Category Archives: Folk History

RED-SCARE JELLO

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Mary Geneva Doud “Mamie” Eisenhower (1896  - 1979)
Wife of President Dwight D. Eisenhower, 
First Lady of the United States (1953 – 1961)
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Here is your bit of “DC gossip” for the day: a Jell-o dessert recipe, for the holiday of Thanksgiving! It is Mamie Eisenhower’s famed Red Scare Thanksgiving Jell-o Dessert and it is best served chilled, to family members you hate … This vile thing is exactly what the Eisenhowers used to force-feed the Soviets … MORE

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Like any other era, the ’50s in the U.S. had good and bad going for it. Some folks wax nostalgic and think it was the best of times. It probably was for some of us. I don’t know if that decade had the corner on hokey, but there was a lot about food that was odd indeed.

Anything labor-saving was hot in post-war America. Consequently prefab foods were a hit, especially TV dinners. 1954 was the year Swanson’s put on their big push. Their frozen TV dinners were just 98 cents at the local Safeway grocery, which was fast putting the mom-and-pop stores out of business. After great drama and much battle with the dairy industry, food manufacturers were able to introduce yellow food coloring into margarine, which made it even more attractive to consumers than it was before. Fake butter! Does it get any better than that? The foods I found particularly irritating and unappealing, though, were the gelatin desserts.

Gelatin, collagen made from animal skin and bone, has been around for forever and used in both sweet and savory dishes. Apparently, though, the ubiquitous, jiggly dessert we now know, is relatively new culinary treat. Gelatin desserts were popular because they were sweet, cheap, and easy to make. That probably still accounts for its popularity. Non-cooks like my mother loved it. Apparently, so did such prestigious homemakers as Mrs. Dwight Eisenhower, a.k.a. Mamie. She was our First Lady.

When Mamie’s recipe for Frosted Mint Delight was published in one of the women’s magazines, my mother decided that this pedestrian dessert was, in fact, quite elitist. By god, if it was good enough for Mamie, it was good enough for us. We had it at Christmas “just like the Eisenhower’s!”  What! Ma, can’t we have baklava like the other Lebanese peasants? 

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Click here for Mrs. Eisenhower’s so-called “Red Scare” Jello Dessert and background info. It’s a funny tongue-in-cheek thing, but it does go to prove Mamie was famous for gelatin desserts. It has been updated to include some contemporary products.

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If this old-time recipe appeals and you need to go gluten-free, you know the drill.  Be sure to find the brands that are allergy-free for you.

It strikes me that the really scary thing about this is that it was probably invented by a White House Chef – perhaps Francois Rysavy – not Mamie, and then just promoted as Mamie’s recipe by the PR people. Come on, Frank, couldn’t you come up with something better?

Mrs. Dwight D. Eisenhower‘s Frosted Mint Delight

The recipe

Serves 10-12

  • 2 1-lbs. cans of crushed pineapple
  • 3/4 cup mint flavored apple jelly
  • 1 pint whipping cream
  • 2 teaspoons confection’s sugar
  • 1 package unflavored gelatin

Have all the ingredients chilled.  Melt the jelly and mix the crushed pineapple into it. Dissolve the package of gelatin in one cup of the juice from the pineapple.  Mix the gelatin mixture into the jelly mixture.  Whip the cream, sweeten it with the sugar, and fold it into the mixture.  Put it into the freezer until firm.  Do not freeze solid.

STORIES OF THE AMERICAN WEST

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Then as now, being alive is often challenging, and the Western speaks directly to that,” says Jeff Bridges, who is nominated for a best-actor Oscar as Cogburn. “It was just such an interesting time in our history, right after the Civil War and all …” Jeff Bridges speaking of the old West when interviewed about his latest box-off hit, a remake of the classic Western movie, True Grit. MORE

DYIN’ OR REVIVIN’?

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Karen Fayeth

Last week I received an email by the good folks running the literary competitions at my local county fair. After notifying me that my story won a prize, they invited me to come out to the fair next weekend to read my story aloud on stage as part of their literary event.

Well I was just pleased as punch to say yes. What a wonderful opportunity.

This past Saturday, I had some time on my hands while I sat in a chair waiting for my hair to turn that color that only my hairdresser knows how to make.

I started thinking about this event next weekend and planning. I need to spend some time practicing reading my story aloud. Practice is everything in a public speaking situation.

I wondered if I’d be asked any questions about the story. I thought I should try to think up what I might be asked so I could be ready with good answers.

One of the first questions I thought of was, “what was your inspiration for this story?”

I had to spend some time thinking that through. It’s a story that’s been rambling around in my mind for a while, and I’ve taken several stabs and getting it out, to both greater and lesser success.

Mainly, I was inspired by the fact that upon reading the guidelines for the competition, I noted that there was a “Western” genre available to compete under. This is not something I often see, so that really got my creative juices rolling.

My absolute author-hero is Larry McMurtry. I adore his way with description and dialogue, and his western novels are a cut above.

I have a collection of short stories that McMurtry edited. It’s western stories written only by writers raised in the west.

When I saw that my county fair offered a Western category, I knew there was no doubt that I had to write a western story.

That said, what I wrote isn’t truly a classical western. Technically, the western genre implies a story set in the 1800′s, the so called “Old West.”

If you read any of the literally thousands of short stories that Louis L’Amour wrote, you’ll find within his formula a common theme. The great conflict in his stories is of man against nature which includes cattle grazing the land, the weather and water. In fact, water rights always seem to play a big role in L’Amour’s short stories.

I guess that the western genre has declined so much because these concepts seem hopelessly old fashioned.

But are they?

Until his untimely death last year, my dear friend who farmed cotton and chile on his family’s farm in La Mesa was fighting with the state of New Mexico over water rights. This problem was such a vital aspect of his life that it was mentioned in his eulogy.

Yesterday I watched a televised show where renowned French chef Eric Ripert spoke passionately about the “farm to table” movement, and visited a Virginia farm where the owner was doing something revolutionary.

He was not overgrazing his land.

He spends time calculating how many head of cattle his land can bear and then actively rotates pastures to be sure that his cattle never overgraze. His land flourishes, his cattle are healthy and he’s seen as an innovator.

This is not innovation. Louis L’Amour wrote stories about this very idea over 70 years ago. This concept is also something they taught me in my collegiate FFA organization**. It’s called “being a good steward of the land.”

And so, to bring this back to my point…

I wanted to write a western story because although I keep hearing that the western fiction genre is dying, I’m seeing that the topics driving most true western stories are still essential and vital to today’s world.

And so maybe Westerns aren’t dying. Maybe, much like the land, if tended to and nourished, the genre can continue to flourish with a modern sensibility.

Writing a western story set in modern times that won an award at my local county fair is so deeply satisfying to me. It’s my affirmation that the Western genre is alive and well inside at least one little girl who was born and raised in the west.

The illustration is from the cover of an old paperback by Zane Grey.

* “I believe in the future of farming.”

GHOST RIDERS

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Video posted to YouTube by . 

An old cowboy went a riding on one dark and windy day … Riders in the Sky: a Cowboy Legend (1948), Stan Jones (1914-1963), American actor and songwriter

HAPPY MUSICAL MONDAY!

Many singers have performed this song since it was written by Stan Jones is 1948.  (When he was twelve, Jones heard the story from an old cowboy.) I think the song is in the Blues Brothers. Don’t hold me to that. Debra Harry did a version for a movie. Other performers include: Johnny Cash, Peggy Lee, and Engelbert Humperdinck. This version by Diesal Bodin sounds to me most like it might have sounded in the old West around a campfire. Not that I would know, of course. Just guessing. Enjoy!

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Two things came together today: Blaga Todorova’s recent ghostly short-story  and my reading of a book on American cowboy poetry. Together they put me right in the mood for ghost stories and cowboy stories: Ghost Riders in the Sky: A Cowboy Legend is both …

I was born and educated in the Eastern U.S., but here I am living in the Western U.S., California. After having grown-up on accounts (fiction and nonfiction) of the iconic wild wild West with anything from Bret Harte’s short stories (especially The Outcasts of Poker Flats) to television shows and movies. I was anxious upon arrival here to explore the places that were legendary like San Francisco and Stockton. Oh, yeah! I spent a week in Stockton one Saturday morning. No offense to the good folks there, but a bit slow for someone from Brooklyn who talks like a chipmunk on benzedrine.

And heck, part of the allure of the Old American West was that so many of the in/famous characters were not long dead when I was born. Bat Masterson (lawman, marshal, buffalo hunter, gambler, and army scout) had retired from one of the most violent and lawless eras out West to work as a sports editor and writer for my hometown paper, The New York Times. He held that job when my family emigrated here in 1914 – also the year my mom was born – and he died in 1921, after several more of her siblings came into this world.

The legend itself has tantalizing roots. Those readers from Europe will recognize Ghost Riders as a version of the folk story of the wild hunt: a lost soul is caught in a never-ending hunt lead by a devil, shape shifter, or psychopomp. It’s likely that our American version is derived from those. It’s the legend of the  Gabriel Hounds or Woden’s Hunt by another name set on another continent.

Link HERE if you’d like to read the lyrics.

You can read Bret Harte’s short story, The Outcasts Of Poker Flat HERE. It’s posted in its entirety.