Originally published at: Mildly-concerning vintage Christmas meals | Boing Boing
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In the 80’s, my brother and I were at a holiday party where there was a fruit jello mold… with gefilte fish inside. It was on a buffet, with no warning.
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Ages past loved their novelty food mouldings. The era of jelly and blancmange, pate and meatloaf. Mrs Beaton, offal and lots and lots of lard in everything.
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“Mildly” concerning
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Looks like the hors d’oeuvres great Cthulhu serves at parties in R’lyeh……
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Possibly one of the larval stages of neo-otyugh.
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I’m sure those faces are just made from melted cheddar cheese. Goes great on cookies, and apple pie!
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Crocodile and porcupine!
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A demented and sad crocodile and porcupine, maybe.
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The ink fade, combined with the less than accurate color film of the day doesn’t help.
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Yep. And specialty holiday recipe books (for practical reasons) seem to focus on out-of-the-ordinary offerings, something that results in iffy, fail-on-sight, whacked-out subjects.
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If his story caught your interest, may I suggest a visit to LILEKS Gallery of Regrettable food. It’s a veritable smorgasbord (see what I did there) of mid century culinary weirdness!
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Looks a bit like Cerveau au beurre noisette.
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Didn’t jellied eels used to be a traditional winter holiday dish in certain circles?
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Certain circles of hell perhaps
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[surprisingly on-topic]
Among the mildly-concerning (ok maybe not exactly vintage but maybe) Christmas meals I have faced over the years is the winter holiday Chinese dim sum family gathering, typically on Christmas week if not Christmas Day (25 December). My very German mom, who had us all celebrating Christmas on the evening of 24 December (NB: Chinese originally did not have and did not celebrate Christmas, it was never part of their old culture), was fine with us going out to dim sum for lunch on the “American Christmas” day, when many Chinese restaurants are already open anyway because those restaurateurs are nobody’s fools. The restaurants we went to were always packed. They would take reservations for a 25 December lunch a year in advance.
So as the steel dim sum carts wheeled by, fragrant, steamy, with many tiny containers on them, various dumplings and buns and uh steamed things ahem were added to our table. Dad invariably got dim sum chicken feet, dim sum tripe, etc.
As a vegetarian (I started while I was still in high school), the spread looked and to me at least was
… and like any practical person, I tried to route my way around the problem. And I absolutely did not speak Chinese, so some guesswork was always involved.
Thanks for the prompt, for letting my stroll [rather publicly] through a holiday memory, with y’all.
Dad would have loved them.
And probably he ate them sometime, somewhere, I’d bet.
He was very traditional and very old school. especially in his Chinese food intake. The fatty pork he’d have mom stew all day in her crockpot was such a joy to him. His cholesterol was sky-high and his BMI then was better than my mine is now.
initial choice in potentially poor taste, my apologies:
Vegetarianly,
your untraditional correspondent
ETA: blurred out my initial “tradition” animated gif, added a more respectful one
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People were thinner back then because the food was so gross. Cocktails, too. Clam juice martini, anyone? Bourbon and beef stock?
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