Blog Archives
PCFG Gives Four Practical, Cheap, Easy Tips For Losing Weight!
So it’s no secret that America is really really fat. I know it, you know it, we’re all aware of it and yet the problem gets worse and worse every year. Obviously, there’s nothing wrong with being a tiny bit overweight, and fat-shaming is bad. That said, trying to lose weight when you’re heavy, is a good thing, and millions of people struggle to try and lose weight every single day, to no avail. There’s eight billion different diets and weight loss programs out there, but personally, we here at PCFG are not fans of wonky regimens and huge, sweeping changes to diet. Both Meg and I have had to worked on losing weight at one point or another in our lives, so we’ve been there before. At the same time, we’re absolutely not dieticians or doctors, so any advice we offer is merely simple, practical advice for any of our readers. Food is slammin’! But so is self control! And obviously balance is the key.
Still though, food is pretty damn important.
Test the Recipe: Grandma Lil’s Peanut Butter Cookies
“Test the Recipe” is a recurring column on PCFG where we test vintage (anything published before 1990) recipes and see if they stand the test of time or need updating. In this post we test the recipe as exactly as possible for the most accurate outcomes. Those recipes that need updating will be featured later in a “We Can Do It Better” post.
I’m mixing things up a little bit with this Test the Recipe post because I didn’t find it in a book; I found it in my grandma’s recipe box. As such, I don’t know the actual date on it, but considering the recipe is my great-grandmother’s I think it’s fairly safe to assume that the recipe falls within the time frame I established. I think a lot of the Christmas cookies my mom makes use my great-grandma’s recipes, but she doesn’t usually make peanut butter cookies, so I wanted to give these a try. I really enjoy peanut butter, and cookies are great, so I was excited to have some peanut butter cookies to eat. I’m sure my great-grandma didn’t come up with the recipe totally from scratch, but I don’t know where she may have gotten the original recipe from either.
Great-grandma Lillian
Test the Recipe: Glazed Pineapple Cookies
“Test the Recipe” is a recurring column on PCFG where we test vintage (anything published before 1990) recipes and see if they stand the test of time or need updating. In this post we test the recipe as exactly as possible for the most accurate outcomes. Those recipes that need updating will be featured later in a “We Can Do It Better” post.
I knew when I started the “Test the Recipe” column that I had to do at least one cookie recipe around Christmas-time. I didn’t want to take on any family favorite Christmas cookie recipes though, mainly because I already know that they’re good. To find a new old cookie recipe I turned to a book from Erik’s mom, McCall’s Cookie Collection from 1974.
There are a lot of interesting cookie recipes in here, but I wanted one that was definitely different from the cookies I knew me, Erik, and our moms would be making. I ultimately decided on this one because it was different from the usual Christmas cookies but also still had a bit of a Christmas call-back since it sounded like it could be a bit fruitcake-esque (without being a food no one wants to eat). So I set to work testing this glazed pineapple cookie recipe.
Thanksgiving Quick Recipe: Fried Cauliflower
One recipe my family has passed around for longer than I’ve been born is for breaded, fried cauliflower. I don’t know why. From what I’ve read, it seems to be more of a common thing in Middle Eastern cuisine. My family is mostly Italian, so I’m not quite sure where the crossover came from. Perhaps because cauliflower itself is a Mediterranean vegetable, and Italians really enjoy breading stuff then frying them. Who knows. Oh well, it’s a really delicious and simple way to prepare one of the more “out-there” veggies.
Test the Recipe: Hearty Whole Grain Coffee Cake
It can be a lot of fun looking through old cook books. Some recipes you look at wondering what people were thinking back then while others still sound really yummy. Though it’s usually pretty easy to tell the horrific vintage recipes at first glance, sometimes it can be harder to tell for sure which recipes have actually stood up to the test of time. That’s where our new recurring “Test the Recipe” posts will hopefully come to help. We plan to find recipes from vintage cookbooks/recipe cards/magazine cutouts, etc. and test them out. For the first run through we will follow the recipe exactly (barring any possible ingredients that are very hard to find/might not exist anymore in which case we will make the closest possible substitution) and see how it turns out. If it turns out good, then that’s it! Recipe is good to go and you can rest assured that you will end up with something yummy if you make it. If it doesn’t turn out good? Well then we’ll be revisiting the recipe and tweaking it and then posting our version of it as a “We Can Do It Better” post at a later date.
Our first recipe up for trial is from the Quaker Oats Wholegrain Cookbook from 1979.
There’s a bunch of interesting sounding recipes in there, so we’ll probably test some more from there, but first up is the “Hearty Whole Grain Coffee Cake.” I enjoy coffee cake but hadn’t had any for awhile, so it seemed like a good place to start.
The Poor Couple's Food Guide 
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