BH&G So-Good Meals: “It’s Lamb Night!”

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by yinzerella

For this year’s Easter Sunday dinner I decided to go with another selection from the Better Homes & Gardens Creative Cooking Library. I did so for a number of reasons:

  1. Because I just adore these new cookbooks and want to COOK IT ALL.
  2. I’ve prepared all of the really Easter-appropriate dinners from DiS!
  3. This particular dinner is from the first chapter of So-Good Meals titled Meals Men Like. The preface to the chapter reads as such:

Fix any of these delicious meals for your man and you’ll be the “Best Cook” he knows. Here are old-time favorites that offer mighty good eating–from thick broiled burgers to standing rib roast and savory brown stew! 

Well I do firmly believe that one should be the “Best Cook” one’s man knows. I’m sold.

4. Lastly, this was another all-in-one broiler dinner, like the surprisingly successful and tasty “Family Favorite” starring Circle Pups. I still love saying “circle pups.”

So I give you, “It’s Lamb Night!”

Meals Men Like. As opposed to Meals Men Hate and Therefore Will Never Sleep With You Again.

Well, what’s not to like there? Not a damn thing. Well, unless you’re one of those mushroom-haters. You know who you are.

Anyway, look at how delectable this dinner looks!

Or garish. God, I love 1960s food photography. Everything is so BRIGHT and FAKE. I wonder what those pears are actually made of. Probably some newfangled nuclear-age plastic with the name Polyfabutine or Shellatuff.

Here’s the rundown:

So how easy is that? Broil meat for 8 minutes, turn, throw on other parts of the meal, broil for 5 minutes more and done. This should be a breeze…

I had to fudge the tomatoes because I didn’t have any shredded cheese so I just sliced up some Kraft singles and mashed it in with the bread crumbs. It’s processed American cheese, just in slicey chunks.

So after the chops cooked for a bit, the tomatoes and pears (brushed with mint jelly) went onto the pan alongside the meat.

I was excited and hopeful that Lamb Night would be a good one.

Sadly, unlike the last broiler meal, this one just didn’t come together. The cheese on the tomatoes didn’t want to melt, yet the bread crumbs nearly caught on fire. The pears and jelly never caramelized, and the lamb was overcooked. It was a tragedy. I hate overcooked lamb.

Oh, and the peas took a lot longer to cook than I had imagined. That didn’t help any. Every tenth pea was still a bit frozen. Argh.

FAIL. Easter fail. Look at this sad, sorry dinner:

Sweet Christ on a cracker. That is a depressing plate–a half under-cooked/half-burnt tomato, a sad little lamb shoulder chop, and canned pears that look moldy. That mint jelly glaze gives the meal the touch of disease that it was desperately lacking.

I was despondent as I put the plates on the TV trays (dinette coming soon!). This looked sucky. But oddly enough, though all the separate elements were not-so-good, when it was all put together it didn’t taste half-bad.

Or maybe I was just that hungry.

Or maybe it was a little column A and a little column B.

Anyway, there was one triumph to this dinner, and that was the Ice Cream-Cake Roll. But I am going to save that for next time.

It is worth waiting for.

Until then, I want to share with you my Easter outfit. I went to church in a non-wedding or funeral fashion for the first time since, oh I don’t know–high school? So I wanted to be dressed appropriately. Necessity is the mother of invention. So meet my Easter bonnet:

Yes, that is just a giant bow. Hey, it was festive. The priest gave me props.

And speaking of Easter bonnets, here is the trailer from one of my favorite movies. Thank you, Robert Osborne for playing it every single year on TCM.

OK, darlings–next time, Ice Cream-Cake Roll!

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yinzerella

23 thoughts on “BH&G So-Good Meals: “It’s Lamb Night!””

  3. If there’s a chapter for Meals Men Like, I assume there’s also a Luncheon For the Girls chapter? Recipes featuring a lot of fruit and pastel cream cheese?

  7. You had me rolling on the floor laughing with your description of your ‘diseased’ dinner!! One of your best posts ever, Emily. (And yes, it did look sad. I could almost hear funerial music looking at it. Bring on the Ice Cream Cake Roll!)

    1. Yes, those are framed 1972 Weight Watchers cards. I have over 200 of them and Lord knows I’ll never make them so I decided to frame some of them. I am going to do another one once I get my dinette set in the kitchen. I’m also going to make one of those bulletin boards out of wine corks.

      1. I have four of the creating cooking library books and I also came across some other BH&G books from the late ’60s early 70’s (Good Food on a Budget, Meat Stretcher Cookbook, Make-Ahead Cookbook) – I think I have maybe 10 or 12 of these. I am crazy about these older books!

          1. I have books all over the house – and there is an awesome consignment store in my town that has the best vintage cookbooks for $1.00 each! How crazy is that!

  10. 1960s food photography definitely looks radioactive. I have never seen a pear quite so yellow!
    Looking forward to the Ice Cream Cake Roll! It sounds like it will certainly not disappoint at all.

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