French's Outdoor Recipes

Yesterday I wrote about advertising cookbooks that focused on the theme of outdoor cooking. One such recipe booklet of this type was Outdoor Recipes for Patio, Picnics, and Camping, published the R. T. French Company. It's not dated, and I haven't yet tracked down the date of publication, but it appears to be from the 1970's. It's illustrated with nice color photographs.

The booklet uses French's brand ingredients such as Worcestershire Sauce, spices and seasonings, mustards, gravy, sauce and seasoning mixes, minced onions, and potato mixes.

The recipes are divided into three groups--Patio Cook-Outs, Picnics and Camping. While the recipes for the cook-outs and camping are prepared outdoors, the picnic food is prepared indoors at home.

In the Patio Cook-Outs section there are 24 recipes. Some of those are Piquant Grilled Steak, Reuben Burgers, Grilled Meat Loaf, Stuffed Onions, Deviled Steak Sandwiches, Striped Spuds, Foil Grilled Pot Roast, Garden Ham Salad, Polynesian Pork Packets, Taco Ribs, Slow Cooker Ribs, and Bacon Wrapped Fish Kabobs.

If picnic food conjures up visions of only sandwiches, think again. There are 23 recipes for dishes like Polynesian Chicken Salad, Barn Dance Hot Dogs, Herbed Meat Loaf, Crispy Chicken, Antipasto, Sandwich Kabobs, Picnic Pitas, Tuna Potato Salad, Picnic Chicken Dijon, Picnic Potato Salad and Tabbouleh.

The Camping section contains 20 recipes, showing that camping food doesn't have to be just hot dogs and marshmallows on a stick. There are recipes for Minestrone Soup, Hamburgers with Mexican Sauce, Hearty Down-Home Frittata, Summer Chicken Skillet, Chicken Dinner Camp Style, Stone Soup, Beef Skillet Pie, Denver Stuffed Pockets, Golden Fish Fillets, Campers' Tater Skillet, Brunchwiches and Skillet Cheese Biscuits.

I noticed in this booklet that there are a lot of uses for those seasoning and sauce mixes besides just adding water and making the basic package recipe.