Margarine Is Evil

Amanda Butler, over at Crescat Sententia, has some scaaary cake recipes. I'm as white trashy as the next girl; for example, I make a mean ham baked in Coke. But, margarine and artifical butter flavoring? For god's sake, woman, just substitute butter!! Crisco has its place in certain baked goods, because it gives a flaky lightness. But not cakes, please. Please. I know loyal reader Mitch Mills eschews Crisco, but I stand firm on this. Half butter and half Crisco makes a superior pie crust. I'd happily use leaf lard, if anyone would sell it to me, but I find packaged lard too porky for sweet baking. (Leaf lard is rendered from the fat surrounding the internal organs, and is reputed to have the most delicate flavor, but I wouldn't know.) The tomato soup cake (which I've never made either) is a reaction to WWII shortages of eggs and butter, I think, and since we don't have those problems now it should be retired, along with all the mid-century Joy of Cooking eggless, butterless cakes based on packaged mayonnaise. It reminds me of the "Mock Apple Pie" recipe from the back of old Ritz boxes (in which delicious, buttery Ritz crackers do the duty of apples). Five times as expensive as real apples, and the flavor....? My dad made it once, because he has a pioneering and experimental spirit. Verdict: that is one nasty-ass pie full of salty crackers.

Comments

[Ray]

Mock apple pie is still a mainstay of our family occasions. There are worse things.

One of the sorrows of my middle-aged existence is that I so successfully repressed the memory of an a much more nightmarish "mock" something that was once served at a family reunion in my late twenties, and now I'm curious as to what it might have been. On the other hand, one of the sorrows of my old age is likely to be that memory's vivid return.

[mph]

I wasn't sure that the recipe lore on display offered much in the way of "white trashy" credentials, but the use of "nasty-ass" did. I don't think I've heard a lady use that phrase since Mindy the Generator Mechanic stole my heart while I was a young operations NCO at Ft. Bragg. Memories. When she flicked her cigarette, it was like a tungsten round blowing through my heart, leaving nothing but a body-cavity-evacuating void.

Past that, if you can score a copy of the authentic Elvis Presley Family Cookbook (by Uncle Vesper), you're in for a treat: fried peanut butter n' banana sammiches, 16 icecream dessert ("some days," adds the helpful historical note, "this is all Elvis would eat all day,") and the usual invitations to early death perched atop the toilet you see in cooking from down there.

Anyhow, recommended reading. His list of favorite Fanta beverages (which seems to include the entire Fanta catalog) shows that Elvis was a man of true emotional range.

[Ray]

Fried peanut butter and banana sandwiches are delicious, although I prefer mine less sweet than Elvis's. Mostly nowadays I just slice bananas on top of peanut butter on toast. The little golden disks are pretty, the peanut butter doesn't stick to your mouth, and the combination's delicious. If the bananas aren't ripe enough, drizzle a little honey over the peanut butter first.

Think of it as a cracker version of black beans and plantains.

[Belle Waring]

Mmmm, you know what's even better (and equally Elvis-approved)? Peanut-butter and bacon sandwiches.

[murray]

Of course margarine is evil, bad and wrong. It's fake, like the administration. "I Can't Believe There's No WMDs!"

If nothing else, had Marlon Brando said "Pass the margarine" in "Last Tango in Paris," audiences would have laughed their asses off, totally destroying a tender moment.

[Mitch Mills]

A good friend and former roommate of mine had a real fondness for, wait for it, grilled peanut butter and mayonnaise sandwiches. His grandmother used to make them for him when he was a kid and he continued this culinary tradition into adulthood. I haven't had the heart to check whether he feeds these to his kids now.

I once got drunk enough to try one, and it's actually not as bad as it sounds. Never had one since though . . .

Years later I saw a recipe for same in The White Trash Cookbook under the name "No Stick Peanute Butter Sandwiches".

[jim in austin]

Toasted peanut butter and pickle sandwiches over here. And don't forget white cornbread crumbled up in a glass of buttermilk and eaten with a spoon. Deep Georgia cracker cuisine...