Thursday, September 22, 2016

CHICKEN FRIED . . .TUBE STEAK?



My mother collected recipes the same way I collect doll clothes patterns. It’s the same obsession, just focused differently. Yes, I had great training in the obsessive arts.

Mother had three recipe boxes. When she outgrew one, she moved to another, and so we see eras of recipes – ‘30s and ‘40s, ‘50s and ‘60s, ‘70s and ‘80s.

And then there were the drawers of recipes. She devoted one drawer in the kitchen to recipes, and among those I even found a poem she had saved about the obsession to clip and save recipes, even when you know you’ll never try them. Moving to the basement we found yet another drawer totally filled with recipes and booklets from bygone eras. (Totally cool if you like vintage.)

When we cleaned out the old family home (25 years ago), I scooped those loose recipes into a box and took them home so that I could work through them at my leisure. Eventually I tossed a lot of it. You know, you can’t keep it all, and some of it, such as undated newspaper clippings, I didn’t find interesting. But now, having reduced it to the meaningful, I have a file folder full of wonderful – and sometimes wonderfully odd – recipes.

Chicken Fried Hot Dogs
1 package wieners
mayonnaise
crushed potato chips
Coat wieners with mayo and roll in crushed chips.
Bake at 350 for 20-30 minutes.
(From Ethel Robinson, my dad's sister) 
KW

4 comments:

Chris said...

Hmm, I have to say, it sounds dreadful! But maybe... I have been plowing through boxes and bags of recipes myself. A trip through the decades for certain.

Kathy said...

This recipe was a tongue-in-cheek offering, but sister Harriet wrote that she might fix it for her group at church, together with a salad and rolls -- unless, of course, she was also putting her tongue in her cheek.

That said, I remember Aunt Margaret Walrath pausing to visit with Mother and me as she passed the house one day, and she said she was going home to prepare wieners for her supper. "You know," she said, "sometimes I just get hungry for wieners." Mother agreed.

I hope you find some treasures among the recipes, Chris, and if you do, I hope you recognize them. But if you don't, you'll never know, so it doesn't matter.

Hallie said...

I'm one of those people who likes to put some "crunch" on a hot dog or hamburger, so I can get behind this idea. I'm not a big mayo fan, but I suppose you need something to get the chips to stick to the dog.

Kathy said...

I wonder if you couldn't use ketchup in place of the mayo / salad dressing. I don't know if it would burn more easily or not.