- Hardcover: 192 pages
- Publisher: Crown Publications; 1 edition (27 Aug 2001)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 0609607820
- ISBN-13: 978-0609607824
- Product Dimensions: 19.9 x 1.7 x 21.6 cm
- Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 530,040 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
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Product Description
Product Description
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.
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.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
25 of 26 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Far too funny for a book about food,
By
This review is from: The Gallery of Regrettable Food (Hardcover)
James Lileks was inspired and unsettled by the discovery of his mother's unused cookbooks from the 1950s. The Gallery of Regrettable food is a hilarious trawl through those books and the now improbable dishes they attempt to encourage you to cook.As someone who escaped life in the 50s by a couple of decades, I'm utterly amazed by the food he showcases. How can they have expected people to be eat that stuff? Lilek's commentary is almost unbearably funny, but there are also occasional moments of social history. Was life in the 50s really like this? Was the highlight of your culinary experience really radishes and assorted salad items encased in cherry flavoured jelly? How could people stand it? Buy this book and be hugely entertained. It's now sitting in our bathroom - there can be no higher praise. I'm waiting for his forthcoming book on 1970s interior decoration.
9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
The Way We Ate,
By
This review is from: The Gallery of Regrettable Food (Hardcover)
The Gallery of Regrettable Food brought back fond memories, made me laugh out loud, and was truly disgusting. Everything about this book, down to the boomerang patterns on the cover (under the dust jacket), says Boomer Childhood. About the only thing missing from Gallery is Velveeta and Sloppy Joes. I loved the chapter on Jell-O, and was amazed at what people thought to suspend in a Jell-O mold. Ecch. And those hard-boiled egg and sliced olive penguins! Lileks makes up just enough in here so that you have to seriously consider whether a dish is real or if he made it up. Unfortunately, he only made up a few. This is a great book to spend a few hours with, especially if you are on a diet. Nothing to tempt you here. It brings back the days when a meal wasn't a meal if there wasn't meat in it, when meat wasn't meat unless it had a layer of fat on it, and when nothing said "sophisticated" like a can of salmon.
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
James Lileks - need I say more?,
By Bibliomaniac (Somewhere in England) - See all my reviews
This review is from: The Gallery of Regrettable Food (Hardcover)
If you're looking at this page, you probably know James Lileks and his wonderful website. And you're probably familiar with The Gallery of Regrettable Food. And you've probably already seen a lot of what's in this book, and fallen about laughing over it.
So what more can I say? Buy the book, keep it, cherish it. It's your own little Gallery of Regrettable Food that you can open any time, even if you're not near a computer. Just think... your own personal Gallery of Regrettable Food, that you can hug to your heart. And of course, you're helping to support the wonderful Lileks himself, so he'll be encouraged to give us more.
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