michael Pollan

in Food & Drink | January 23rd, 2014

Michael Pol­lan, the best­selling author who describes him­self jok­ing­ly as a “lib­er­al food­ie intel­lec­tu­al,” pub­lished Food Rules in 2009, a hand­book that offers “straight­for­ward, mem­o­rable rules for eat­ing wise­ly.” The one I remem­ber best is Rule #2. “Don’t eat any­thing your great-grand­moth­er would­n’t rec­og­nize as food.” That’s because it’s like­ly processed and “designed to get us to buy and eat more by push­ing our evo­lu­tion­ary but­tons, our inborn pref­er­ences for sweet­ness and fat and salt.” A few oth­er note­wor­thy sug­ges­tions and asser­tions include:

Rule #6: “Avoid foods that con­tain more than five ingre­di­ents.”

Rule #20: “It’s not food if it arrived through the win­dow of your car.”

Rule #37: “The whiter the bread, the soon­er you’ll be dead.”

Rule #17: “Eat only foods that have been cooked by humans.”

That last rule gets tak­en up again in How Cook­ing Can Change Your Life, a short ani­mat­ed film just released by the Roy­al Soci­ety of the Arts (RSA). The audio in the clip is an out­take from a longer talk that Pol­lan gave at RSA in Lon­don, last May. Lis­ten to the talk in full here. Below, we’ve also post­ed anoth­er RSA video that takes more Food Rules by Pol­lan and ren­ders them in stop motion ani­ma­tion. This sec­ond clip first appeared on our site back in 2012. (For a more sus­tained intel­lec­tu­al expe­ri­ence, see our pre­vi­ous post: Michael Pol­lan Presents an Edi­ble Edu­ca­tion, A Free Online Course From UC Berke­ley.)

Relat­ed Con­tent:

MIT Teach­es You How to Speak Ital­ian & Cook Ital­ian Cui­sine All at Once (Free Online Course)

Sci­ence & Cook­ing: Har­vard Profs Meet World-Class Chefs in Unique Online Course

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Hunter S. Thompson’s Personal Hangover Cure (and the Real Science of Hangovers)

in Food & Drink, Letters | January 18th, 2014

Hunter-S-Thompson-hangover-cure

Last year, we brought you a descrip­tion of Hunter S. Thompson’s dai­ly drug and alco­hol reg­i­men, con­sist­ing of fright­en­ing amounts of cocaine and liquor, sup­plant­ed by the occa­sion­al cup of cof­fee or acid tab. While the sto­ry may be apoc­ryphal, Thomp­son was no dilet­tante when it came to psy­choac­tive sub­stances. The father of gonzo jour­nal­ism bur­nished his image as a for­mi­da­ble sub­stance user in the open­ing lines of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas (1971):

The trunk of the car looked like a mobile police nar­cotics lab. We had two bags of grass, seventy—five pel­lets of mesca­line, five sheets of high—powered blot­ter acid, a salt shak­er half full of cocaine, and a whole galaxy of multi—colored uppers, down­ers, scream­ers, laugh­ers and also a quart of tequi­la, a quart of rum, a case of Bud­weis­er, a pint of raw ether and two dozen amyls. All this had been round­ed up the night before, in a fren­zy of high—speed dri­ving all over Los Ange­les County—from Topan­ga to Watts, we picked up every­thing we could get our hands on. Not that we need­ed all that for the trip, but once you get locked into a seri­ous drug col­lec­tion, the ten­den­cy is to push it as far as you can.

It’s safe to say that if you were to con­sult any­one about a hang­over fix, Thomp­son would be a good can­di­date for coun­sel. Luck­i­ly, the author left us with a guide. In 2011, Play­boy released a com­pendi­um of its 1960s and 1970s cor­re­spon­dences with Thomp­son. Most were dis­ap­point­ing­ly pro­sa­ic, but among the dross was a hur­ried­ly scrib­bled note on the top­ic of hang­over cures:

P.S. — inre: Oui’s request for “my hang­over cure” — it’s 12 amyl nitrites (one box), in con­junc­tion with as many beers as nec­es­sary.

OK H

If a hair of the dog approach doesn’t quite suit you, or if Thompson’s recipe exceeds your ini­tial con­sump­tion, I sug­gest a bot­tle of sports drink at the tail end of a big night to replen­ish elec­trolytes. Still, accord­ing YouTube’s SciShow, which does a fan­tas­tic job of elu­ci­dat­ing the chem­i­cal process­es behind all the headaches and room spins, there’s only one fool­proof method:

As a PSA to stave off angry com­ments, a spoil­er alert: SciShow’s rec­om­men­da­tion is on par with the absti­nence mod­el of birth con­trol: just don’t do it, and you’ll be fine.

Ilia Blin­d­er­man is a Mon­tre­al-based cul­ture and sci­ence writer. Fol­low him at @iliablinderman.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Hunter S. Thomp­son Calls Tech Sup­port, Unleash­es a Tirade Full of Fear and Loathing (NSFW)

John­ny Depp Reads Let­ters from Hunter S. Thomp­son (NSFW)

Hunter S. Thomp­son Remem­bers Jim­my Carter’s Cap­ti­vat­ing Bob Dylan Speech (1974)

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How Coffee Affects Your Brain: A Very Quick Primer

in Animation, Food & Drink | January 14th, 2014

The morn­ing cup of cof­fee sweeps the cob­webs off of your brain. Almost mag­i­cal­ly. Just like that. If you care to get ana­lyt­i­cal about what’s going on in your caf­feinat­ed brain, we give you a short video from PHD comics — short, of course, for Piled High­er and Deep­er. For more of their videos see:

The Hig­gs Boson, AKA the God Par­ti­cle, Explained with Ani­ma­tion

What’s Next for the Large Hadron Col­lid­er? PhD Comics Intro­duces the Search for Extra Dimen­sions

Dark Mat­ter Ani­mat­ed: The Next Fron­tier of Dis­cov­ery for Physi­cists and Cos­mol­o­gists

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The Curious Story of London’s First Coffeehouses (1650–1675)

in Food & Drink, History | January 12th, 2014

coffee englandIn his 1621 opusThe Anato­my of Melan­choly, Robert Bur­ton wrote, “The Turks have a drink called cof­fa (for they use no wine), so named of a berry as black as soot, and as bit­ter … which they sip still of, and sup as warm as they can suf­fer; they spend much time in those cof­fa-hous­es, which are some­what like our ale­hous­es or tav­erns…”

Sev­er­al decades lat­er, read­ers would require no such expla­na­tions: Eng­land would be awash in cof­fee­hous­es, num­ber­ing in the thou­sands. The curi­ous sto­ry of how the British swapped much of their dai­ly ale con­sump­tion for this “syrop of soot, or essence of old shoes,” is told by Matthew Green in “The Lost World of The Lon­don Cof­fee House,” on the Pub­lic Domain Review.

Pri­or to 1652, when Pasqua Rosée estab­lished a small cof­fee­house in St. Michael’s Alley in Lon­don, cof­fee was vir­tu­al­ly unknown in Eng­land. Rosée, a ser­vant of a cof­fee-lov­ing trad­er to the Lev­ant, found tremen­dous suc­cess with his ven­ture and, accord­ing to Green, was soon sell­ing over 600 serv­ings a day. Above, read­ers can view Rosée’s orig­i­nal hand­bill, where the entre­pre­neur adver­tised both the ther­a­peu­tic and pro­phy­lac­tic effects of his wares on diges­tion, headaches, rheuma­tism, con­sump­tion, cough, drop­sy, gout, scurvy, and mis­car­riages. It’s a won­der any­one ever drink­ing the stuff got sick.

Cof­fee­hous­es quick­ly became pop­u­lar places for men to con­verse and con­gre­gate, and Green notes that women soon grew tired of their absence. This exas­per­a­tion mount­ed until the 1674 Women’s Peti­tion Against Cof­fee, which claimed that “Exces­sive use of that New­fan­gled, Abom­inable, Hea­then­ish Liquor called COFFEE” led to England’s falling birthrate, mak­ing men “as unfruit­ful as the sandy deserts, from where that unhap­py berry is said to be brought.” Men, as they are wont to do, expressed their dis­agree­ment, and stat­ed in Men’s Answer to the Women’s Peti­tion Against Cof­fee that cof­fee made “the erec­tion more vig­or­ous, the ejac­u­la­tion more full, add[ing] a spir­i­tu­al ascen­den­cy to the sperm.”

A year lat­er, cof­fee­hous­es found more for­mi­da­ble oppo­si­tion in the form of King Charles II, who issued the “Procla­ma­tion for the sup­pres­sion of Cof­fee Hous­es” in 1675. Charles, how­ev­er, was more inter­est­ed in their polit­i­cal effects than the spir­i­tu­al ascen­den­cy of his sub­jects’ sperm. Cof­fee­hous­es pro­vid­ed an oppor­tu­ni­ty for more mind­ful and seri­ous con­ver­sa­tions than did ale­hous­es, and allowed any­one who paid the sin­gle pen­ny entrance charge to par­tic­i­pate in dis­cus­sions — to Charles, these were the ide­al cir­cum­stances for plot­ting sedi­tion and trea­son among the pop­u­lace. Despite the King’s procla­ma­tion, the cof­fee­hous­es, buoyed by a sup­port­ive pub­lic, pre­vailed.

To read Green’s fas­ci­nat­ing essay in full, includ­ing a descrip­tion of the cof­fee­house fre­quent­ed by Alexan­der Pope, Jonathan Swift, Joseph Addi­son, and Richard Steele, head over to the Pub­lic Domain Review.

Ilia Blin­d­er­man is a Mon­tre­al-based cul­ture and sci­ence writer. Fol­low him at @iliablinderman.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Hon­oré de Balzac Writes About “The Plea­sures and Pains of Cof­fee,” and His Epic Cof­fee Addic­tion

Men In Com­mer­cials Being Jerks About Cof­fee: A Mashup of 1950s & 1960s TV Ads

 

The His­to­ry of Cof­fee and How It Trans­formed Our World

Black Cof­fee: Doc­u­men­tary Cov­ers the His­to­ry, Pol­i­tics & Eco­nom­ics of the “Most Wide­ly Tak­en Legal Drug”

 

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Watch Beer Ferment in Time-Lapse Motion, and Then Learn How to Make Beer with an Animated Video

in Food & Drink | January 9th, 2014

In one time-lapse minute, you can watch Big­foot Bar­ley­wine Style Ale, made by Sier­ra Neva­da, tur­bu­lent­ly slosh­ing around, ris­ing and falling, over the course of six days. The clip is set to the music of Edvard Grieg’s Peer Gynt Suite No. 1, Op. 46. Now if you want to put this visu­al dis­play into a bit of a larg­er edu­ca­tion­al con­text, then we rec­om­mend you spend anoth­er two min­utes watch­ing a short ani­mat­ed video explain­ing the beer-mak­ing process, from start to fin­ish. For the impa­tient, the fer­ment­ing comes at the 1:20 mark.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Physics of Guin­ness Beer Demys­ti­fied

A Beer Bot­tle Gets Turned Into a 19th Cen­tu­ry Edi­son Cylin­der and Plays Fine Music

Wim Wen­ders Cre­ates Ads to Sell Beer (Stel­la Artois), Pas­ta (Bar­il­la), and More Beer (Car­ling)

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Norman Rockwell’s Typewritten Recipe for His Favorite Oatmeal Cookies

in Art, Food & Drink | December 30th, 2013

Norman-Rockwells-Favorite-Recipe-e1325108175699

Nor­man Rock­well, pro­lif­ic painter and illus­tra­tor of 20th cen­tu­ry Amer­i­cana, often worked so sin­gle-mind­ed­ly that he missed his meals. In 1943, Rock­well exhaust­ed him­self to such a degree that, while com­plet­ing the Franklin Delano Roo­sevelt-inspired series of paint­ings enti­tled Four Free­doms, he lost 15 pounds over the course of sev­en months. This drop in weight is, per­haps, all the more shock­ing when giv­en some con­text: Rock­well was far from being a cor­pu­lent man. In fact, when the then 23-year-old artist attempt­ed to enlist as a ser­vice­man in the U. S. Navy dur­ing World War I, he was judged to be eight pounds under­weight, stand­ing at six feet and tip­ping the scales at 140 pounds. Rock­well, how­ev­er, was not to be deterred by some­thing so triv­ial as his bod­i­ly com­po­si­tion. He gorged him­self on bananas and dough­nuts when he came home that evening. The next day, Navy recruiters dul­ly wel­comed the suf­fi­cient­ly bloat­ed Rock­well to the fold.

When Rock­well did eat, we know that he had a pen­chant for oat­meal cook­ies. At least two of the artist’s let­ters detail­ing instruc­tions for mak­ing this choice snack are post­ed online. Although there is a 1966 iter­a­tion of the oat­meal cook­ie recipe avail­able on Biblioklept.org, we’ve pro­vid­ed a lat­er ver­sion, from the 1970s, found on The Sat­ur­day Evening Post web­site:

 

Ingre­di­ents

  • 1 stick but­ter
  • 1 cup light brown sug­ar
  • 1/2 cup gran­u­lat­ed sug­ar
  • 1 tea­spoon vanil­la
  • 1/4 cup water and 2 eggs well beat­en
  • 1 tea­spoon salt
  • 1 cup flour, sift­ed
  • 1/2 tea­spoon bak­ing soda
  • About 1 cup oat­meal
  • Chopped nuts (wal­nuts pre­ferred)

Direc­tions

Mix in order and drop on bak­ing sheet. Bake 400° 7 to 8 min­utes. Then run under broil­er to brown.

via Sat­ur­day Evening Post

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Ernest Hemingway’s Favorite Ham­burg­er Recipe

David Lynch Teach­es You to Cook His Quinoa Recipe in a Weird, Sur­re­al­ist Video

Pre­pare Mar­i­lyn Monroe’s Per­son­al, Hand­writ­ten Turkey-and-Stuff­ing Recipe on Thanks­giv­ing

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Charles Mingus’ “Top Secret” Eggnog Recipe Contains “Enough Alcohol to Put Down an Elephant”

in Food & Drink | December 24th, 2013

mingus-egg-nog

Image by Tom Mar­cel­lo Web­ster, via Wiki­me­dia Com­mons

Just in time for a hard-drink­ing Christ­mas, the Vil­lage Voice brings us the “top secret” eggnog recipe from “Angry Man of Jazz” Charles Min­gus. Despite his gen­er­al­ly iras­ci­ble tem­pera­ment, Min­gus had a leg­endary “zeal for par­ties and drink” and “felt the yule­tide spirit—or spir­its, if you will—according to biog­ra­ph­er Janet Cole­man.” Min­gus passed his recipe to Cole­man over the phone, and she pub­lished it in Mingus/Mingus: Two Mem­oirs. The ‘nog, the Voice tells us, “calls for enough alco­hol to put down an ele­phant,” so if you hap­pen to be host­ing one, this might just come in handy. Humans seem to dig it too. Cole­man called it “a con­coc­tion so deli­cious and mind-blow­ing, you would do any­thing to make sure you saw him at Christ­mas.”

Charles Min­gus’ “Top Secret” Eggnog

* Sep­a­rate one egg for one per­son. Each per­son gets an egg.
* Two sug­ars for each egg, each per­son.
* One shot of rum, one shot of brandy per per­son.
* Put all the yolks into one big pan, with some milk.
* That’s where the 151 proof rum goes. Put it in grad­u­al­ly or it’ll burn the eggs,
* OK. The whites are sep­a­rate and the cream is sep­a­rate.
* In anoth­er pot- depend­ing on how many peo­ple- put in one shot of each, rum and brandy. (This is after you whip your whites and your cream.)
* Pour it over the top of the milk and yolks.
* One tea­spoon of sug­ar. Brandy and rum.
* Actu­al­ly you mix it all togeth­er.
* Yes, a lot of nut­meg. Fresh nut­meg. And stir it up.
* You don’t need ice cream unless you’ve got peo­ple com­ing and you need to keep it cold. Vanil­la ice cream. You can use eggnog. I use vanil­la ice cream.
* Right, taste for fla­vor. Bour­bon? I use Jamaica Rum in there. Jamaican Rums. Or I’ll put rye in it. Scotch. It depends.
See, it depends on how drunk I get while I’m tast­ing it.

If you’re drink­ing tonight, make sure you drink respon­si­bly!

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Try George Orwell’s Recipe for Christ­mas Pud­ding, from His Essay “British Cook­ery” (1945)

Pre­pare Mar­i­lyn Monroe’s Per­son­al, Hand­writ­ten Turkey-and-Stuff­ing Recipe on Thanks­giv­ing

Charles Min­gus Explains in His Gram­my-Win­ning Essay “What is a Jazz Com­pos­er?”

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

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