Vintage 1950s Parties

Picnics

          Picnics were a simple box lunch of sandwiches, a refreshing salad in covered watertight cartons, plenty of fruit, cookies or cake, and coffee and milk in vacuum bottles of your choice. Or you could carry along several sandwich spreads, plenty of bread, crackers, sliced tomatoes, lettuce, cucumbers, a pickle relish, etc., and let each person make his or her own sandwiches.

          However, if men were given a choice, most of them would probably vote for the picnic where they can cook at least one dish over the open fire. Folding portable grills which burned charcoal briquettes could be purchased for a reasonable sum. Those worked easily and efficiently on picnics and motor trips where you camped out.  The completed meal was served either buffet or sit-down style from a table set up on the lawn, or if you were on a blanket cuddled up on the beach, in a park or forest.

          Some were small family outings, but the memorable ones were the groups for 20 or more.
          The most common simple picnic consisted of a cold roast beef sandwiches, sliced Swiss cheese on rye bread, celery, olives, cut-up fruit (watermelon), cake, and coffee in a vacuum bottle. For large group,  ladies brought salads or desserts or cuts of meat to be cooked. Men toted the grills, baskets, buckets, and chairs, then took over cooking over an open fire.

vintage 1950s Food Calico Slaw

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I remember this being served at buffet dinners at neighbor's homes, but my mother never made it. It was delicious!

Calico Slaw

2 pkg. lemon Jello                                    1/4 cup diced pimentos

2 cup tomato juice (hot)                           1/4 cup diced green peppers

1/4 cup tomato juice (cold)                      1/4 cup diced celery

1 lemon juice and the zest                      3 cup shredded cabbage

1tsp onion salt                                          1 cup mayonnaise

1 cup mayonnaise

Dissolve Jello into hot tomato juice, blend cold tomato juice, water and onion salt, lemon rind, and juice with mayonnaise. Add to Jello mixture, beat until smooth.

Pour into ice cubes tray, chill until firm around the edges and still soft in center. Turn into a bowl and beat with mixer until fluffy and smooth. Fold in vegetables. Turn into 2 qt. mold, chill until set.

Serves 10-12

Vintage 1950s Mysteries

Beverly Hills Bermuda Triangle

N. Linden Drive and N. Whittier Drive, Beverly Hills 90210

The properties around this triangle of land in Beverly Hills has taken on a mysterious aura.

 On July 7, 1946, Howard Hughes  took a prototype XF-11 reconnaissance aircraft on its maiden flight and crashed into a row of houses. He landed at 808 N. Whittier. 

On June 20, 1947, as Bugsy Siegel sat with his associate Allen Smiley at 801 N. Linden, reading the L. A. Times when an assailant fired at him through the window, hitting him many times, including twice in the head.

Jan Berry of Jan & Dean was in a near-fatal accident in a real-life Dead Man’s Curve on April 1, 1966. His Sting Ray car going 90 MPH crashed into an unexpected parked truck. The accident occurred just a short distance from the fictional site mentioned in the 1964 hit single “Dead Man’s Curve” released two years earlier. Was the song a foreshadow of what was to come?

On November 16, 2010, Hollywood publicist Ronni Chasen was shot, multiple times, in her car at the corner of Sunset and Whittier. She careened into a street light at 815 N. Whittier. She died from 

Vintage 1950s Food

Such an easy buffet  "show stopper".   Simple to make!

Salad Loaf

Assembly

The bottom layer is raspberry gelatin filled with sliced RIPE bananas

The middle layer is lemon gelatin smoothed with cream cheese.

The top layer is lime-flavored gelatin with pineapple rounds cut in half and placed in the design.