• 1/2 cup salad oil
• 1/4 cup vinegar
• 1/4 cup chopped onion
• 1 teaspoon salt
• Dash pepper
• 2 teaspoons Worcestershire sauce

Combine all ingredients, mix well. Add steaks, kabobs or roasts and let marinade 1 to 3 hours.  (or as long as other recipes suggest.)

Select a beef pot roast 2 inches or more thick  and marinade overnight in the refrigerator. Wrap roast securely in aluminum foil and grill over a moderate fire for 2 1/2 to 3 hours, turning once. Remove foil, brown on grill, and baste with marinade. For sheer flavor it’s hard to beat pot roast cooked this way.

You may recognize this cheery couple, which seem to have become the mascots for Retro Cookbook. They kind of exemplify that happy, feel good kind of couple you expect to find in vintage cookbooks, especially from around the fifties.

Whats not to love about this fun little cookbook, chock full of barbecue recipes and tips? The illustration style is simple, yet fun, and the 20 page cook booklet has illustrations on most pages. Inside you’ll find tips on selecting meats for the barbecue (and using leftovers), an outdoor cooking equipment check list (for us guys), and a tip sheet for outdoor chefs.  Oh, and recipes, too!

The recipes are pretty straight forward, and wholesome—just like I’d expect from Kansas. There are a few recipe where they let their hair down. Orange-glazed Bologna Roll, Dixie Dogs—which are hot dogs slathered with peanut butter, then wrapped in bacon, Buckaroo Filets—minute steaks spread with mustard, and then wrapped around a strip of dill pickle, and Barbecue Frozen Vegetables.  The recipes cover beef, lamb, pork, and poultry, and there are a couple pages of barbecue sauces and marinades. I was a bit disappointed to see the Kansas Barbecue Sauce which consists of tomato sauce with “a packet of exotic herbs salad dressing mix” with a few other basic ingredients.  Ah, packets of salad dressing mix!

There are definitely a couple recipes I’ll try from this vintage cookbook.  Campfire Pot Roast is catching my eye, and I’d probably try their pork ribs recipe to see how it compares to mine.  (Of course it can’t compare to mine!) Yet another fun vintage cookbook from my collection!

• 3 tbsp. chopped onion
• 3 tbsp. chopped celery
• 1/2 cup diced bacon
• 6 eggs, slightly beaten
• 1/2 cup tomato juice
• 1/4 cup diced cheese
• 1/4 tsp. paprika
• 1/4 tsp. poultry seasoning
• 1/4 tsp. salt
• 2 tbsp. chopped parsley

Cook onion, bacon and celery over low heat until bacon is crisp. Combine remaining ingredients, add bacon mixture, and cook in double boiler or over low direct heat until eggs are firm. Stir just enough to prevent sticking. Serve on hot buttered toast. (4 servings)

This may be the only toast cookbook in my collection, and I must say it is very cool! Fantastic illustrations, page layout, and even photos. And the best part is that it is all about toast!  Mmmm… toast!

“Everyone knows how good hot buttered toast tastes at breakfast, servers just plain or with preserves! However, there are many delicious ways to serve toast for family or party breakfasts. Get the day off to a golden start with these tempting breakfasts featuring toast!”

And yes indeed you will find some fantastic toasty goodness in this fine little cookbook. Breakfast, lunch or dinner, you’ll find recipes that tempt your tastebuds. Perhaps the most surprising thing is that all the recipes actually seem decent—nothing too kitschy weird in here. Well, maybe the Apple Sausage Surprise is about as weird as it gets—sausages, applesauce, and American cheese on toast. Then again, that sounds alright too.

I love this quote, “Men take to ‘Toast Cookery’… it’s the easy way to rate high as an amateur chef.” Then there is, “Entertain often! ‘Toast Cookery’ lets you make a big impression for just a little money!” I’ve never thought about making a toast meal for guests, I just may try it some day.

This is a classic, find a copy, if you can. (Sorry, mine is not for sale, but if I find another copy, I’ll add it to the shop.)

• 1 pound chopped lean beef
• 1/2 pound chopped lean pork
• 1/2 pound chopped lean veal
• 2 eggs, well beaten
• 2 cups milk
• 1 cup soft bread crumbs
• 2 teaspoons sale
• 1/2 teaspoon pepper
• 1 large onion, finely chopped
• 1/2 cup butter
• 2 cups meat stock or 2 bouillon cubes dissolved in hot water

Combine meat, egg, milk and bread crumbs. Mix well. Add salt and pepper. Sauté onion in butter until brown. Remove onion, add to meat and mix well.

Shape small meatballs with wet hands and fry in butter until brown. Add stock and dimming 20 minutes. Serves 8.

Abalone to Zabaglione is the food recipe version of the wild drink recipe book called Aquavit to Zombie – Basic and Exotic Drinks. Ah, what a weird and wonderful party you could have if you used both of these cookbooks for your next soirée!

So what kind of unusual and exotic recipes await you? As with many of these cookbooks, the recipe are in alphabetical order, and not by category. So we begin with a basic recipe for Abalone. Abalone is a mollusk, a shelled creature of the sea, although the illustration next to it is of an octopus.

The book moves through some not so usual, but perhaps slightly exotic recipes, until we get to Bird’s Nest Chicken Soup. Yes, it actually uses a small bird’s nest in the recipe.  Sound odd? Just wait. Bird’s nest soup is actually a delicacy in China. It uses the nest from the cave swift, which are renowned for building saliva nests. Okay, now that is usual.

After that we find a few more normal recipes, then a recipe for Eel, en Matelot, (which actually looks good). There is Gogl-Mogl, which only has an unusual name, as the recipe is just egg yolks, sugar and Rum or Cognac. Things don’t really get weird again until we hit the “R’s”, and then we find a recipe for Roast Reindeer. Well, perhaps not really odd since many people hunt and eat regular deer.  Perhaps the whole indoctrination of Rudlolf the Red-nosed Reindeer makes this recipe feel a little more unusual than it really is.

Following the Roast Reindeer, we stumble upon Shark Fins, Trussed Squabs, Turtle Soup, and a bunch of more normal recipes in between. Does hearing “Trussed Squabs” make you feel like taking like a pirate? Or is that just me? The book closes with one more unusual sounding recipe, Zabaglione, which is another egg & booze recipe, this time with Marsala wine.

Abalone to Zabaglione – Unusual and Exotic Recipes is definitely a must have for anyone’s collection.  Aside from the unusual recipes, it has a good number of decent exotic recipes.  And of course it has very cool illustrations and fonts.