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The Gallery of Regrettable Food

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Manufacturer: Crown
List Price: $22.95
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WARNING:

This is not a cookbook. You'll find no tongue-tempting treats within -- unless, of course, you consider Boiled Cow Elbow with Plaid Sauce to be your idea of a tasty meal. No, The Gallery of Regrettable Food is a public service. Learn to identify these dishes. Learn to regard shivering liver molds with suspicion. Learn why curries are a Communist plot to undermine decent, honest American spices. Learn to heed the advice of stern, fictional nutritionists. If you see any of these dishes, please alert the authorities.

Now, the good news: laboratory tests prove that The Gallery of Regrettable Food AMUSES as well as informs. Four out of five doctors recommend this book for its GENEROUS PORTIONS OF HILARITY and ghastly pictures from RETRO COOKBOOKS. You too will look at these products of post-war cuisine and ask: "WHAT WERE THEY THINKING?" It's an affectionate look at the days when starch ruled, pepper was a dangerous spice, and Stuffed Meat with Meat Sauce was considered health food.

Bon appetit!

The Gallery of Regrettable Food is a simple introduction to poorly photographed foodstuffs and horrid recipes from the Golden Age of Salt and Starch. It's a wonder anyone in the 1940s, '50s, and '60s gained any weight. It isn't that the food was inedible; it was merely dull. Everything was geared toward a timid palate fearful of spice. It wasn't nonnutritious -- no, between the limp boiled vegetables, fat-choked meat cylinders, and pink whipped Jell-O desserts, you were bound to find a few calories that would drag you into the next day. It's just that the pictures are so hideously unappealing.

Author James Lileks has made it his life's work to unearth the worst recipes and food photography from that bygone era and assemble them with hilarious, acerbic commentary: "This is not meat. This is something they scraped out of the air filter from the engines of the Exxon Valdez." It all started when he went home to Fargo and found an ancient recipe book in his mom's cupboard: Specialties of the House, from the North Dakota State Wheat Commission. He never looked back. Now, they're not really recipe books. They're ads for food companies, with every recipe using the company's products, often in unexpected and horrifying ways. There's not a single appetizing dish in the entire collection.

The pictures in the book are ghastly -- the Italian dishes look like a surgeon had a sneezing fit during an operation, and the queasy casseroles look like something on which the janitor dumps sawdust. But you have to enjoy the spirit behind the books -- cheerful postwar perfect housewifery, and folks with the guts to undertake such culinary experiments as stuffing cabbage with hamburger, creating the perfect tongue mousse when you have the fellas over for a pregame nosh, or, best of all, baking peppers with a creamy marshmallow sauce. Alas, too many of these dishes bring back scary childhood memories.


DESCRIPTION:

Binding: Hardcover
Dewey Decimal Number: 641.50207
EAN: 9780609607824
ISBN: 0609607820
Label: Crown
Manufacturer: Crown
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 192
Publication Date: 2001-09-11
Publisher: Crown
Release Date: 2001-09-11
Studio: Crown


SIMILAR ITEMS:

• Mommy Knows Worst: Highlights from the Golden Age of Bad Parenting Advice
• Gastroanomalies: Questionable Culinary Creations from the Golden Age of American Cookery
• Interior Desecrations: Hideous Homes from the Horrible '70s
• The Amazing Mackerel Pudding Plan: Classic Diet Recipe Cards from the 1970s
• Mental Hygiene: Better Living Through Classroom Films 1945-1970


CUSTOMER REVIEWS:

Customer Rating:
Summary: Great chuckle for all baby boomers who remember the regrettable food era!
Comment: This is actually my SECOND copy of this book. The first copy I bought in a garage sale....I laughed myself silly...shared it with every girl in the neighborhood.....and then mailed it to my friend in Seattle to share with her friends.
Now, I've found myself missing that copy....and the ability to share it with new friends.

Customer Rating:
Summary: I just don't get it
Comment: This book came up as one I "might be interested in" after I'd added some other humor books to my cart. I checked it out, and after reading so many favorable reviews, purchased it.

And boy, do I regret that purchase! To me, the author seems to be saying the same thing over and over: This looks like nuclear waste, this looks like a swamp, this looks like [fill in the blank]. What were they thinking, blah blah blah. Yeah, his comments are mean-spirited, but I LIKE that kind of humor. Not this time, though.

In addition, the pictures of the foods he's denigrating are often difficult to make out. I understand that the originals were found in old cookbooks and aren't as glitzy and glamorous as those today's food stylists produce, but still . . . it would be nice to be able to actually see the dishes that he's putting down.

Believe it or not, I've fallen asleep more than once while trying to slog my way through this book. (I'm one of those who tries to finish every book she starts, although not always successfully.) I'm going to give up, as I'm sure the rest will just be more of the same.

Huge disappointment.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Mom remembers the dishes....!!!
Comment: I bought this book as a gift for my mom's 79th birthday. She was a home maker in the glorious days of culinary exploration described in this book. She couldn't put it down, and kept laughing thru the pages. I was afraid she would recognise something off the family menu from years past... I mean my parents have been together for 60 years, and there was 8 kids, thats a lot of meals. I do recall her being a great cook, but maybe there was something that didn't work......?
Customer Rating:
Summary: A Cure for Modern Ills
Comment: Had a rough day? Stressed about the looming Apocalypse and your dwindling bank balance? You need James Lileks. You need The Gallery of Regrettable Food -- actual food illustrations and photography from the Depression through the swinging 70s. There are a few recipes, but the focus is on the unappetizing pictures and Lileks's delicious commentary. Imagine the mind that could dream up hot dogs in aspic. No, don't. Not if you're eating. Or about to eat. Or ever want to eat again.

Most of the content in Lileks's books is no longer on the website, but truly they are worth buying. He describes a loaf of mottled red meat sludge in aspic as "a core sample from a mass grave." He tells the hidden stories of the people in those illustrations. Truly, he is the MST3K of old advertisements -- and his wit is as sharp as his eye.

The effect of reading anything by Lileks is, first, laughter, tinged with horror. Then, as you read on, uncontrollable spasms of laughter. Then choking, screaming convulsions of something that might be laughter or agony, garnished by tears. Then full-fledged hysteria. It's absolutely guaranteed, and it's one of the best ways I know for dealing with a horrible day.

Why yes, I had a . . . regrettable day. Any day in which one's automobile, freshly emerged from the shelter of a warranty period, demands repairs that will cost almost a month's rent (which, incidentally, has just been raised again), that day cries out for Official Cheer.

(It worked, too.)
Customer Rating:
Summary: Spelunking into a forgotten culture
Comment: People think of the era covered by Lileks book as "recent history" because we have television and film from this era, but really, it's not very recent at all. Sure, there are some people alive now who were alive then, but the cultural upheavals and historical lava flows that have occurred since then make them more like visitors from a foreign country than people of our time.

Lileks answers the burning question: what nameless horrors did Wally Cleaver eat, that made him think becoming a hippy and destroying Western Civilization was a good idea? This book shows some of these culinary atrocities. It was the last era where corporations were seen as more or less benign entities. You can see where Wally Cleaver got the other idea: I mean, food made with 7-up? All those marshmallows? The twinkie defense was invented not long afterwords. After reading the book, you can understand why the kids were so angry in the 1960s. They'd been eating sinister marshmallow covered 7-up roasts prepared by their moms in the 1950s. Sure, they railed against sexism and racism and colonialism, but considering what the same people did in the 70s and 80s, perhaps it was just indigestion.

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