Is this another set of odd recipes from days past? Not really. It’s barely even one recipe, and I don’t think it will be a head scratcher. For anyone going “geez I know people have to write their silly little story before they get to the recipe but this is ridiculous!” the point of this post, as is many of my food-related posts, is the silly little story. You have been warned!
Some of you reading this blog may know I do, somewhat, keep up with sports. Not relative to someone that would call themselves a Sports Fan, per se – professional sports games are just a preferred choice for background noise when my family is eating dinner and what not. But ah, my imaginary reader interjects, you deceive us Kelp! I know you’re a commissioner of a fantasy football league!
Why That Is Not a Gotcha
Well yes. The story there is my mom, who is a Sports Fan, used to play in my dad’s work league. But once my dad more or less retired, her fun little addendum to every weekend was gone. I took up the task of forming a new league (strictly casual, no money involved) and filled it with my co-workers at the time. But after I left that job, and slowly left near all of society writ large, the league atrophied. Currently it is a shell of its former self, with only me, my mom, and one (1) married couple I’m still friends with from my grad school days. It will likely not surprise you that the one robust social network that remains to me, ‘fellow alt fashion weirdos’, is…generally not interested in joining a casual fantasy football league. And I can’t cast a wide net for the same reason my mom prefers to play in a league I have control over; people are mean. Shockingly mean. I get that it’s normalized to ‘trash talk’ in these situations, but it’s one thing to rib your friend, and quite another to just insult a stranger on the internet for having bad luck.
Anyways. We typically have a party for The Big Game (you know the one), but usually only my sister’s family is in attendance. This year, however, my sister blanked on what weekend was what and double-booked. My dad took this opportunity to invite a friend of his, and that friend invited a friend, and lo, we actually…had people over for the first time in years.
The game itself was awful. Those of you who watched it know. Those of you who didn’t…well it was almost record-breakingly bad. My dad remarked later that if we hadn’t had company over he would have just shut it off. (Or watched the puppy bowl instead. That’s gotten pretty good over the years!) We should have known it was doomed after my mom failed to find her football player cake decor in the days leading up to The Big Day. (Bonus: she ended up with a migraine and just went upstairs to take a nap before the half was over.)
Back to Snacks
I usually try out a new recipe, if only to make use of the increased number of taste-testers, and thought this year would be a good chance to make something from Party Foods.
Yes, the standard balloon colors of bright red, bright yellow, and Forest Green
This is one of several spiral-bound cookbooks my mom has picked up for me at used book sales around here that features recipes from secondary school Home Economics teachers. And here starts my rant.
I took Home Economics in middle school, and enjoyed it very much. While I won’t deny it was certainly part of my strategy to take ‘slacker electives’ to minimize my academic workload, I genuinely wanted to learn how to sew a pair of pajama pants and bake chocolate chip cookies. (Well, I already knew all the baking curriculum at that point. But you know.) But when I got to high school, my budding scholarship screeched to a halt. Our college prep-focused campus had decided some years earlier to demolish the Home Economics classroom, and of course the class along with it.
In its place, one could potentially jump through some minor hoops and take an ROP class. These were off-site courses held after-school-ish at a district-wide center, usually with a vocational focus. Some courses were even fully online, and this was the early 2000’s, when that wasn’t really a thing for public schools. Looking up at where this program is now, it looks like it’s been rebranded from “Regional Occupational Program” to “Career Technical Education”, and the closest thing to Home Ec is a Culinary Arts Pathway.
That isn’t Home Ec! I don’t want to be a pastry chef. You hear time and time again people lamenting about how kids these days don’t have life skills, and this is the answer. You have high school classes about life skills. I am still mad that my one remaining chance for this at my high school, Regular Ol’ Economics, was also denied – on paper we were supposed to take one semester of AP Government and one semester of AP Economics, but in practice it was all test prep for the Government AP exam until after the test, when the school year was more or less over, especially for seniors. When I finally got to see our Econ textbook, I saw lessons about “here’s how credit cards work” and “different types of loan conditions”, and whilst learning about important Supreme Court cases and super PACs wasn’t not useful, depriving soon-to-be college students from learning how interest compounds seems like A Bad Idea!!
I could go on and on about my quibbles … well no, widely-shared critiques slash known issues with secondary school education and its destructive focus on ‘college prep’ and misguided ideas about ‘careers’ and what not…okay one last thing actually. This rebranding seems to be putting the cart before the horse. Why is it a pathway. That assumes kids have already chosen a path! (deep breaths)
Okay Seriously Back to Snacks
As mentioned previously, I have several of these cookbooks and I like them very much. As an anthropologist, they are fun little artifacts of a Community of Practice from decades past. And as a former high school student, I think it’s a great idea for a school fundraiser.
Something to refer back to if you’re ever worried you overuse quotation marks
Party Foods, put out in 1995, clocks in at about 150 pages. As for what is a ‘party food’, the table of contents lists the following:
- Cold Appetizers
- Hot Appetizers
- Dips
- Salads
- Soups (?)
- Breads (??)
- Desserts (???)
I fully understand that Desserts were likely added to pad out this particular California Cookbook Company entry. (I have two separate editions of Sweet Surprises which features…exactly what you would expect.) Really, I think my main head-scratcher is Soup. Have you made soup for a party? Have you brought soup to a party? It gets weirder – multiple soup recipes mention something like “perfect for when you get back from hitting the ski slopes!”. How many people were having soup parties after driving to Big Bear and back.
(Oh, but Kelp, yet another imaginary reader interjects, how can you, as a Sacramentan, think it strange for someone to take a day trip to Heavenly or whatever- I don’t! But one of the ski slope soup recipes is from San Diego!! I have questions!)
Another questionable party food from the soup section
Will We Ever Find Out What The Recipe Is
Yes, hold on for one more paragraph. Last year I made wings, and for two reasons I didn’t want to repeat. One, it can be understandably difficult to find chicken wings this time of year. Two, I wanted a no-fuss recipe. The type someone might prefix with ‘dump’. Once I learned my mom was handling the pain-in-the-ass snack, slow-baked bbq ribs, I set out with renewed conviction to find a savory snack that fit my low-effort parameters.
I landed on cocktail sausages. You know. The lil’ guys. Part of the appeal here is I own a Zojirushi Gourmet d’Expert® which is basically a very fancy crock pot. Chafing dish? You get the idea.
Ah yes, the two genders: GRILL and COOK
We mainly use this to grill up a decent facsimile of yakiniku at home, but I thought why not use it for a Party Food? Bonus, the recipe I ultimately landed on had three ingredients, and amounted to “dump everything in and turn it to Warm”. The only issue I ran into was it turns out cocktail sausages are also in high demand, forcing my resident grocery shopper to check four different stores to track down a pack.
As for my taste testers…well everyone really liked the ribs. And the friend of a friend brought a pepperoni pizza. I don’t think my lil’ guys were unsuccessful, just understandably not a high priority in the highly processed meat snack category. We had leftovers of everything for a good two days afterwards. Except the ribs.
Right, the recipe. It’s just hickory bbq sauce and apple jelly at roughly a 3:2 ratio. “So easy – so good!” claims Cathy Miller from Montclair High School, and she’s right. It’s very easy.
Reflection of an Artist Lost in the Sauce
kelp 