safe and unsafe things to do in your home

I was strolling through the Gallery of Regrettable Food and found a gem: a 1959 recipe booklet from Knudsen Dairy Products.

Yummy! How fun to see what they were eating as I was experiencing my first months post-partum. Let’s turn the pages (I’ll put the pics here – but you can read the source’s commentary, too. He’s pretty funny).

The first item is, um, green, like a stagnant-pond green but without the promise of teeming life beneath. Oh my. It’s called, “Fruit Ring Mold with Dressing.” “Dressing”? Looks like ranch salad dressing. You put dressing on jell-o? OK, so the first one isn’t too appetiz---. Wait! What’s that underneath? Tell me isn’t a … oh, barf, it is! A Cottage Cheese Log. Gag reflex! I need some Tums to settle my stomach. brb.

Alright, look. One page. No problem. Can only go up from here.

AH, what do we have here! Looks like a salad. Um, “Chicken Curry Salad”! OK. I don’t eat meat, but that’s remotely digestible if you like dead farm animals. What’s that on the bottom? The orangy square thing .. well, jell-o mold, yes. Sign of the times. Let’s just accept that. What’s in it? Oh no. You must be kidding! Please, no. Please. “Corned Beef Salad Loaf.”


Production Step One: Take a cut of beef (usually brisket, but sometimes round or silverside) and cure or pickle it in a seasoned brine. The "corn" in "corned beef" refers to the "corn" or grains of coarse salts used to cure it.

Production Step Two: Make gelatin. The production of gelatin starts with the boiling of cattle bones or pig skins; contrary to popular perception, horns and hooves are not used. This material is then soaked with acid or alkali in large vats to extract and hydrolyse the protein collagen. The extract is then dried and ground to form a powder.

Cut the corned beef in tiny pieces, then suspend in a water, sugar, and gelatin mixture.

Garnish. Serve cold..

Bowels loosening. Need Kaopectate. brb. Let’s see … dosing, dosing, dosing. Ah, there it is! “Adults and children 12 years of age and older—The usual dose is 1200 to 1500 milligrams (mg) taken after each loose bowel movement. No more than 9000 mg should be taken in twenty-four hours.” What the hell is 1200 milligrams? Here. Two swigs.

Turn page.

“Creamed lobster.” Remove lobster from shell, diced, mix with cream cheese, return to shell, and broil. That’s a stretch. No intestinal reaction, so let’s move on before something kicks in. Page!

What the hell is that thing with the green olives? Chicken and sour cream. Oh, that explains it. But wait. It seems the way this book is unfolding, that they expected the recipes here to mix with and sit on top of … the … cor-- … gurgle … the corned be-- … gloop! … that mold thing! {unmentionable}.

Excuse me. I need to go wipe myself. Where’s the Kao? Two more --- fuck it --- half a bottle! brb.

Lookey what’s on top! Why, it “Tomato Steaks in Sour Cream”! How about – “Lycopene Suspended in Heart Failure”? My word! Did you know that life expectancy for a white male born in 1930 (my dad) – the target audience for booklets like this – was almost 63 years, and that a white male born now is over 80 years? Don’t let them kid you – it has nothing to do with advances in medical diagnosis and treatment. It is 100% due to recipes like this one going the route of the USSR. In fact, this whole booklet feels like a communist plot. “Ve hav vays uf dealink vef ze Amerikans. Zay shal die by zer uwn hahns. Glutinouz fuls! Zest hav patienz, Comrade. Ze Knudsen Prozet zall suczede!”

Well, the good news is my anger at our Cold War foes has seemed to firm up my stool. That’s a good thing!

OK, I can’t risk anymore “recipes” (boy, is that term used loosely … ut oh! Bad word … brb. Kao! gulp, gulp, gulp!). I need something, um, firming, if you know what I mean.

Let’s see, hey! Here we go! It seems that adding Viagra to cut flowers makes them last twice as long!.


Each pill is 50 mg; all the flowers need is 1 mg. So very cool. There’s a real economic benefit here. Lots of places, like B&Bs, constantly replenish their cut flowers. New ones needed each week. The researchers found that flowers last two weeks instead of one. At $3.00 a pill – and 1/50th of that – that’s 6 cents to double the life of your cut flowers. Money in the bank.

It reminds me, I had a guy google ”what is safe household product to masturbate with”. I came in 20th. The guy was focused enough to go to the 2d page. Man. Here you go, you sick prick! Shave a corner off that little blue pill, mix in water, feed it to your cut flowers, take the rest yourself – and you have yourself a masturbation party! Get up close and rub some pollen on your face, you societal reject.

So, like, if you put all male flowers in the vase, do they become gay? If you have mixed gender, do they keep your guests awake and propagate overnight? If you get a closed bud and jerk it off, does the pollen shoot onto the wall? Ah, the telltale yellow stains on the B&B breakfast room wall. Be warned! If you see them, don’t ask – just check out. Worse yet, if you walk in and the proprietor has a jaundiced look, don’t even check in!

If we take it, and the Spanker doesn’t go half-mast within four hours, we’re supposed to seek medical attention. Do the male flowers, as they crank into their 2d week, get all, “hey WTF?!? We need a doctor here!” The little signs they made up so jovially and placed in front of the gay vase during the first few days that read, “Parking in Rear,” are now a mess of pollen that seems to read, “Help!”

Alright, colon stabilized. Quit while I am ahead.