Regrettable Foods Christmas Potluck 2006

...Or shall we call it the Family Circle Christmas potluck?

The origins of this potluck go back to a lovely day at the beach this past summer when Jodi presented various cookbooks from The Family Circle Illustrated Library of Cooking to those present. This past weekend, we were all called upon to utilise these books to conjure up the magic of cooking in 1972. The consensus at the party was that it was painfully difficult for us to follow these recipes to the letter; the abundance of pre-processed ingredients, the lack of spices or seasoning, the insistence on hard-boiled egg garnishes, and the enthusiasm for molding perfectly good food with gelatin made this potluck prep an almost arduous task . However, we persevered and these are the results.

Ladies, if I get any of the details wrong, please say so in the comments below!

The Feast!

My own contribution to the feast was Scotch Eggs. Pretty simple - hard boiled eggs encased in spiced hamburger, rolled in crushed Corn Flakes, then deep fried. Not too much technique there - although I'd love to make these sometime with really little eggs covered in homemade turkey sausage. These beasts were a little overwhelming and kind of difficult to cook because of their hugeness. But oh, so tasty. (Next time, I'll spice 'em up! The Scotch won't know what hit 'em!)

Next, we have a casserole with pineapple, yams and ham with Marshmellow topping courtesy of Sharon (one of my favourites of the evening, actually...) and an eggplant salad. The ham was cooked in a sauce of canned pineapple juice and brown sugar. I think this is kind of a take-off on the whole candied yams American Thanksgiving thing. Yummy.

The eggplant salad was from the 'Foods from Afar' heading - this was a supposedly Israeli salad of cooked eggplant, cucumber, celery and green olives covered in sour cream. No spices apart from salt, sugar and garlic. The method for making the radishes into rosettes was also in the cookbook. Those 70s housewives sure loved their garnishes.

These two treats above were courtesy of Kreesta and John. The sandwiches were a corrupted Reuben sandwich with spam instead of corned beef - and the lovely tuna ramekins were concocted completely of preprocessed and canned foods. Even the biscuit topping was Pillsbury. A lovely little Tuna Pot Pie, if you will.

My vote goes to Jenny, however for the most ornate food of the night.

These little candied oranges were astonishingly beautiful. I want to decorate my Christmas tree with them. Jenny, correct me if I'm wrong, but I think this is how they were created. First, the orange was sliced at the top and all the insides were gently scooped out. Then the hollow peels were candied. I'm not sure of the process, but I think it involved cooking them in a sugar syrup over a long period of time. Then the candied orange peels were filled with Christmas cake and steamed.

In a way, these oranges reminded me of the beautiful molded Marzipan treats that I first saw in the Netherlands when I was a kid. Breathtakingly lovely, but you were a little afraid to eat them.

It was almost surprising that there was only one molded salad at the potluck - I would venture a guess and say that almost a quarter of all the recipes in these Family Circle books involved mixing gelatin with otherwise acceptable food and conforming it to a imposing, quivering tower of food.

Melanie took on the molded salad challenge with this little number composed of rice, cream, melted candy hearts, and canned pears. Garishly festive!

Alas, there were many other dishes that were enjoyed but not photographed - the quiche, the ambrosia salad, the cheesecake, the salmon spread, the molasses roll-ups... All truly wonderful, and all enjoyed.

Huzzah for Regrettable Food!