Crisco for Your Salads

Here's one more small piece of paper that takes up a bit of space in my house. Multiply this leaflet by hundreds (seems like thousands) and it's no wonder I'm running out of room.

This little tri-fold recipe leaflet, Discover New Crisco Oil (not dated) was published by Procter & Gamble sometime in the early 1960s. (I actually think it's around 1962 since there's the small numbers 8-62S in tiny print along the rear edge.) It originally contained a coupon for Crisco Oil, along with some recipes for salad dressings and some suggestions for other ways to use the oil.

This product was introduced in 1960. Do you remember the lovely brown glass bottles? I do. Sure miss those!

This looks like the lady is tasting her glass of wine. Look--Sniff---Taste. Is that the image they meant to portray?


I'm not sure I'd want to add vegetable oil to my meatloaf--there's enough fat to drain off already. Perhaps ground beef wasn't so fatty back then. But the salad dressing recipes sound pretty good.

More Help from General Foods

My last post was about an older advertising booklet from General Foods Corporation that was published back in 1970. Today's booklet, Home Meal Planner, is also from General Foods (1961, 3rd Edition, 2nd Printing, 32 pp), but was published about ten years earlier. It's not nearly so pretty and cheerful to the eye as was the prior booklet. See how that appealing to the consumer's senses thing works?--not just for the food itself, but also for the advertising. I'd choose the first one over this one any day just because I think it looks better.

This booklet is illustrated completely in black and white, with the exception of a few tinted pages and drawings, which are pretty boring in my opinion.

This woman's hairdo is spot on for the one my mother had back then.


The Home Meal Planner promises big results from its 32 pages.

"With it, anyone can:

• Choose from a menu or serve the family meals that are balanced, right in food values, and delicious to eat



• Select the foods that make meals fit particular tates, individual cooking talent, one's budget, the season.



• Make meals varied and interesting with new flavor combinations and easy recipe ideas. This takes no special know-how. The Home Meal Planner will do it all--almost automatically!"

To do this, the booklet covers a lot of ground. Section headings include:

• Foods Needed Each Day



• Skill in Planning Meals



• Meal Plans and Menus



• Plans for Snacks



• Food Choices



• Quick Tips from General Foods Kitchens



• Look on the Grocer's Shelves



• Services...Back of General Foods Products

One of the pages suggests seven menu examples for Breakfast. Their cereals are prominent in each of the meals. I don't know about you, but when I eat cereal, I eat cereal, perhaps with some fruit, but that's all. Here, they have cereal going with pancakes and cereal with eggs, and cereal with toast. The Summer Breakfast has cereal with eggs and coffee cake. That's a lot of food! The Luncheon and Dinner menus have a lot more variety.


They refer to the different age groups in amusing ways--little tots, school children, teen-agers, oldsters. Now it would be the children's specific age groups, or perhaps seniors or just plain old "kids."

Although it doesn't say so, this is surely a photo of the Birds Eye frozen fruits:


In this booklet, as well as the later one, they also show a picture of some of their products. I don't see that the frozen Birds Eye Tiny Taters made it til the beginning of the next decade. D-Zerta was still around though sugar-free Jell-O replaced that product in 1984. I'm not sure when they discontinued Swans Down Cake Mixes. I don't recall ever seeing those, but perhaps I wasn't paying enough attention.

Here's a listing of their products which is not nearly extensive as the one ten years later:

Food for You and Your Family

Popping back in again after another long absence. It's hard to get back into the swing of things, but I'm trying. I still read all of your daily blogs that I always have in the past, although I haven't commented. I've just been in kind of a quiet mood. And truth be told, sometimes there's so much stuff stacked up on top of the scanner, it simply requires too much effort to remove it in order to scan a cookbook.

Anyhoo, I came across this colorful booklet on my shelf and thought I'd see if I could manage to write something about it. Food For You and Your Family was published by General Foods Corporation (1970, 6th Edition, 32 pp). I'm not sure why it has the binder holes in it; perhaps it was meant for a Home Economics class or something like that. It provides a lot of basic information about food and what it means to a person and information about meal planning and nutrition. It does seem to be more on the educational side, although it contains several recipes too.

I think the cover is so bright and cheerful, even after forty years. It's illustrated inside with color photos like the one below, as well as some colorful drawings.



Post Cereal was a brand under the General Foods umbrella, so I imagine this is a picture of Post Raisin Bran. I always think of my grandmother when I see Raisin Bran, because she ate a bowlful every single morning. Digesitve purposes, you know.

This is one of the colorful drawings and below is part of the text that accompanies it:

"In the search for new convenience foods, the appetite-appeal factors are kept prominently in view. Step by step, every product is tested and retested for its appeal to every one of the five senses--yes, even to the sense of hearing, as in the case of cereals! The result--wonderful new taste for your table."

I wonder, if in 2011, food manufacturers are still trying to appeal to our five senses. My mind senses that the answer is yes! I find thinking about the inner workings of consumer marketing to be a fascinating subject!


The booklet contains a chart of food values for General Foods products which is several pages long. While sometimes this information can now be found on the food labels, it's probably easier to just look online if we want to know. Don't you love that we can see these details almost instantly if we choose to? Many times, one can even look at the actual food label on the manufacturer website. I find the chart interesting because it lists all of the brands and products that were being manufactured back then.


The rear cover shows a picture of their products (or some of them, at least). I like to see which ones are gone now and also how the packaging has changed. I remember the PRIME and TOP CHOICE dog food, thinking those little moist bits looked so much more appetizing for our dog than the ugly canned stuff or the dry food. I don't remember the La France laundry whitener though--I guess my mom didn't use that brand. There are those small jars of instant Sanka my dad used to buy after the doctor told him no more caffeine way back in the early 60s. And I have to say, I miss those packages of Birds Eye frozen fruit. My grandmother used those jars of instant coffee, but I'm thinking it was Folgers rather than Maxwell House. I can see the jar in my mind's eye, but not the specifics of the label.

I kind of liked the sound of this recipe because it requires cereal as one of the ingredients. I'm always looking for recipe ideas that might use up some of the remaining cereal in the box after I'm tired of eating it the regular way. An inexpensive box of Corn Flakes is useful in so many ways because of the different recipes it can be used in.

CHOCOLATE COCONUT CEREAL CRUST

2 squares Baker's Unsweetened Chocolate
2 tablespoons butter
2 tablespoons hot milk or water
2/3 cup sifted confectioners' sugar
3/4 cup Baker's Angel Flake Coconut*
3/4 cup Post Toasties, Corn Flakes, 40% Bran Flakes, or Grape-Nuts Flakes*

* Or omit cereal and increase coconut to 2 cups.

Melt chocolate and butter over very low heat, stirring until blended. Combine milk and sugar, blend in chocolate mixture. Add coconut and cereal. Mix well. Spread on bottom and sides of greased 9-inch pie pan. Chill until firm. (Do not freeze.) Fill with cream or chiffon filling. Chill until filling is firm. Let stand at room temperature 5 minutes before cutting.

To fill with ice cream, let chilled crust stand at room temperature 5 minutes; then fill, cut, and serve immediately.