Recipe for Success

I recently got a baggie of old recipe booklets and clippings at a flea market that had a few great food with eyes finds inside:

This little pamphlet, "How to put Variety in your Milk Beverages" was produced by Carnation Evaporated Milk. Variety would be a sun bathing orange and an Eskimo pineapple complete with snowshoes and igloo. Kind of a Heat Miser and Snow Miser in fruit form.



This low-budget cook booklet was produced by the New York State Department of Agriculture to extol the many virtues of eggs. Not only are they incredible and edible, but they are also economical, plentiful, rich in Vitamin D, combine well with other foods, etc., etc.


A close-up of the top illustration:

And the bottom:

The rich egg doesn't look very happy about it.


This newspaper clipping recipe for creamed vegetable soup must be from the World War II years as it mentions using veggies from your Victory Garden (and provides a bit of trivia about tongue).

The veggies and milk bottle all look so friendly, but that cauldron is really terrifying!

The Snack Jar Plan

Mr. Peanut was not the first anthropomorphic legume to extol the virtues of peanuts as the perfect food. In 1946 the National Peanut Council produced The Snack Jar Plan in which a band of Snow-White-and-the-Seven-Dwarfs-like peanuts show us the merits of eating peanuts.

The cover:

Four peanut dwarfs (or are they elves?) pull Junior and his snack jar along while a chipmunk looks on with great interest.

Two peanut elves ride on the cuckoo clock as snack time is announced. They have apparently shed their pants for this activity.

How to decorate your snack jar:

The Jack and Jill one is rather disturbing. Peanut elf with pants turns the page.

Professor Peanut urges children to eat more:

A wise peanut owl:


Farmer peanut and his hoe:

Mr. Universe Peanut, 1946:

At the Movies with Roger Peanut:

Peanuts are an amazing food:

Especially when they have faces, talk, and ride on cuckoo clocks.

Mr. Peanut's Guide to Nutrition

Happy 2008 and welcome to the second year of Food With Eyes!

If you're like most people, you've probably made some New Year's Resolutions, and one might be to eat right and exercise more. But how can you accomplish this? With Mr. Peanut's Guide to Nutrition, of course. This 1970 booklet was endorsed by Dr. Evelyn B. Spindler of the USDA who urges young readers to "give nutrition a chance."

The cover of the booklet features Mr. Peanut balancing trays of balanced meals. Look closely and you will see Planters Creamy Peanut Butter and Planters Cocktail Peanuts among the offerings. Are the two young diners looking eagerly at his trays of food or the six-foot-tall peanut between them?


Mr. Peanut - Nutritionist. Wouldn't he be Dr. Peanut, then? This page postulates that since Mr. Peanut is a nut and the first letters of nutrition are N-U-T, then clearly he is an expert on nutrition. I hate to point out the flaw in that argument, but maybe I could believe he is an expert in legumetrician.


Mr. Peanut educates us about fats and vitamins. Here he is synthesizing some Vitamin D - or dry roasting himself?

More on vitamins and minerals, including vitamin letters with eyes. Except for poor Niacin who is a 9-legged freak. That Vitamin N just never caught on.

Mr. Peanut fishing and serving as host of The Biggest Loser:

My favorite image from the whole book: Mr. Peanut as a gondolier punting along on a hot dog through the intestinal canal.

Mr. Peanut gives an anatmony lesson. Let's be happy he stopped at the large intestine.

Mr. Universe Peanut shows off:

By now you must be asking, "But Mr. Peanut, what foods should I eat for good nutrition?" And the answer? P-Nutty Cocoa and Mr. Peanut's Sloppy Joes.

An array of nutritious Planters products and Happy Birthday Mr. Peanut (best imagined as Marilyn Monroe singing). He looked good then and is still going strong at over 100 years old.

All illustrations in Mr. Peanut's Guide to Nutrition were by Leonard Kessler.

Mushrooms in your Menu

This 1956 cookbooklet from BinB Mushrooms suggests dozens of ways to incorporate more mushrooms in your diet with the help of their special butter-broiled spokesmushroom.

The front of the pamphlet shows their mushroom chef following a recipe in this very cookbook, no doubt utilizing his own savory juices (I have always admired this artistic device since first seeing a Superman's Pal, Jimmy Olsen comic book with a cover featuring Superman -or was it Jimmy?-sitting in a barber chair reading the same comic book ad infinitum).


The first page shows Mr. Mushroom attending a costume party dressed as Mr. Peanut, arm-in-arm with Miss Gourmet Magazine (I believe this is Miss Fluffy Rice underneath the costume).


Only one of the 24 pages of recipes shows our mushroom character. Here he is in stylized form lifting two shrimp barbells. Note the recipe on the left for Sweetbreads and Ham. That's what I typically serve my guests for luncheon.

And one last look at our BinB Mushroom friend.

This last picture is a bit disconcerting as we have a clear view of his stem hole. Shocking.