1970s foods: fun with franks, puns with penises

Immediate confession: There will be no penises in this post. Nor will there be puns, because all my wit and humor drained out of my body from fear when I saw this recipe card:



There are so many levels of disgusting in this picture that my eyes can't decide where -- if anywhere -- to land on this photo. The split wieners? The stuff oozing out of them? The forks and toothpicks jabbed in willy-nilly? Take your pick, it's all here, a nightmare-like Lynchian horror show. What's worse is that there is an unpictured recipe on the back called "Glazed Franks." Glazed. Franks. Wieners that have been made to look wet and shiny.



Ah, now here's something we've all wanted for dinner: Food made from a recipe with the words "Tuck" and "Loaf" in the title. (Please leave your "tuck game" jokes at the door. Thank you. -- Mgmt.)



This is meatloaf stuffed and topped with hard boiled eggs. In this photo, the sliced eggs on top blend in with the eggs inside the loaf and it took me a while to realize there were eggs inside. And nothing says classy like setting a meatloaf on top of 5 lbs of lukewarm frozen peas.

Recipe here with a bonus recipe called "Tuck Away Baby Beefies." I am not funny enough to make this shit up.


Ladies' Seafood Thermidor:


Oh my god that is sick. I swear to you that I have not adjusted the colors on this card. This card isn't particularly discolored from age, either, you can tell from the white border. The food is supposed to be that color. I just can't with this, you guys. Recipe here, although I don't think you can find condensed cream of shrimp soup anymore. And who would waste lobster on this pinkish-brown globbity goo?



Now this is just sad.


"Twirlin' Turkey for a Crowd" is a phrase that will stick in your head for a week, especially if you've ever had too much to drink and started twirlin' your turkey in a crowd. While your best frenemy catches it on her cell phone and uploads it to YouTube while you're passed out after your 16th shot of butterscotch schnapps, and in the morning you don't remember exactly what happened, all you know is that there are a few dozen messages on your voice mail, most expressing various levels of disgust, but there's a couple of proposals in there, too, and... ahem. Moving on. All this "recipe" consists of is (1) turkey, (2) salt and pepper, and (3) melted butter. But check out this crazy shit in the background:


It's a glass of iced tea sitting on a daisy. A huge damn fucking mutant daisy with the strength of a circus freak! RUN!


This is one of the best photos on the cards:


But "Tres Chic Pic-Nique"?! I am embarrassed for everyone involved in the creation of this card.



At first I thought this was ridiculously offensive, then I remembered that when I was a little kid in the mid- to late-1970s, hobos were the bomb. I read books about hobos, especially hobos that took trains, and The Boxcar Children was one of my special favorites. I owned a Boxcar Willie album and one year I dressed up as a hobo for Halloween, complete with rope for suspenders. The proof is here! The picture is from 1981 and I still have that end table and the chair, I'm sitting between them right now! Anyway, in regards to hoboness, it would be hypocritical of me to go off on the tastelessness of this recipe card...


...especially since it tells you how to make a "hobo dinner" and dessert -- called a "Shaggy Dog" -- in a coffee can over a grill. That. Is. Awesome.


Less awesome is the unfortunate name given to this recipe, which includes 2 cans of "boned chicken." You can buy chicken with bones in cans? Really?

I'm always up for a campsite quickie, though.


And finally, we're back where we started:


Hot Germans, you say? Men's Favorites, you say? Sigh. I miss Jack.

This is Part II of a very special episode of technoknob about 1970s foods. Tune in tomorrow for Part III: Putting the 'Duh' in Dessert.