IT’S A COOKBOOK!!!
IT’S A COOKBOOK!!!
For Your Halloween Consideration: The Twilight Zone, TV Dinners and Airplane Food
Hi, Everyone, Happy Halloween! 👻 And, a Spoiler Alert! (But I have a feeling many know the episode of The Twilight Zone I’m about to talk about already) Watching any episode of The Twilight Zone on Halloween is always a good idea, along with the 1990 Simpson’s Halloween Special Treehouse of Horror — it includes a spoof of To Serve Man called Hungry Are The Damned, and it’s very funny if you’re looking for a little lighter Halloween fare. JH
To Serve Man
When I first watched The Twilight Zone episode, “To Serve Man”, I was eight.
The story takes us to a Cold War world looking for answers. When seemingly benevolent outer space beings drop in with promises of peace and prosperity, the mostly trusting earthlings embrace them. And the Kanamits, as they are called, deliver.
There’s just one catch the citizens of Earth missed about the ‘exchange program’, trips they volunteer to take to the Kanamit’s home planet. The visitors from space brought a book with them with the soothing, humanitarian title “To Serve Man” — but this is no altruistic tome. A skeptical U.S. government cryptographer deciphers the rest of the book and in one of the great plot twists in a story discovers “To Serve Man” is a cookbook.
As a kid, my reaction to this episode was more “Eww!” than scared.
Watching it over the years as an adult, it’s the protagonist’s panic at the realization that he’s made an irrevocable, very-bad decision that’s terrifying.
That, and the fact that the food on his long trip to the new planet looks like airplane food.
But I’m not being fair about the fare on mid-century flights.
It was actually pretty luxurious as you can see from the 1950s American Airlines ad below. I found a terrific article from Atlas Obscura/Gastro Obscura about the Golden Age of airline food — it was really quite something. Charcuterie, Roast Beef au jus, Guinea hen, caviar and eggs — all were part of the menu on carriers like TWA and Pan Am.
To read Diana Hubbell’s piece for AtlasObscura/GO, Remembering the Golden Age of Airline Food, click: HERE. I really enjoyed it and I think you will, too.
Another Golden Age: The TV Dinner
During this same period of the 1950s and 60s, while people were buying televisions and watching programs like I Love Lucy, Perry Mason and The Twilight Zone, partitioned, heatable aluminum trays filled with TV Dinners were also making a splash.
A new form of entertainment and a wandering trainload of frozen turkey triggered a convenience food boom.
— Kovie Biakolo, Smithsonian Magazine, 2020
There are a couple of competing origin stories about who invented the TV dinner, but all of them involve Swanson’s and turkey. The very first was a Thanksgiving TV Dinner in 1954 with turkey, cornbread, mashed potatoes and frozen peas. And we can thank Clarence Birdseye for revolutionizing the industry with his invention for freezing food.
A Brief History of the TV Dinner by Kovie Biakolo breaks it all down in this terrific article for Smithsonian Magazine, Link: HERE.
The First Frozen Vegetable, Perfect for TV Dinners: Peas
Clarence Birdseye’s method of flash freezing was a technique he learned from working as a fur trapper alongside Inuit fishermen in Newfoundland. He watched the fish freeze immediately as they were pulled from the water. When defrosted, they retained their flavor and texture even after several months. (link:here)
Birdseye decided to experiment with peas, blanching them first to retain their bright green color, then flash freezing.
Before the Zoom virtual cocktail party I hosted last week, I was looking through a 60-year-old cookbook, James Beard’s Menus for Entertaining (1965) and I was tickled to see a recipe Mr. Beard had included with a rather fancy French title that made use of frozen, boil-in bag-peas.
In the spirit of the 1950s and 60s, I got myself a couple of bags of frozen peas and frozen pearl onions, the kind my mother used to buy, and made this recipe, substituting the pearl onions. For dinner, I didn’t add the ham, I was serving steak (and baked potatoes). The peas and onions were simple and flavorful and felt like home.
James Beard didn’t like the term “Brunch”, preferring the more elegant description, “Late Breakfast.”
So, on Sunday, I added some ham to the leftover peas and pearl onions, heated it all up, put on some shaved Pecorino Romano, made some crispy fried eggs (cooked in olive oil, tilt the pan and spoon the hot oil gently over the whites of the eggs, they get deliciously crisp and the yolks stay runny) along with a buttered and toasted Bay’s English Muffin, all accompanied by Barry’s Irish Tea with milk and sugar — a leisurely “Late Breakfast.”
Speaking of the Zoom cocktail party, thank you so much to everyone who joined in, it was really nice to be able ‘meet’ and I’m already planning an event for December, so stay tuned.
I want to give a special shout-out to
of who stayed up till midnight from the UK to be able to attend and in the spirit of Halloween “arrived” with a cocktail and hors d’oeuvres from recipes made famous by actor and horror film royalty, Vincent Price! It was really fun.Coming in December
It’s not that I don’t like Halloween, it’s just that once it’s over we are in November and planning for Christmas is full-on, which I love.
I’ve been seeing a lot of articles about the most popular Advent Calendars this season, many that revolve around food (link: here) and so I’ve decided that from December 1st to December 24th I’m going to create the first ever Time Travel Kitchen Advent Calendar. They will be tiny, daily, one or two paragraph posts (I don’t want you to feel inundated!) with a holiday, food or winter related theme — something small to open every morning, like an Advent calendar, a little surprise to start the day. I’m really looking forward to this. ✨
Have a Happy Halloween, everyone, see you soon. 🎃
Jolene
Jolene! Thanks so much for the lovely shout-out! I absolutely LOVE the idea of a Time Travel Advent Calendar and now cannot wait until December! Mind you, before that we have November and it will be VINCENT PRICE MONTH over at @silverscreensuppers.substack.com There will be a competition that I feel is right up your street. It involves a rather elaborate snacky thing to go with drinky things - a large amount of cheese is involved... 🧀🍸
It’s hilarious to imagine someone against the word “brunch” when (I guess) the portmanteau was still new?