Recipe Monday: There are only two great foes to successful meal planning - Monotony and Fear.

So, my sister just had her baby boy (Logan Robert), Thanksgiving was had, job was mostly finished though I will be working a shift this week and hopefully having holiday lunch this week. Of course, that means that I'm exhausted, fibromyalgia flared up and have a cold.

So that means, Retro Recipe Monday! The line from the title comes from the book to give you a peek into what we're getting ourselves into. The book is called The General Foods Kitchens Cookbook (published: 1959) and has exciting subchapters like "When you have a maid. (with a silent understood) Bitch.", "Pamela's dieting again.", Saved by a salad! (subtitled: Is your husband clutching his chest a lot?) and "Good grief, we'll never get the yearbook out!"

Pros: They address possibly living alone (though there's the silent understood that you better be an old maid or a widow and not a slutty divorcee, Missy!) and that you may be a working gal (with the silent understood that you better get your ass into the kitchen because that dinner isn't making itself and it's not your husband's fault you can't be satisfied with the spending money he gives you), the fifties is actually when global cuisine started being brought into middle class homes so there's recipes for curry, lasagna (we were still ethnic then boys and girls!), sukiyaki, etc. which is cool and the best part imo is that there's a can do spirit about it. I know that's a complaint of the time but I *like* that they're like hokay, you need to make a wedding dinner including a wedding cake? You can do this, Sheila. Let's get organized. For all the unintentional irony and pre-second wave lack of choice, there's a very no nonsense let's get this done vibe and covers like every possible culinary emergency you can think of. Having just picked this book up for the first time in a while, I realize my Kitchen Witch outline unconsciously follows this outline with an updated modern spirit.

Cons: Oh lordess, where to start? Okay. The drawings of "ethnic" people are pretty bad (for the Southern cooking there's a "Mamee" style drawing to give you a taste), when shit goes wrong and/or your family is being mulish about trying new food, guess whose fault that is? The pictures, oh god the color photos of some of these horrors. And of course that the "ethnic" food is whatever is the most Americanized version of what that ethnicity has to offer.

Onto the recipe! If you get brave and make it yourself, you get a guest blog spot here. Pics or it never happened!

Glazed Pate

1 cup chicken liver pate
1 1/3 cups condensed beef consomme
1/2 cup water
1 bay leaf
1 teaspoon salt
Dash of pepper
1 package (3 oz) Jell-O Lemon Gelatin Dessert
2 tablespoons sauterne wine
1 tablespoon lemon juice
1 teaspoon tarragon vinegar
Stuffed olives, thinly sliced (optional)

Pack the chicken liver pate in a buttered mold and chill. Combine consomme, water, bay leaf, salt and pepper in a saucepan. Cover and simmer for 5 minutes. Then remove bay leaf and dissolve the gelatin in hot liquid. Add sauterne, lemon juice and vinegar. Chill mixture until syrupy.

Then unmold pate, garnish with olive slices if desired and pour on a thin layer of the gelatin mixture (if gelatin mixture becomes too firm to pour, let stand over hot water for a few minutes to soften). Chill until almost firm. Pour a second layer over pate. Chill again until almost firm. Add a third layer; chill until set. Makes 1 cup. (Double recipe to serve 10.)