FUDGE! FUDGE! FUDGE!

If you saw the title and are now disappointed to see fudge recipes you just aren't paying attention. If you don't like fudge there's nothing to see here. Move along. Tomorrow might be better.

Does anyone else get chocolate recipes out around 10 pm and dream of all the things you could make and eat, but because it's so late you know you won't, which saves your waistline and your pocketbook? No? Really?

Many many many years ago, when I lived in L. A., I can remember several times going into my roommate's room and saying, "If I made a chocolate pie would you help me eat it?" My old roommate was, and still is, a chocolate lover.

Now, I'm not saying these were great pies. I'd make the pie crust from scratch, cook it in the microwave then throw it in the oven to brown, put the crust in the freezer to cool, mix up chocolate pudding from a box, pour it into the now cooled crust, squirt canned whip cream all over the top. We would then sit down and eat the whole thing. Entire thing, from idea to washing up dirty pie pan, would take a little over an hour. If I did that now at 10 o'clock at night I'd be as big as a barn. Currently I'd say I'm closer in size to a chicken coop.

The following are from the 1941 The Candy Book published by Consolidated Book Publisher for the Culinary Arts Institute.

Click on any image to see it larger.

Now, how the heck did meatballs end up on the back cover of a candy book?

250 WAY OF SERVING POTATOES

Using the book title as my title means that some poor soul will eventually find this post hoping to find potato recipes. Sorry.

On the flip side, I gathered you all weren't really hankerin' to make any of the fine cream cheese recipes I posted. Okay, then. How about potatoes as aliens?

I give you "250 Ways of Serving Potatoes." Notice the appetizing cover photo? We know what this is supposed to look like, but it somehow misses the mark. Things do get better when you get inside because somebody got the brilliant idea of printing everything in a purplish blue color instead of sticking with good old black and white. Nothing makes me hungrier than purplish blue meat and potatoes.

And, is it me or do many of these photos look like aliens? Purple People Eaters. Doesn't this look like the nursery in Alien's?

Launch pads from which they'll launch their attacks of leftover goo? Is the duck a sentry or an unwilling participant in the potatoes attempt to rule the world? We'll never know.

And honestly, I just don't want to speculate.

Finally, I give you the mother ship.

And if there are only 250 recipes in this book that means there are 115 days you're on your own. They couldn't come up with 365? I guess some of these will have to be leftovers which probably could have been a whole other series:

250 Things to Do With Potatoes That Your Neighbor Shouldn't Know About

and

A Spud by Any Other Name Never Tasted So Sweet or So Bad After Oxidation

All of this from the Culinary Arts Institute, 1941. I kid you not. Just think of the photos that were rejected.

Bon Appétit!