🫖Full Day of Meals; Vintage Cooking from 1950! 🍝 (these stand the test of time).

Today, friends, we are traveling back to 1950 and cooking a whole day of vintage meals from the Betty Crocker picture cookbook that was published that year. I've got a fun menu, so for breakfast, I'm gonna make some baked eggs with corned beef hash. For lunch, we are gonna try a chicken salad recipe along with some potato salad, and then for dinner, I'm making spaghetti and meatballs with garlic bread and a salad, some homemade French dressing, and some fudgy chocolate brownies for dessert. I'm also excited to let you know that today's vintage cooking video is sponsored by Walmart. I've worked with them so much here on my channel, and I love working with them because you guys know I love Walmart. Right now, they are having huge deals for Black Friday and Cyber Monday, so starting on November 25th, you can start shopping Walmart Plus exclusive access and full access online. Then on November 29th, Black Friday in-store shopping starts at 6 a.m. local time, and then on December 2nd, you can shop Cyber Monday new online deals, full access only, and one day only. There are so many amazing and limited-time deals on Walmart.com. Walmart is affordable, and it's not just a physical store. You can go online at Walmart.com and find what you need, order it, and have it shipped right to your doorstep from the comfort of your couch, which is my favorite. In today's video, I'm gonna be showing you all of the awesome items that I picked up on Walmart.com for my home and kitchen, including this awesome cordless vacuum, which helps me clean up all the crumbs after I'm done cooking. I also grabbed a new hand mixer, some dinner plates, some new knives that are super sharp. I really love them, an electric skillet, and a new nonstick skillet that I am loving and have been using on a daily basis. I also found some fantastic deals that you'll want to check out, either for yourself or for a gift, and all of the items that I mention in today's video will have individual links in the description box below. You can pick up a Tefal 22-piece nonstick pot and pan set for $80.23 off, which is gonna make it only $49.76. Time and Table 12-piece silicone utensil set. These look fabulous, might I add. These are only $20, which is over $38 off. The BHG scented candles are only $5, and these make awesome gifts, so I know I'm gonna be stocking up on some of these. Time and Table has 10-piece ceramic kitchen organizer sets for only $20, and if you're looking for food storage, these Time and Table eight-piece pantry storage sets are only 15 bucks, so affordable. There's also a Gotham Steel 20-piece ceramic pot and pan set for $72 off, which makes it $119.99. This would be perfect for a college student or someone who is just starting out on their own and needs to build their kitchen up. And for that hard-to-buy-for person, you can also pick up this electric throw blanket for $55 off, it's only $24.99. Again, all of these products that I've mentioned are available at walmart.com, and we'll have links in the description box below. So make sure that you don't miss out on these awesome deals for Walmart's Black Friday and Cyber Monday. Pick up some of these affordable items for yourself or for those hard-to-buy-for people on your list, and thank you again to Walmart for sponsoring today's video. Before we jump into the cooking, I do wanna say that I went over to my grandparents' house and I took this cookbook and I kind of walked through some of the recipes with her and sort of asked her some things about cooking in the 1950s, and I'm gonna share some of her tips as we go along throughout the video. All right, so I looked at a couple different options for breakfast, and the first place I looked was the eggs section, and I decided to go with the eggs baked on corned beef hash. So here are the directions. I've got my baking dish here. I'm not exactly sure what year this baking dish is from, but I thought it was very 50s apropos. This is actually one that I got from my grandma. It's just an anchor hocking glass dish. We've got a couple eggs, some cream, one can of corned beef hash. I did Google if they had canned corned beef hash in the 50s, and yes, they did, although it wasn't this brand. It was a different brand. Then I've got some butter. So it just says to add the hash to a buttered dish or a greased dish, so I just used a paper towel and put some softened butter on the bottom and the sides. Now it says to spread the warmed corned beef hash in the bottom of the dish. I did not warm this. It just came straight out of the can. So while the oven preheats, I'm just gonna go ahead and set it right here. This will obviously warm it up a little bit while the oven preheats. So do you guys like the letters falling off my stove? It's no longer a Samsung, it's an am son, maybe. Okay, so it says to use the bottom of a dish to make some hollows. Well, that didn't work. Hollows in the hash, but I think I'm just gonna use a spoon because that will be easier for me to control here. Basically, you just need a spot for two little eggs. And then it says to dot each with butter and put an egg in it. Got our egg. Eggs. And then it says to pour one tablespoon of cream over each egg. I've seen this a lot in older recipes. I guess I don't know the purpose of it. I would have to look, but that is done. Okay, so this goes into a 400 degree oven for 15 to 20 minutes. I don't really care for runny yolks, so I'll probably do it on the longer side. So here's our baked eggs and corned beef hash right out of the oven. I did let it cool for a little bit. You guys, I really actually like corned beef hash, but I cannot say that I recommend this recipe. Typically, when you fry it in a pan, you get a chance to get some of that grease out of there and crisp it up, but when you bake it in a dish, it kind of just all sits there. So while I appreciate the concept, I would definitely rather fry it next time. So it's right after breakfast, but for lunch, I wanna make this potato salad, and I want to go ahead and get it started so it can chill in the refrigerator. It calls for three cups of cubed boiled potatoes. So I'll probably have a little bit more than three cups, but I'm not sure. I've got three kind of medium russet potatoes and two smaller ones. I'm gonna go ahead and boil these whole just because I find that when I make potato salad that way, the potatoes don't turn out quite as watery. So I'll show you how we do that. For the potato salad, you do need some of this French dressing. However, this is gonna go ahead and do double duty for us because we are gonna not only use it for the potato salad, but I'm also gonna use it for the lettuce salad at dinner. So for the dressing, I'm gonna go ahead and shake it up in a jar to combine, but I've got some sugar, some salt, a quarter cup of vinegar. My grandma was actually telling me how her mother would make vinegar in the basement, which I need to research that more. I thought it was super interesting. And then she was telling me when Wesson came out with what they called salad oil, obviously, which we now refer to it as vegetable oil. But anyway, we have three fourths of a cup of that. And then for seasonings, we've got paprika, dry mustard, and pepper. All right, so we're gonna pop this in the fridge to let it chill while we work on the rest. Totally forgot to add the garlic. So it says either a few drops of onion juice or a clove of garlic. I'm gonna go ahead and use a clove of garlic. So I was actually asking my grandma about salads that they would have had in the 1950s. And she said that they did not routinely have lettuce. They really only used cabbage. So I also think that they did not have a dash egg cooker in the 1950s, but that is what I'm using to cook my hard-boiled eggs for my potato salad. Now, once my potatoes were tender, I went ahead and removed them, and then I chilled them in the fridge. Once they're cool, you can easily kind of scrape the skin off with a paring knife and then dice them. We're gonna need three cups of these. So this is actually similar to the potato salad recipe that I always make here on my channel, which is another recipe from my grandma, except there is a little bit of variation. But basically you put the chilled potatoes into a bowl. I added a tablespoon of really finely minced onion, and then I'm going to add some salt. Now, typically at this particular stage, when making my regular recipe, I would just toss the potatoes with a little bit of vinegar. However, this recipe actually calls to toss the potatoes with a little bit of that French dressing, which I think is really unique. So I went ahead and added, I think it called for like a quarter cup of that. And this did really give it some nice flavor. One thing I would say is that that dressing is very heavy on the vegetable oil. I don't think that this salad needs obviously extra vegetable oil because you're gonna be adding mayonnaise to it, but it was still good and fun to try. So I'm dicing up my hard boiled eggs, and I'm just gonna go ahead and add those to the bowl with the mayonnaise and the potatoes and the onions and seasonings. And I just went ahead and stirred this around. One thing that is really nice about boiling the potatoes whole is that when you dice them up afterwards, when they're cool, it really helps them not to break apart when you stir the potato salad together. Obviously, potato salad tastes better after you've chilled it. So we're gonna go ahead and pop that in the fridge. Now for the chicken salad, it called for two cups of cold cubed chicken. I did take a shortcut and use rotisserie chicken that I bought the day before at the grocery store, and I just popped it in the fridge overnight so it could chill. And then I'm going to dice up my celery and everything else that I need for the chicken salad. There were several different variations in here. I had grapes on hand, and so I decided to go with that variation along with some olives. Again, this is pretty traditional chicken salad. I thought it was very good. It's a solid recipe. And I was gonna say again how much I love these knives. They're the Beautiful brand. So I'll be sure to link those down below. They're a pretty affordable set of knives. And you guys know I'm like pretty picky about my knives, and I've been using these for several weeks. I really love them. So to my chicken in the bowl, I'm adding celery, grapes, salt, pepper. I also added some lemon juice. And then I'm gonna go ahead and give that a toss. I really like to dice my celery super fine. The recipe actually said to leave it a little bit larger, but again, I prefer it small. So went ahead and stirred that up. And then at this point, you can taste it, add salt or pepper. I didn't think it needed any, but I did, like I said, add some almonds to it just to give it some additional crunch. And then also I prefer to put this in the refrigerator as well to let it chill for a few hours before we eat lunch. But I just served this chicken salad on some plain toasted bread along with the potato salad. And I threw on a sliced apple just because I thought the corner of the plate was looking a little bit bare. But this is definitely a lunch I would make again. Solid, definitely solid vintage recipes. So for dessert tonight with dinner, I'm gonna make these brownies and I'm gonna make the chocolate-frosted brownies. So I've got the recipe right here for the brownies and then there's some variations down here. I'm just gonna do the frosted ones. So I've got some unsweetened chocolate here. We're actually gonna use this both for the brownies and the frosting. I've got some eggs, shortening, a cup of sugar, and then it calls to sift together flour, baking powder, and salt. So I've got that in my sifter here, which I actually really love this sifter and I did get it online at Walmart. So obviously I'll link it down below. And then we're gonna use a double boiler to melt the chocolate and the shortening together for the brownies. So I've got that set up here. And then it calls for an eight inch square dish. So I've got that out as well. I've got about an inch of water in this pot. You don't want the top of the water to touch the bottom of the bowl. And I'm gonna heat it over medium high heat. You just really want the water simmering, not boiling. And then I'm gonna add two ounces of this baking chocolate to the bowl. And then I added a third of a cup of shortening. I'm gonna sift this flour just into this bowl. So this is all smoothed and melted together now. I'm gonna remove it from the heat. Okay, and I'm gonna be in one cup of sugar. I'm using my new beautiful hand mixer, which I'm super excited to have. So I'm just gonna turn this on like a low-ish speed and add the sugar. Then we're gonna add two eggs. Okay, and then adding the dry ingredients, which is the flour and baking powder and salt. I really like this mixer. It's flat on the bottom, so it very easily stands up when you're kind of in the process of adding ingredients. And I also like that it comes with the multiple attachments. So it comes with the beaters, but then it also comes with dough hooks, which I have not had a hand mixer like that before. And then it also comes with the whisk. And then I just greased my eight-inch square pan with a little bit of cooking spray. We're gonna spread the brownie batter in there. Okay, and then we're gonna pop this in a 350-degree oven for 30 to 35 minutes. So for dinner, we're gonna be making a recipe from the supper dishes section. They actually do have some menus in here, which I looked at several of these. None of them really seems like they would suit my family too well, but this is what we're gonna make. It's spaghetti and meatballs. So it's on page 385. And so here's the recipe. I've gone ahead and cut up an onion for the sauce. And then for the meatballs, in this bowl, I've got 1⁄4 of a pound of ground pork and 3⁄4 of a pound of ground beef. And I've also added one tablespoon of parsley that I finely chopped. And then I've got two cloves of garlic here that I minced. We're gonna add that. I need to scrape that out into the meatballs as well. And some salt and pepper. We're gonna add one cup of fine, dry breadcrumbs. My grandma did tell me that they would not have purchased breadcrumbs. They would have made their own from the heels of bread and scraps and things like that. Then I've got two eggs that I beat. Then we're adding 1⁄2 a cup of milk. So all I'm gonna do is just stir this all together with a fork. I like to use a fork because I feel like it keeps the mixture light and kind of helps combine everything without getting my hands super dirty. Then the last ingredient is 1⁄2 a cup of Parmesan cheese. We're just using the kind in the can, obviously. I was super excited to try out this electric skillet. Now, here's a caveat. Obviously, my grandma said they did not have electric skillets in the 1950s. However, I do remember my mom having one in the 80s and the 90s, and I do remember her using it quite frequently. I don't know what the draw was back then because honestly, they're kind of hard to wash. However, I really do like it. And I personally like it as kind of like an alternative to using the stove, especially if you're going to simmer something for a really long time like these meatballs. So I just sauteed some onion in a bit of shortening per the directions. This pound of meat actually made a ton of meatballs. We had a ton of leftovers, but I'm just rolling the meatballs kind of small and putting them in the electric skillet. I have to say, I really do recommend this electric skillet. It is beautiful. It's easy to use. It holds at a really constant temperature. I'm actually kind of thinking of how I can use this for Thanksgiving. I was kind of maybe thinking I could make mac and cheese in it and keep it warm that way, but I really do recommend it. And it comes in a bunch of different colors if you're looking for one. So when the meatballs were browned, I'm adding in some bell pepper. It called for green bell pepper, but I didn't have any on hand, so I used red. And then I'm adding some chopped flat leaf parsley. And again, just stirring this around, being super careful not to break up the meatballs. I'm gonna add my canned tomatoes. I used a combination of pureed and crushed tomatoes. I also really like that this electric skillet has the lid holder, so you can basically pop the lid up on that as you're cooking and it won't drip onto the counter, which is freaking genius. Love it. I'm gonna go ahead and simmer this. I'm gonna go ahead and start the frosting for the brownies. So I've got a cup of powdered sugar in my sifter here, and we're just gonna sift that into this bowl. For the frosting, I've got my double boiler here. I've got one ounce of the unsweetened chocolate and one tablespoon of butter. And I'm just gonna melt this down until everything is combined. To the melted chocolate, I'm gonna add one and a half tablespoons of warm water and then my powdered sugar. We're just gonna whisk this together. Okay, so that was super, super easy to make. I'm gonna frost the brownies. I cannot find my offset spatula, so we're just gonna use a spoon. Okay, now this frosting is still a bit warm, so I'm guessing it's gonna set up as it cools, but we'll see. So we're gonna make some garlic bread to go with the spaghetti. I think I'm gonna go ahead and use maybe just like 2 1⁄3 of this loaf because we definitely won't eat the whole thing for dinner, but I'm gonna cut it in half lengthwise. So in this bowl, I have almost a whole stick of butter. It's like a tablespoon less than a whole stick because obviously I used a tablespoon for the brownie frosting. So I've got butter, I've got three cloves of garlic, some minced parsley, and just some salt and pepper. And this is what I'm gonna use for the garlic bread. So since they did not have frozen garlic bread in the 1950s, we are making it ourselves. So I'm just spreading the garlic butter onto the bread, and then I will bake this. I can't remember what I had the oven set at. I don't know, probably 425. And then I'm gonna go ahead and make my salad. So I did have kind of like 3⁄4 of a head of iceberg lettuce in the fridge that I needed to use up, which was perfect, because I love a good iceberg salad with spaghetti. I added my spaghetti to the boiling water and just cooked that per the package directions, and then cut up some toppings for my salad. The interesting thing that I was considering when I was talking to my grandma, because she grew up on a farm, and basically they would have had food that was seasonally available, right? So as far as like actually having lettuce or tomatoes or cucumbers or peppers or something like that to put on a salad, that stuff really would have only been available during the warmer months, especially in the Midwest, like she grew up in Missouri. Obviously it's cold during the winter. So you're definitely having to find ways to preserve things and you're eating seasonally because that's when it is available. Okay, we're gonna go ahead and put our salad together. I got out one of my vintage Pyrex. I don't know that croutons were a thing in 1950, but I'm gonna add some to our salad. Okay, I just baked the garlic bread for about 10 minutes at 400. I'm just gonna slice it up. All right, so our meatballs and sauce are done. I did give it a taste. I'm not gonna add anything. I think that it's great. The meatballs turned out really good and tender. So now I just have to drain the pasta and put everything together. Okay, so I'm using these new beautiful, the brand is beautiful, from Walmart dinner plates that I got. If you guys are looking for new plates, highly recommend them. They're nice and heavy and sturdy. So I served up some spaghetti with salad on the side and some garlic bread. Had to, of course, add my Parmesan cheese to the top. I don't know why I put so much spaghetti on my plate because I could only eat like a third of this, but you know what? I love this recipe. I would definitely make it again. It is a very, very solid, delicious spaghetti and meatballs recipe. Nothing bad about it. My whole family loved it. So that was definitely a good dinner. The meatballs turned out super tender. The brownies were also really good. I'm sorry I didn't get a better picture of them, but my family proceeded to attack them after dinner. Adam said this was probably the best brownie that he's had in a long time. They turned out super fudgy and that frosting was really good as well. Okay, so that is it for my mostly delicious vintage day of cooking. I know it's been a while since I've done one of these videos, but I really enjoyed filming it. So let me know in the comments below if you would like me to do more and give me an idea for like what year or what era you'd like me to do. I have a huge cookbook collection, so I probably already have a cookbook for that year anyway. And also don't forget to check out Walmart's deals for Black Friday and Cyber Monday. Again, I'll have all of the products I use linked in the description box below. So get on that, get ahead on your holiday shopping, and I'll see you in my next video, bye.