Welcome to this week’s Mid-Century Menu!  I hope everyone is getting excited about the upcoming Thanksgiving holiday.  I know I am.  My parents are coming up to spend Thanksgiving with us and then spend a few days hanging out with us and watching movies and stuff.  It is going to be really fun.  But one of the highlights is that they are going to be eating the Mid-Century Menu next Wednesday, so we can all look forward to special guests at the menu next week .  Hooray!

This week, however, we have a fun cookbook that Tom and I found at the local Salvation Army.  The Tailgate Cookbook by April Herbert was publish in 1970 and it deals with recipes for camping, grilling out, tailgating and even meals to eat in the car.  Some of the menus included with the book looked really good, and some of them looked a little questionable.  Of course, Tom and I got really excited about a questionable menu, and immediately decided to make that one. 

I was pretty excited about the Butterscotch Squares, and I figured I could make it through whatever horrors this menu had to offer before that.

I decided on the Pirozhki, and the Chicken Liver Pirozhki because it would be the cheapest to make in case it tasted terrible. I figured it couldn’t be that bad because I like pate, right?  Well, anyway…

I threw the ingredients for the cold cut roll-ups in here to flesh out the picture, and because I couldn’t resist showing everyone all of the saturated fats we were about to consume.  Yum.

Mmm…liver frying in butter.

Wow.  This just keeps getting better, doesn’t it?  Looks like a chipmunk exploded.

Liver mixed with cream cheese.

Adding the nutmeg and brandy. Still looks pretty scary.

Finally, I couldn’t take it any more and I took the stick blender to it.  It was just too lumpy and disgusting.

There, that’s better.  I think.

Ugh.  Now it looks like cat food.

Filling the crescent rolls was a pain the butt because a bunch of the dough got stretched out, but I poked and prodded it until I got 8 filled.

Here they are, all filled and ready for the oven.  Aww…they are finally cute.

As a side note, I tried some of the filling on a cracker after I put the pirozhki and it was pretty good. 

Here they are, all finished from the oven.  They actually baked up really well, except in far less time than the recipe called for.

The whole table, set and ready to go.  Even Butterscotch Squares in the background!

The first bite…and…

“So, what do you think?”

“Uh.  Tastes like liver.  Overcooked liver.”

I took a bite, and they did taste overcooked.  The filling was good before it went into the oven, but the trip to the oven definitely cooked them too much. All they tasted like was liver.

The Verdict:  Okay overall, but not great.

Pirozhki – The filling was cooked for too long and didn’t taste good afterwards.

Cold-Cut Roll-ups – Bologna and Blue Cheese DOES NOT taste good together.  Not at all.  And I couldn’t slice them because they kept unrolling without the toothpicks.  We ended up just eating them on bread like a sandwich.

Butterscotch Squares – Ok, but very, very sugary.  They turned out almost like candy rather than a cookie.