Posted on 02/26/2015 2:58:16 PM PST by Jamestown1630
This week's thread is about Cooking With Kids.
When I was in elementary school in the early 1960s, every year the school would hold a book fair; students could look at new books and pick some out to buy.
One year I bought 'Betty Crocker's Cookbook for Boys and Girls', originally published in the late 1950s. I loved looking at this book, and learned a lot using the recipes.
For a children's book, it's a surprisingly comprehensive guide to basic cooking, with a lot of interesting presentation ideas, and even some decorative crafts. AND it includes campfire cooking!
I wanted to post a recipe from it that has become a staple for us; and it struck me to try and find the book on Amazon, even though I was sure it was OOP.
I was surprised to find that there is a 'facsimile' edition available:
http://www.amazon.com/Crockers-Facsimile-Edition-Crocker-Cooking/dp/0764526340
Some of the reviews indicated that it is somewhat edited, and not entirely like the original. BUT: one of the respondents subversively indicated that the original is available on archive.org! I was thrilled to find it - scanned complete with cooking splatters - and to look at the wonderful retro drawings again:
https://ia600506.us.archive.org/12/items/bettycrockerscoo00croc/bettycrockerscoo00croc.pdf
I hope that some of you will remember it, and enjoy looking at it again.
A recipe that I have used from this book countless times over decades, is adapted from the recipe for Spanish Rice (page 151 in the original):
Spanish Rice
Prepare One Cup of Raw White Rice (to make 3 cups cooked)
Heat Oven to 400 degrees
Fry 6 slices bacon until crisp; drain and crumble
Pour bacon grease from pan, leaving about 2 T
Add 1/2 C. minced onion and ½ C. diced green pepper (I usually use 3/4 C. of each).
Cook until onion is yellow
Add in fry pan:
the 3 C. Cooked Rice
2 C. diced, canned tomatoes (one regular can)
1-1/2 tsps. Salt
and the crumbled bacon.
Turn all into greased baking dish. Sprinkle top with grated Cheddar Cheese (as much as you like :-)
Bake 25-30 minutes, or until cheese melts and begins to brown.
After faith in God, solid moral training and encouraging a love for reading, I don’t think there is anything more important to teach kids than to enjoy doing useful things with their hands, including cooking and gardening.
(If you would like on or off of this ping list, please send a private message.)
-JT
1 quart of heavy cream
1 pint of regular milk (maybe, if it's around)
8 egg yolks
2 cups sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla (extract if need be, or use 1 vanilla bean, parted out)
Heat cream and milk (if using milk) until at boiling. Be careful, or it will boil over and burn.
Mix egg yolks with sugar using a whisk. It will be thick.
SLOWLY mix in small amounts of hot cream/milk to egg/sugar mixture. If you don't do this very slowly, and carefully, you will wind up with scrambled eggs.
When cream is fully incorporated, return to heat and keep stirring with whisk. The point is to make a fairly thick custard (it will coat the back of a spoon easily).
When that is done, take off the heat, strain and cool.
Make ice cream as directed by your machine (I use a machine... it's easier).
This is the most difficult recipe I make, because it's very easy to scramble the egg yolks instead of make a custard.
/johnny
I need an ice cream maker! Does anyone have a recommendation?
When I was a kid, ice cream was a once-per-month thing. I remember we would have our ice cream at night, while watching ‘Candid Camera’ on TV; and get cold from it and rush to bed when the show was over ;-)
(Store-bought ice cream today is nothing like it was back then - or maybe it’s another one of those first food experiences that you can’t re-create.)
-JT
We eat this recipe often during Lent. I purchase shrimp on sale during the year and freeze it for the season. Everyone LOVES it except my youngest who declared that the Devil made seafood (not a fish lover).
SHRIMP CASSEROLE
1 1/2 cups uncooked long grain rice
1 1/2 pounds medium size raw shrimp (or what have you)
1/2 cup butter
1 green bell pepper, chopped
1 onion, chopped
3 celery ribs, shopped
2 garlic cloves, minced
2 (10 3/4 oz cream of celery soup)
salt and pepper to taste
1 cup shredded Cheddar-colby cheese
1/4 cup breadcrumbs
Prepare the rice according to package. Peel and devein shrimp. Melt butter in a large skillet/pot over medium heat. Add bell pepper and the next four ingredients until tender. Stir in soup, shrimp, salt and pepper and cook until te shrimp turns pink (about 3 or so minutes). Combine the shrimp mixture with the rice and mix well. Pour into a lightly greased 13x9 inch pan or one close. Sprinkle the cheese and breadcrumbs (we actually leave out the breadcrumbs but I am using the original recipe). Bake at 350 degrees for 25 minutes till cheese is melted.
***You can use the same recipe and use 3 cups diced chicken/or turkey and two cans of cream of chicken soup for another style dish.
****I always hesitate when posting a seafood type dish especially one with the “holy trinity”. Please Bayou and Cajun freepers.. be kind!
I tried a little something new last night. I marinated my chicken breasts in yogurt, green curry paste, lime juice, garlic, salt, pepper, ginger & honey for a few hours and then put them on the grill with some squash and zucchini. Then made a basic white sauce and seasoned with curry powder, ginger, salt, pepper, garlic. Put it all over pasta. My 3 year old tasted it and decided he wasn’t hungry. My husband and I thought it was pretty okay for something a little different to have once in a while.
My recipe for basic white sauce:
1 Tbsp butter
1 1/2 Tbsp flour
1 cup milk
Melt butter over medium heat. Add flour and whisk until smooth. Add a small amount of milk and whisk until smooth. Keep adding milk in small amounts and whisking until all milk is added and sauce has no lumps. Bring to a boil, whisking constantly, and boil for 1 min. From here you can do whatever king of seasoning you like. Add garlic and parm cheese for an “alfredo”. Add cheddar or your other favorite cheese and a touch of dry mustard, garlic, salt & pepper and add to macaroni for mac & cheese. Add ground beef, salt, pepper garlic and serve over toast for SOS. Lots of possibilities.
I got my ice-cream freezer (an electric) at a yard sale.
It works for me. It's a Sunbeam.
I can point to two kids that I mentored. One got mentored on engineering, and went on to college and a degree, and a job in the oilfield that she is keeping, even as others are getting laid off. The other kid got mentored on art, and one of her art projects went to state competition this year to win. I expect she will go far if she wants to keep it up.
But ALL kids that come through my house have to learn something.... cooking is almost always going on, so they learn that. Even if they don't know they are learning.
You are right. Kids are our most important job. We always have to be teaching them something.
Not having a TV here helps, since I'm usually the most interesting thing going on. ;)
/johnny
We had two boys that used to watch me cook but had no interest in actually “cooking”. UNTIL they both got married and then they’d call me and ask for my meatloaf recipe or how I made mashed potatoes or how to make potato pancakes or how I made the sausage stuffing for the Thanksgiving turkey or....you get the idea!
Made me feel good that they “remembered” way back to their childhoods and wanted to prepare the same meals with their own kids. Even now they do a lot of the cooking because they want the meals to taste like they “used to”!! I find it interesting because their wives are excellent cooks.
One of the only things I do remember them helping with was making a Waldorf Salad. A few times it didn’t seem like there were enough apples in the salad. Hmmmm, I wonder why? LOL!
Oh, and they both have gardens.
Your 3 year old and my 8 year old would make fabulous friends! LOL!
What a wonderful recipe! Now I REALLY have to get an ice cream maker. My parents owned a restaurant when I was a kid and my dad made his own ice cream. It was nothing like the stuff you buy. How I miss that.
One of the things I like about the Betty Crocker book for kids, is that it engaged boys as well as girls. That didn’t seem weird to me back then (I was raised pretty much without the “boys do this, girls do that” stuff); but looking back, it seems kind of revolutionary for a book to have involved boys in cooking in 1957 (which was the original publication date.)
Our home-made family cookbook is FULL of recipes from my husband’s mom, despite the fact that he has become a much more experimental eater and cook since boyhood. Nobody ever cooks like ‘Mom’; and people want what they are used to and remember as satisfying!
-JT
We always made ice cream (actually it was always frozen custard) in the winter because we had plenty of snow to pack the bucket of the big ice cream maker with.
I had to laugh because my husband has always said that he didn't know what good cooking was until he met me....and he'd say that in front of his own mom!
That’s the one I’ve been looking at, so I guess I’ll break down and buy. Even though I don’t eat sweet things much anymore, there are times when I want REAL ice cream!
-JT
Joe, how hard is it for a non chef guy to make good ice cream?
How cost effective is it considering all the ingredients needed? About same as lets say Breyers? More, Less?
I use all half and half (I buy it by the half gallon for coffee) as I rarely have milk on hand and never have cream. I guess it's probably a little cheaper than Breyers.
The reason I got it is so I could make Teaberry ice cream, because no one has ever heard of it in FL and I was raised on it in PA.
Just leave out the vanilla beans and once you transfer the mixture to the contraption, add a little Teaberry extract (very little, as that stuff is STRONG!). I even have some pink food coloring to add.
I've also made some great chocolate ice cream using the same base recipe and adding some cocoa and Giardelli chocolate. Using that custard recipe you can make anything you want really. 
To answer your question, it's easy. Oh, and delicious.
I HAD that cookbook! The Betty Crocker Cooking for Boys and Girls. I loved it! I made so many recipes from that book. I remember a fantastic peanut butter fudge recipe. I started out cooking in the 4th grade. Maybe even before. My mom let me make cakes and muffins out of mixes, and jello. I loved making whipped jello. But when I graduated to that cookbook, I thought I had arrived! I still love cooking today. My mom was a fantastic cook - she taught me everything. She just turned 87 last Sunday and still cooks almost every night for herself and my dad.
LOL! He’s been a wonderfully non-picky eater most of the time, so I just figured he wasn’t hungry. No big deal for him to not eat dinner if he’s not hungry from whatever he’s eaten during the day; usually fruit and nuts and cheese and smoothies from homemade yogurt. :)
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