100 Years of California Cooking: 02/01/09

About a month ago I got an email from Randal who runs the Practically Edible site, an online food encyclopedia. It was a request for the recipe on page 49 of 100 Years of California Cooking for Green Goddess Dressing.

100 Years of California Cooking is a compilation of recipes published in the Oakland Tribune. They were "compiled and tested for the ... readers" by Martha Lee, the newspaper's Home Economics Editor. The book is 96 pages long and full of recipes I remember eating during family get-togethers in the 1970s and 1980s.

California Cooking seems to have drifted away from the flavors and combinations of foods in this volume. Except for Christmas dinner, I can't think of any other time I would eat a gelatine mould, and certainly not one involving either ham or tuna!

There are two exceptions where the book is actually current: the dressings and the desserts. There is a peanut butter cookie recipe very close to one I use on a regular basis on page 89. My mother still sometimes makes Refrigerator Cookies like those on page 87 and of you add chocolate chips to the Dream Bars on page 86, you'll get Magic Cookie Bars.

All of the recipes that sound interesting to me I have similar enough ones in my grandmother's old cook book and in my old Betty Crocker cook book.

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