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The Weird, Wonderful, and WTF World - Friday, First Period [09/20].

The class today would not be meeting at portalocity, but rather inside the school's kitchen classroom itself, a familiar place for anyone who'd taken several of Summer's classes in the past, which she hoped would be triggering a little bit of a sense of dread for what was ahead of them for today's class.

And that sense of dread would be very well-founded as she smiled beatifically from the front of the classroom, surrounded by....what else?....shining, gleaming cloches.

"Welcome back, everyone," she said. "This week, we're going to be leaning much more heavily into the Weird and the What The Fuck of the class, with something that has become a special interest of mine for many, many years now, and that will surprise none of you who have likely taken any of my recent classes. Today, we're going to be talking about the weird, what the fuck world of vintage retro recipes and the bizarre shit people used to do to food back then.

"Now," she said, "there is actually some pretty interesting discourse on why the dinner tables of the time were so....let's be generous and say interesting, but at the center of it is the fact that these recipes are usually pulled from cookbooks for special occasions, so it's not like they were eating these things every day, but the mid-century was also a post-war period of economic revival. Not only that, but there was a good deal of marketing magic going on at the time, and a lot of interesting and innovative products being made available and new access to more 'exotic' ingredients and spices that people were just itching to try out and show off to their friends that they could have the privilege to really bring it, literally, to the table.

"This all comes into focus really strongly with the explosion of interesting jello molds at the time, to bring it back around to my own interest in all of this. It's all about the Jell-O, baby! Because before this time, gelatin or aspic was actually a whole difficult process to produce, but then they started mass-marketing gelatin powder, and, ohmygod, it was off to the races then. Everyone wanted to take advantage of this incredibly versatile and now extremely convenient new thing in interesting and exploratory ways....that the advertisers were pushing. A lot of these trends did not start organically in the kitchens of housewives, but, instead, in marketing boardrooms a la ~~meta for~~Mad Men. Add in with that an interest in an added interest in 'fancy' cuisine thanks to the likes of Julia Child and an eagerness to combine it with the modern convenience foods starting to show up on grocery shelves, and you have an interesting little microcosm of a food trend that marked a whole era. Sort of like adding bacon to everything in the 2010s or currently making highly realistic versions of things entirely out of chocolate and cake.

"So today," she concluded, "I've gathered some of the most notorious terrifying retro recipes for us to all try and discuss and, for a lot of you, revisit, and we'll talk about some of our own weird recipes that we may have grown up with, or ones that I didn't include, and just sort of discuss weird food in general while we....erm...ha! Enjoy."

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Ready to eat!

Stewart

Stark

Beckett Mariner

Charlie Gale

Gray

Arden Finch

"I'd like to start out our journey," Summer declared, hand over the cloche and ready to reveal what awaited within, "with something that involves tuna and gelatin and therefor feels appropriately called a Summer Salad Pie with this gem, advertised to be a 'pretty as can be', especially with the little cherry tomato flower garnishes on top! Throwing things together in a crust and jello and calling it a pie? Brilliant. Classic. So many variations, but this one in particular is a great example of that vein of mid-century recipes.

"And, of course, no review of weird retro recipes would be complete without one of my favorite examples, ham and bananas in hollandaise sauce, which many of you know is likely a product of people going bananas over...well, bananas at the time and trying to put that shit in everything.

"Also really popular? Putting things in loaves and slathering them in some variety of white substance, usually mayonaisse or cream cheese. We see this in the lovely Frosted Ribbon Loaf, which is like the answer to the question that no one asked: what if a sandwich were a cake? Actually, the same applies to our infamous bologna cake. And you don't have to have the bologna hidden, you can put the bologna on the outside of a loaf, too!

"The meatloaf igloo gets an honorable mention here, too, but, like, it's legit adorable, too. Just look at it! Amazing.

"And, obviously, I wouldn't leave you guys hanging without bringing in the liver sausage pineapple, either. Or the prawn stuffed apples, either. Brilliant stuff."

With all the horrible recipes now on display, Summer just smiled beatifically at the class, eager to see the looks of disgust even on the faces of those who knew exactly what they were being met with today.

Truly, the sheer level of gleeful devotion in which Summer presented these dishes, simmering just below the surface of a truly unhinged mind, was, to Stewart, to put it simply...wondrous. This was precisely the sort of weird he had expected in taking this class, and he was practically hanging on each word, and was defiantly planning on making sure to try them all.

(Those prawn stuffed apples were going to be a problem, though, he would discover all too late).

Arden was putting together an eloquent request to be excused,based on how her people hadn't contributed to these culinary atrocities and so she shouldn't be punished for them, and, honestly, hadn't her people suffered enough at the hands of mid-century America?

Someone had briefly forgotten that she wasn't half-human, yes. Look at this, Summer, the food was so bad she was having a crisis of identity over it.

"And now that I've presented you with the classics," Summer concluded, and if it looked like she was nudging one of the plates closer to the class, then she absolutely was, "let's talk about it. Not just talk about it, either, I want you all to try at least one of these dishes, unless, like, you've got a serious medical reason why not to. And then I want to hear about some of your own weird recipes and things you've encountered in your lifetime or are interested in, and how do you think those weird recipes might reflect certain aspects of your culture? Sort of how a lot of these abominations came about for societal and commercial reasons, what are the driving forces behind either particular food trends or traditions? Do some of these seem less offensive to you than others? Why or why not? Today, let's dive a little deeper into what's been running my classes for years now: the psychology and considerations behind some of the strange stuff we put into our mouths..."

Of course she was going to put it exactly like that and give everyone the sweetest smile afterwards, too.

"It's all a bit relative, isn't it?" Stewart practically hissed his challenging rhetoric to the concept. "Of course there's a scale. I'm not about to find anything particularly odious about a Caeser or poutine, but someone less cultured might turn their noses in disgust at the conceit! How does one determine such things? Would a Tourtière find itself comfortable among the dishes presented to us today? What if we simply included gelatin into it? What about prairie oysters? Salmon candy? Pemmican?"

He scoffed, rolling his eyes.....and his entire head....to look away, hands folded in front of him with the shrug of his shoulders.

"At least you Yanks are finally starting to come around to the idea of ketchup and all-dressed and dill picklers chips. I've actually been....impressed, by the offerings that even this small little island's illustrious general store seem to be able to keep in stock."

And, yes, he knew who likely made that orders, due to her owning the store in question, which is why Stewart's attention shifted back toward their teacher with a smug, shameless sort of smirk on his face.

Summer was just going to take a moment to look at Stewart, and, while flatter was usually always appreciated, she did have to consider the source.

Also, that was....a lot, Stewart.

"Are prairie oysters the same thing as Rocky Mountain oysters?"

She was one-thousand percent positive that they definitely were.

Stark was resigned to his fate here. He'd known something was coming, at least, even if he hadn't examined the contents of Summer's fridge carefully yesterday before they left.

"You've convinced me to put all manner of things in my mouth," he said. "I'll try the ribbon loaf."

"But always remember," Summer pointed out sweetly, "of all the things I could have convinced you to put in your mouth, but didn't. Good luck with all that cream cheese, babe."

The recipe had called for four, but you better believe Summer used five.

"I'm very lucky," Stark said. He meant it. He always did.

"I'm not eating all of it. I need room for things for my class."

But he was trying it. See him taking some bites? Some very very cream cheesey bites?

"I guess that's a decently fair excuse," Summer allowed, taking a moment to look maybe just a little lofty over Stark's acknowledgement over just how good he had it, thank you very much.

"But," she added, because of course there'd be a but!, "I will be disappointed if you don't at least have a little of the liver sausage pineapple, too, Stark. I know that one's a favorite."

"I hate disappointing you," Stark said. "So I suppose I have to eat some of the horrible liver thing."

He'd eaten much worse and they both knew it.

He lifted a fork with a put-upon sigh. "Will you try a bite with me?"

"You know? The ham and bananas in Hollandaise isn't half bad," Charlie said thoughtully.

"Awwww," Summer sounded disappointed, with a wrinkle of her nose to match; not in you, Charlie, but in herself, for not being more clearly blatantly disgusting, "really?"

That almost hurt a little, but she was quick to brush it off. "Well, then," she said, "I'm pretty sure it's all yours to enjoy now, you lucky dog."

While nibbling on the meatloaf igloo, Arden had to, reluctantly consider that a lot of Soul food was very odd when you thought about it. But!!! They'd had better reasons for it than 'advertising' and, presumably, 'drunken dares.'

"..." She went to comment on it and then remembered her conversation with Kamala and shut her mouth again. Because...was this hers? Could she claim it?

Okay, now she legitimately was having an identity crisis.

Summer's head tilted a little curiously at that little non-start there, taking a moment to note Arden's thoughtful nibbling before asking, "So, Arden....any thoughts to share?"

Arden glanced up at Summer, thoughts whirling, and just sputtered, "Soul food is mine!"

And then just gonna...facepalm and slowly slide down her seat until the floor opened up and swallowed her.

Which it didn't seem to be doing. Fucker.

"My, uh. Thought," she said belatedly. "Soul food uses a lot of parts of animal that most folks wouldn't because of its links to the food fed to the enslaved in the South."

Hold on a second, Arden, Summer needed to relax her eyebrows back down into a normal position after they'd lifted at that little outburst.

"Yeah, no," she then said, "no worries there, white cookie cutter suburbia is where I was born and bred and I know how to stay in my lane. The worst I could do is dredge up some Betty Crocker bullshit attempt at soul food that uses, like, the tiniest whisper of seasonings for the fifties housewife whose feeling a little saucy and bold when she invites the PTA over for a Tupperware party.

"But," she said, because she was a teacher, dammit, and this was a real class, so that meant introspectively looking at the topic at hand, "is it just sort of the visceral thought of 'ew, ugh, why those ingredients together in that order?' that made you draw the connection there? Or something else, do you think?"

"That wasn't what I meant," Arden said, a little weakly. "I meant, Soul food was what I was thinking, but my brain was going faster than my mouth."

Good save, babygirl.

"But yeah. I was thinking of foods that folks - me included - eat without thinking twice and how other folks would react and I realized that soul food has a lot of that. Cause they got the scraps and had to work to make it palatable, and, when possible, could connect it to dishes from their homes back in Africa. And then we get hamhocks, pigs feet, chittlins...okra came from Ethopia..."

Who may potentially have plans for crushing that bologna cake while high because ohmygod.

Summer, a Gemini:

Accurate.
Find your own here!

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The Weird, Wonderful, and WTF World - Friday, First Period [09/20].

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