Now is the month when mothers start sending those off-to-school packages, a labor of love, but a labor no less. Why not have the job done to order? Say the word, send the check, and eight snack packs, beginning now in October to be stretched out through May, will be mailed monthly by Gifts For the Year, Inc., located at 1246 Madison Avenue, New York City. The price is $27.50 for the regular offer; the package series de luxe costs $44.50. The quality is the same in both kits, the difference is in the quantity and variety. All packages are sent express prepaid, guaranteed to arrive in perfect condition.
Not a glum chum in the series, the boxes are strictly cataclysmic. October's package, for example, is titled “Room Picnic,” and goes complete with paper plates, napkins, and varicolored plastic tumblers. The eats are a variety of crackers and sandwich makers, stuff and stuff, like cashew butter, creamed honey, and fill-'em-up meat spreads.
November brings a “Bucket of Eats”—we mean bucket. Big red apple, giant peanuts, apple candies, a game or two, just to garnish with laughter. The pre-holiday package carries fruit cake, Lebkuchen, and other holiday delectables, spicy, tantalizing, of nose-tickling aroma. How the crowd Christmas-carols! Or could it be whoops?
January's “Rendezvous” means “After 12, lights out, a sneak party into my room” with cheese and crackers and innumerable fancy spreadings.
It's “Corny Fun” for March—popcorn, cheese corn, caramel corn, parched corn. April brings “Kandy Kolossal,” an all-candy box, right in the teen-age groove.
May's box is called “Prom,” a collection of party treats, a good-bye sort of thing, cakes and cookies and cokes.
These school packages will carry the same high quality products which the firm has featured in the monthly gift series which was started last fall with the Christmas series. One difference in the keen teen line, quantity is stressed as well as quality, keeping in mind the well-known hollow-leg principle. Your ewe lamb may be a shy creature, but friends in plenty are guaranteed with a monthly goo box to pass. For further information, write or telephone Mrs. Frances W. Branch, 1246 Madison Avenue, the telephone Sacramento 2-5505.
The sweet meat of those juicy, smoke-tanged turkeys which parade in golden-brown perfection from Forst's Catskill Mountain Smokehouse has been put into cans. Whole birds sell as always, but so often a whole bird is too much. Then it is these small tins come in handy, packed with smoked turkey neatly sliced or in dice, also in pâté form. The eight-ounce tin of the sliced bird can be used in any turkey recipes to serve three. And it's good à la King. If it's a hurry lunch you are fixing, take that jar of Epicure sauce à la King you bought from B. Altman's, fifteen and one-half ounces for 46 cents, and heat in the top of the double boiler. Add turkey sliced or in dice, and in less than a jiffy the dish is ready to eat. The sauce is made with chicken broth, with both milk and cream. In it are bits of mushroom, green pepper, pimiento, peas, and it's scented faintly of sherry. But more sherry is needed, we think, to stand up against the smoky flavor of the bird. Anyhow, the sauce can stand thinning so add a big pour from the sherry bottle. Pungent, that smoke taste, and if you know your smokes, you might recognize this as the zesty tang of old applewood. No additional seasoning is necessary when using this meat.
That tin labeled “Handi-cuts” holds the turkey meat in dice. Very salty it is, so however you use it, in salads or pot pies, in croquettes or casseroles, go easy on other seasonings or you will overdo a good thing.
The pâté is coarse and loose-packed, rather than velvet-smooth and firm as an all-liver pâté would be. This is made of a combination of finely ground smoked turkey meat and livers, blended with spices. A thirst whet of the first order. It spreads far, especially if you take the label tip and blend with mayonnaise. B. Altman's have this turkey trio, the prices $1.30 for the pâté, $1.50 for the diced, and $1.75 for the sliced meat, all in eight-ounce tins.
For almost a century the country's best known hotels, clubs, and restaurants have bought their choice smokehouse viands from the Forsts. It's within recent years that smoked turkeys were introduced, but these are of the same fine quality as the hams, bacon, and sausages. Each young bird is selected for full-breasted plumpness, cured in an herb and spice bath, then slowly smoked over applewood. Dark gold the flesh, smoky to the bone, and moist of the juice. A whole smoked bird to serve just as it comes is party food hard to beat. Mighty important looking, this bronze beauty, when used as a buffet table centerpiece.
When you order, state the desired weight of the bird; nine pounds is the minimum. Enclose your check with your order, calculating $1.50 a pound. If there is any difference in the final cost, you will be notified, and naturally if you overpay, you will be reimbursed. All postage charges are prepaid in the United States and Canada. Write to the Forst's Catskill Mountain Smokehouse, Route 83, Kingston, New York.
Southern Comfort, that all-American liqueur, has declared its ambition to be the cook's best friend. Six months ago the Southern Comfort folks of St. Louis decided the time had come to show women of the land how to use this grand old drink of the South in the flavoring and saucing of foods, and perfect it is for culinary purposes, a dark, heavy nectar, based on bonded bourbon and sweet of fruit essences. It's 100 proof, so when used to blaze over fruits or puddings, it burns long with a steady flame.
Demetria Taylor, a home economics consultant, was called in to turn out the recipes. The result of six months' test work you will find in a neat little booklet of Southern Comfort desserts attached to the neck of each bottle.
Crêpes Magnolia is one we urge you to try, this a variation of crêpes Suzette but aided and abetted by Southern Comfort's fruity way: Mix and sift one cup flour, one tablespoon sugar, and a few grains of salt. Beat three eggs and add to dry ingredients, add one cup milk, and stir until smooth. Add two tablespoons melted butter and one teaspoon Southern Comfort. Strain through a fine sieve, and let stand two hours. Melt one-half teaspoon butter in a seven-inch skillet. Pour in a thin layer of batter. When set and brown on underside, turn and brown the other side, allowing one minute for each. Repeat until batter is used. Spread the pancakes with jam; then roll. Put in a very hot, heatproof serving dish; sprinkle with sugar. Pour one pony of Southern Comfort over all and ignite. Serve immediately.
Another day use it flaming over cooked pears, over cooked peaches. Saturate Bing cherries with the liqueur, then ignite it and dip the liquid flame over vanilla ice cream. Try Southern Comfort in a fruit cake batter. It gives a flavor unique.
Southern Comfort may be used in all manner of party—Manhattans, Collins, rickeys, side cars, and our favorite, the old fashioned de luxe. For this take a jigger of Southern Comfort, a dash of bitters, two cubes of ice, a spurt of seltzer. Garnish with a cherry, a twist of lemon peel, a thin half slice of orange. Serve in old fashioned glasses. Two of those and “Every girl is a peach, every woman a queen, and the graces are six misses of eighteen.”
In using this liqueur remember its slogan—one drink a delight, two a revelation, no gentleman will ask for three. The two-drink rule was first enforced about seventy-five years ago in the New Orleans bar of an Irishman by the name of Herron who originated the Southern Comfort formula. Later Mr. Herron moved to Memphis, then to St. Louis where he had a fine bar, featuring Southern Comfort served icy cold, poured over half a ripe peach, and served in a wide-bottomed glass. Herron made the liqueur principally for use in his own bar, but a small amount was sold before Prohibition days.
It was after repeal that F. E. Fowler, Jr., a St. Louis man with a good business head, got hold of the formula and formed a company, a family affair, to bring the drink back to fame.
Instant Sanka is the new product of the autumn, the brain child of the research department of General Foods Company, Inc. Now the bothersome two-pot system, followed in households where one member of the family drinks decaffeinated coffee and the others do not, is a thing of the past. The new Sanka may be brewed in a matter of seconds and right in the cup in which it is served. It dissolves instantly in water, either hot or cold.
Here's the way of mixing: For the cold drink place one and one-half teaspoons of the powder in a tall glass, fill three-quarters full of cold water. Give a brisk stir, add the ice cubes. This gives a dark brew of strong coffee flavor. For hot instant decaffeinated coffee, only one teaspoon, more or less, of the powder is placed in the cup, boiling water added, then a quick stir. Taste Java's double; even the aroma is there.
Researchers have known for long years that the problem of instant coffee of any kind is one of the most difficult in the entire field of food technology. It's easy enough to make a coffee beverage containing aroma from the ground bean but it's next to impossible to evaporate the water from the beverage without evaporating the very small amount of highly volatile aroma which is coffee's own soul. Doing the impossible, however, has become commonplace in America's research laboratories, but the impossible usually takes a few years to achieve. At any time during the past decade it would have been possible for General Foods to have presented the public with a makeshift decaffeinated product which, no doubt, would have received a certain acceptance. But the firm preferred to wait to announce its soluble coffee, caffeine eliminated, until they could offer fine flavor and aroma along with convenience. The perfected product is selling today in hundreds of markets in dozens of cities, the price around 39 cents for the two-ounce jar which makes as much coffee as a pound of the regular.
The product is convenient, too, for use in frostings, puddings, or ice cream for those allergic to coffee's caffeine. Here's a recipe for using Instant Sanka in a coffee caramel custard which came to us from Hildegarde Von Loewenfeldt, world traveler, writer, and food connoisseur: Melt one-third cup sugar in a frying pan over direct heat until light brown in color. Take care not to burn. Coat inside of individual custard cups with syrup and allow to cool. Scald three cups milk, three tablespoons sugar, one-half teaspoon vanilla extract, and one-third teaspoon salt. Add three teaspoons of Instant Sanka and stir until smooth. Add liquid to three slightly beaten eggs and strain to remove any egg particles. Pour into the custard cups. Place cups in pan containing one inch of water. Bake in moderate oven about 45 minutes until firm. Chill, then unmold onto deep dessert plates.
Remember Vichy Celestins, that naturally alkaline carbonated water from France? It's back on the grocery shelves, imported by Cresca, coming in three sizes: thirty ounces at 69 cents, fourteen ounces at 45 cents, seven ounces at 31 cents. It is handled by numerous stores, and we have glimpsed the Vichy at Bloomingdale's, Lexington Avenue and 59th Street, B. Altman's, Fifth Avenue and 34th Street, Charles and Company, 340 Madison Avenue, and Hammacher Schlemmer, 145 East 57th Street.
Vichy Celestine has long been known to the medical profession and has been prescribed by thousands of doctors in all parts of the world. It contains sodium bicarbonate and insignificant amounts of other chemical constituents commonly found in ground waters. Before the war more than forty million bottles of this water were sold annually.
So the imports return. Here for good winter feasting are such delicacies ad olives stuffed with anchovies, anchovies stuffed with pimiento and capers, antipasto, truffles, pâté de foie gras, and the first shipment of the small Dutch candies called hopjes.
Scandinavian imports come along lively. Fish balls from Sweden, fish balls from Norway. Herring tidbits in tomato, in wine sauce, in dill. Anchovies are here laved in lobster sauce, in spice sauce. There's Danish beer of two kinds, Tuborg and Carlsberg. Norway's bristling sardines are on hand, and those mite-sized shrimp which count out 75 to 100 in the two-and-one-half-ounce tins, the price around 69 cents. The Fifty-eighth Street Delicatessenm, 969 Third Avenue, specializes in these Scandinavian items. So does Nydorg and Nelson, 841 Third Avenue.
Sweet almond oil is being imported from Italy and Spain to pinch-hit for olive. It's an oil 100 per cent pure, entirely free from artificial colors or flavors, introduced by Morris Specialties. Almond oil can be used exactly like olive oil for dressings, for frying. Packed in pint-sized containers, it is priced $2.10 at Charles and Company, 340 Madison Avenue, and the Gristede stores.
Belgian imports dribble back. Again welcome the miniature carrots, perfect for picture platters, for dressing up a plank dinner.
These carrots are a variety similar to our canning types, that is, of short root, thicker than the kind seen generally in the fresh markets. Picked in their youth and no bigger than your thumb, they count forty to the pound, twelve-ounce tin, price 65 cents, noted at the Allerton Fruit Shop, 546 Madison Avenue.
There, too, we found Belgian celery feet, four feet to a can, the price $1. A foot is a stalk of celery, the top cut to leave about five inches of base. The celery is without strings, it's cooked tender to fork-cut easily as a boiled potato. A handy shelf item to have when a vegetable is needed in a hurry to warm and butter-dress; give it a grind of fresh pepper, or chill for a salad to serve with a sharp dressing.
The Allerton Fruit Shop, no bigger than a luncheon napkin, has a strange assortment of delicacies, some two thousand items. Everything imaginable is jammed on its shelves—licorice whips, French truffles, English marmalade, rock candy, chutney, spices, fine teas, Greek candies and cakes.
New York's candy artist, Miss Ellen, maker of Continental style sweets distributed in the larger cities of the nation, has a new assortment this autumn which she sells at her factory door, 164 East 91st Street. Packed one, two, or three pounds at $3 a pound, there are twelve different pieces, all chocolate-covered, some are hand-dipped, others hand-molded.
Let's taste one by one: curaçao is a molded piece, cream-filled, the cream scented of curaçao. French nougat is of finely ground filberts blended with chocolate and sugar, then prettily molded, a roasted filbert resting atop snug as a solitaire. Caramel surprise is a chocolate caramel wrapping itself around a fat toasted almond. You chew and chew and then at the end, a nut-sweet crunchiness.
The chocolate caramels are made with heavy cream, then chocolate-dipped. Chocolate rum truffles are butter-richened, so are truffles of pistachio but these are rum-flavored. Foil-wrapped are the three-layered praline pieces, ready to melt away at a glance. A prize piece is the honey croquant made of almonds and filberts, of butter and cream, sweetened with honey, then over all the coating of chocolate, fragrant as the queen bee.
Something that fills the mouth with gushing freshness is a whole cube of pineapple, chocolate-dipped. It goes down cool and feverless. A similar piece is half a preserved strawberry, encased in thin chocolate mold.
Coffee caramel noux is a creamy soft caramel that melts in the mouth if you don't feel like chewing. A piece unusual is the walnut coffee roll, this a coffee fondant strewn with finely cut walnuts. There's your dozen. We ate every last one.
It was nine years ago when Ellen joined the great exodus from Berlin. Preceding her family, she came as did hundreds of others, trained to earn her living as a candy maker. Six months before she left her home city, she attended night classes behind locked doors in the kitchens of Haman, famous German confectioner. Her first few months in America she worked as a saleswoman in a smart Fifth Avenue shop. She made candy evenings to sell in the store where she worked. The business grew in a hurry; Ellen gave up a salesgirl career to devote full time to her candy. Today she owns the four-story brownstone where the candy is made. She has over two hundred wholesale accounts, scattered through forty-five states. Father, mother, brother are all in the candy game now, but Ellen's big boss!