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Steal this Meal – “The Help”

February 24th, 2010

Our book club recently finished "The Help" by Kathryn Stockett. The hosts of the evening decided to pay homage to the southern spirit of the book and serve us the food that the white women of Jackson, Mississippi made on the days when they didn’t have "the help" to cook for them. Thank goodness there was good chablis to wash it down.

 

We started off with Salmon Loaf from the Better Homes and Garden cookbook circa 1958. The recipe is not on their website but the salmon was from a can and had loads of pepper.  Cheese squares with canned olives and pretzels were artfully presented along with canned crab on cream cheese with chili sauce pour over the top. Of course there was a can of Cheese Whiz and Ritz Crackers and Saltines.

For starters there was canned fruit cocktail replete with the cherries!  Being overly exposed to canned fruit cocktail as a child has scarred me for life, I still can not eat fruit salad of any kind, fresh or otherwise.

            

For the main course we were treated to ham studded with canned pineapple and cherries, canned butter beans (creamy white beans that were perty darn tasty), canned black eyed peas and scalloped potatoes from a box! O.K., O.K., I was indeed surprised at the texture of the potatoes. They were firm and actually tasted like potatoes. Ahhhh, food technology at its finest. Meatballs in canned tomato sauce and Russian Salad rounded out the meal. Green bean casserole was missed.

For dessert we enjoyed Mock Apple Pie (a true marvel from the 1930′s made almost entirely out of Ritz crackers) and a green giggly molded Jello (the kind that scared me as a kid with canned mandarins trapped inside) also from the vintage BHG cookbook.  The piece de la resistance was Classic Banana Pudding with Nilla Wafers and Cool Whip.

In real life our hostesses are wonderful cooks who adore food and entertaining. They both commented that they had never opened so many cans to cook in their life but also said this was one of the cheaper meals they had ever made.

This meal made me thank Julie Child, Madeleine Kamman, Jacques Pepin and Alice Waters (just to name a few foodie pioneers) for introducing Americans to the delicious (uncanned) food revolution!

Entry Filed under: Food Literature