Menus for the School Child
Perhaps my favorite volume in The Encyclopedia of Cooking in 24 Volumes is volume 22 - Body Building Dishes for Children. I'm amazed at the menus provided for "the school child" and have to remind myself that this was published in the early 1950s. While I'm not a proponent of stuffing kids full of McDonald's hamburgers, pizzas, and chicken nuggets, I'm also not quite able to get my mind around broiled lamb kidneys and orange prune molds for the little ones. Here's a week of recommended dinner entrees for the kiddies - mock duck, pot roast of beef with eight vegetables, the aforementioned lamb kidneys, baked liver, creamed salmon with hominy grit ring, pan-broiled liver, and chicken and brown rice. When you toss in the sides, it really gets strange - things like buttered beets and celery, toasty prune betty (distant cousin of apple brown betty?), watercress and egg salad. Maybe children were more compliant back then, more easily led. My friend Holly has a daughter, Maya, who is comtemplating becoming a raw foodist. She's eight.
Ruth Berolzheimer, the editor of this slim volume, assures us that "a well nourished child is a happy child" and that "vitamins are their spark plugs." She advises that physical growth depends, in equal parts, on fresh air, sunshine, sleep, an adequate home, the right foods, and correct clothing. Ms. Berolzheimer also recommends an attractive table setting and a fairy tale while casually feeding the "dreamy or imaginative" child a few forkfuls. There's something about all of this that I find very, very amusing.
deb
in Quirky, Vintage, and Otherwise Odd Collections of Recipes
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Reader Comments (3)
And my clothing was totally hip. How come Ms. Berolzheimer missed how much magic a child can encounter with everyday utensils like, say, a toothbrush? Things such as these are CRUCIAL to proper development.....