Arranging the Buffet Supper

Today’s Saturday Short is “Arranging the Buffet Supper” from the Keeping Up Appearances collection. It’s about the buffet supper and how to arrange it.

It begins with June calling her grandma. She wants to know what the correct etiquette is for a buffet supper. What foods should she serve and what arrangements should she make…oh wait, this isn’t a buffet supper. It’s a boofay supper. I guess she’s also called the Bucket residence and invited the lady of the house. Better get out the Royal Doulton china with the hand-painted periwinkles.

Now it’s the afternoon of the party. Grandma comes over to help June properly arrange her boofay supper. It’s different from a buffet supper because it’s served later in the evening when people only want a late meal, a pre-Taco Bell fourth meal if you will. Chairs will not be needed since no one will be crass enough to sit down at a boofay table. Just to make sure none of the socially less fortunate make such a faux pas, Grandma and June put the chairs along the walls.

Now for the tablecloth. A plain linen tablecloth is appropriate for a boofay. However, it must be laid smoothly with the edges hanging evenly. Even the least hint of asymmetry will ruin the entire party, so get your yardstick out and make sure those edges are perfect!

Next up are the proper decoration. June wants candles, but since this isn’t a candlelight supper she can’t use the good candlesticks. In fact, it’s best not to have candles on the table at all. How about a centerpiece of fruit piled on a plate? That’s fine, but make sure it’s in the exact center of the table. Use surveying equipment to make sure it’s not even a smidge off center. And for the love of all that is holy, do NOT shift the tablecloth when you’re placing the centerpiece! Are those edges still even?

Now the dinnerware. It needs to be placed so that guests can serve themselves easily, so put everything in the order in which it will be used. Lay out the forks stagger fashion for easy pickup. A boofay is a simple meal to be served simply, but the layout of the plates and utensils is anything but simple. Put the dinner plates next to the forks since they will be picked up next. Is the centerpiece still in the exact center of the table?

The main dish is a Mystery in a Casserole Dish. All we know is that it’s hot. It could be a meat pie, mac and cheese, Schrödinger’s cat, whatever you want it to be. There is also a cold dish to balance the hot dish. Unlike the hot dish, it is not a mystery but tomatoes stuffed with cottage cheese. (Ew.) June calls this a salad.

They really stretched the definition of “salad” to its ultimate limits in the postwar years, didn’t they?

The sides can be placed between the hot and cold dishes. One side is a silver basket of pre-buttered rolls in a napkin. The napkin is cloth which is both classy and difficult to remove grease stains from. The other side is the “relish” or hors d’oeuvres or crudites or, if you’re truly socially inept, a veggie tray. Those calling it a veggie tray will be sent out of the boofay in utter disgrace. You didn’t shift the tablecloth putting those dishes down, did you? Check them with the laser level just to be absolutely sure.

Dessert is a cake which requires new forks, plates, and a cake knife. Once the dessert forks have been properly staggered, the boofay table is complete. Just one more check to make sure the centerpiece is still in the mathematical center of the table and the edges are perfectly even all around. Done!

Not done! What about the drinks? Milk and punch are ready on the buffet next to the boofay table. If this were an adult party, there would be coffee or tea instead. (The liquor is in the bathtub.)

Now they’re done! June and Grandma admire their work. The exact obsessive positioning of every object on the table reflects the soul of etiquette. If the tablecloth is even one millimeter longer on one side than the other, if the centerpiece is only a fraction of a slice of a measurement off true center, you will be rightly shunned by all and your family will be cast out of town, never to be spoken of again.

Enjoy the meal, everyone!

Let’s Talk Turkey

Today’s Saturday Short is “Let’s Talk Turkey,” part of the Seasonally Appropriate Series. It’s about how to communicate with these majestic…wait, I’m getting a note from my producer that this is actually about how to cook turkeys. Well, then, why didn’t they call it that?

Did you know that turkeys exist every day of the year, not just at Thanksgiving and Christmas? They are! Now turkeys can be “table dressed” so they won’t embarrass you in front of your guests! They’re also quick frozen so you can break your toe when you drop it on your foot. Spend hours every day cooking a full-size turkey in your oven 365 days of the year!

Also, did you know that there are different sizes of turkeys? There are big ones for big families, medium-sized ones for medium sized families, and a wee little Cornish game hen for Baby Bear.

In the Marie Gifford Kitchen, women in blue dresses carefully study this mysterious creatures. They condense their findings in a special service bulletin on how to buy and serve these misunderstood birds in their new forms. See, when you bought a turkey in Ye Olden Days, you had to buy the whole bird with its feet and head attached. Wearing a kicky paper hat, I notice. Now you can buy a plastic-wrapped turkey that’s not only been decapitated, but also lacks that pesky neck and feet. And it’s frozen!

At the USDA Experiment Station at Beltsville, Maryland, science has taken place. They’ve developed a new breed of turkey called “young” because it’s killed before it’s fully grown. These “young” turkeys are 5-10 pounds, having been fed on grain and buttermilk. Um, do turkeys drink milk? I thought they got their protein from bugs. What kind of mad science are they doing up there in Maryland?

Compare the cost between the behatted bird and the pre-prepared one. The whole bird wears 15.75 pounds before the various non-standard bits are chopped off. Now the carcass is 13 lbs, which means we have 2.75 pounds of cat food. Kitties love necks!
The wrapped turkey is 13 lbs as soon as you buy it because it only has meat for humans. Kitty will have to make do with dry kibble, I guess.

The Special Service Bulletin gives instructions on how to defrost the turkey. The best way is to stick it in the fridge three days ahead of time. They say it only takes 24 hours, but we all know they’re being optimistic. Or, if you forgot to take the bird out until Thursday morning, you can stick it in the sink and run cool water over it for 3-4 hours. This method is not recommended because it wastes way too much water. We need to conserve this vital resource here in The Future.

Once the turkey is defrosted, reach inside and take out the packets of internal organs. Put them in a bowl and give them to the cat. Kitties love hearts!

Or, if you’ve decided to be evil, you can make giblet dressing. Put the cat food in a pot of boiling salty water and simmer. Then chop the giblets fine and save the broth. Add the giblets to a mixture of bread cubes, butter, celery, onion, and various herbs and spices before drenching it in broth and mixing thoroughly with two spoons.

Now it’s time to stuff-n-truss, which sounds like a kinky nightclub. Salt up the inside of the bird, insert stuffing, skewer the skin together, and tie it up. Remember, this is something you can do EVERY DAY OF THE YEAR!

Once you’ve indulged your bondage tendencies on poultry, put the bird in the roaster and brush it (the bird) with melted fat. Now is the time to employ algebra to figure out how long to cook it. Add the weight of the stuffing to the weight of the bird, look at the chart on the Special Service Bulletin, and select the correct time and temperature. Put the turkey in the oven for the recommended time at the proper temperature and wait. Now you have a cooked turkey! Give it to Dad to carve while your 2.5 children bounce in their seats.

Now it’s time for the big reveal: Can this dad carve the turkey better than the one in “Dining Together“? Yes he can! See what using a properly sharpened knife can do?

In spring you can make Picnic Turkey. Cube the cooked turkey as awkwardly as possible. Boil the broth with rice, celery and onions. Remember, all vegetables are Satanic so you have to boil the Hell out of them. Once the rice is halfway cooked, add peppers, pimientos, salt, Worcestershire sauce, and the turkey cubes. Put the mixture in a casserole dish and edge with buttered breadcrumbs. Bake for an hour at 350. You’ll know it’s done when your square glass casserole dish turns into a round pottery one.

Wedding Turkey is perfect for June. It comes in the form of a Turkey Almond Salad. Cube a cold turkey, add red grapes, celery, toasted almond slivers, and dressing. On closer inspection the “dressing” appears to be plain mayonnaise. Mix, place on fresh lettuce leaves, and sprinkle with more slivered almonds. Actually, that looks pretty good. I bet if you replaced the nuts with chopped, fresh celery it would be just as good and safe for those with nut allergies. [scribbles furiously]

In July and August…think carefully. Do you really want to heat up the house cooking a whole turkey for several hours? Sure, Marie Gifford claims that you can do it in “the cool of the day” but that would mean you have to start cooking at 2 in the morning and no reasonable human should be up at that hour for anything less than a life or death emergency. But if you choose to do so you could serve the turkey on the lanai with corncobs. Then put the remains of the turkey in the fridge so your husband can sneak downstairs for a midnight snack while wearing his loudest bathrobe.

October Turkey comes in the form of Turkey Pinwheels with Mushroom Sauce. Begin by rolling out biscuit dough. Mix the chopped turkey with onions, green peppers, salt, pepper, and cream. Spread the mixture over the dough. Roll it up like a jelly roll, pondering the whole time whether or not you need a favor. Slice and bake. Serve with mushroom sauce, which appears to be nothing more than Campbell’s Cream of Mushroom Soup.

See how turkey can be a year-round bird? Let’s all eat turkey all the time. There’s no need for any other form of protein in our diets! And remember to order your turkey several weeks before Thanksgiving or all you’ll get is the scrawny bird from “Dining Together.” This will disgrace you in the eyes of your friends and family. Now let’s all bow our heads and offer up prayers to the Great Lord Turkey! Gooble gobble, gooble gobble, one of us! One of us!

Let’s Visit a Poultry Farm

Today’s Saturday Short is “Let’s Visit a Poultry Farm,” part of the “Let’s not and say we did” series. It’s about dinosaurs and how far they’ve fallen since the Chicxulub Impact.

Betty is playing with some chicks in a box outside The Store. She wants to take one home for a pet, but Father says no. They live in an apartment and chickens need lots of outside to be happy, he tells her. They’re also dirty birds, he doesn’t say. Instead, he takes her on a trip to his friend Mr. Miller’s farm to see just how what they’re like in person.

Betty, with nary a seatbelt on her, bounces with excitement when she sees the farm. She’s so excited, she teleports out of the car with Father to greet Mr. Miller and pet his cocker spaniel. Looks like there might be some puppies in the future. Maybe Betty can have one of those instead? Was Father trying a little distraction on Betty and her desire for a pet chicken?

Mr. Miller’s son Dick shows Betty around the farm. They start in the henhouse where they keep the white leghorns. Hey, these chickens aren’t outside. Father lied! Wait, leghorns? I say, I say, I say, is Betty about to meet Foghorn Leghorn, the greatest chicken of them all? No? These are all hens? Well, now I’m disappointed.

Dick shows Betty how good the chickens have it in the henhouse. They have straw to peck around in, water to drink roosts to perch on. He shows her the chicken feed because it’s just that exciting, and then lets her help him scatter grain for the chickens to eat. While the hens are distracted, Dick and Betty collect the eggs from the nesting cages.

They put the eggs in a wire basket and bring them to the egg-cleaning room. There Dick shows Betty how he scrubs the dirt (poop) off the eggs. If they’re really dirty, he scrubs them on a special rotating brush that looks like it could take your fingers right off if you’re not careful. Once the eggs are clean, he packs them in a box for the Eggman to take to the grocery stores.

And that, my dear Europeans, is why Americans refrigerate their eggs.

Just in time, the Eggman arrives. He trades Mr. Miller a sack of grain for three crates of eggs. I don’t know enough to tell you if that’s a good rate or not, but Mr. Miller seems satisfied so I guess it’s okay.

Now Dick shows Betty where they keep the pullets. Those are young hens who aren’t old enough to lay eggs yet. These chickens get to live outside where they can have all the grass and bugs they can peck. Dick tells Betty that Mr. Miller gets his pullets from a hatchery since he sells all his eggs. We get a quick glance inside a hatchery, complete with giant 1940s incubator that turns the eggs for you.

Then we’re treated to the requisite chicken short video of a chick hatching. It looks like hard work. That little chick is all wet and exhausted. Now it’s fluffy with lots of friends cheeping in the remains of their shells. Cute!

Dick has some chickens of his own that he’s raising for 4-H. These are Rhode Island Reds, which are good for laying and frying. Looks like Dick’s in charge of the Annual 4-H Fried Chicken Dinner.

Mr. Miller doesn’t just have chickens on his farm, though. He also has ducks. Or one mama duck with several fluffy baby ducks paddling around in the pond. But he has some turkeys as well! The narrator thinks that tom turkeys are called “gobblers” because he obviously comes from a place where turkeys don’t wander through your yard during mating season. I, however, have encountered turkeys in the yard so I know what they’re called.

And so Betty’s day on the farm comes to a close. She runs up to Father and spends the entire ride home telling him all about chickens and ducks and turkeys.

The next day Betty has eggs for breakfast and fried chicken for dinner. She is not horrified because she has learned that chickens are dirty birds and also good eatin’. Mmmmmm, fried dinosaur.

Good Eating Habits

Today’s Saturday Short is “Good Eating Habits” from the How to Get an Eating Disorder series. It’s about Bill and his stomachache and what happened to give him a stomachache.

We join Bill as he’s having dinner with his family. The narrator wants us to know that it’s lots and lots of FUN! to eat supper with your family. Mother, Father, and Sister are all having a blast. Bill, however, is not. Maybe it’s because there’s an amoeba climbing up the wall behind him.

It’s also FUN! to play before bed, but again Bill proves the narrator a liar. He’s not having any FUN! at all watching his model train go round and round and round and round and round and round and [falls over from dizziness] . Also, he has a stomachache. Mother comes in, notices Bill clutching his stomach like his appendix just burst, and puts him to bed. She sits on the side of the bed to tell him a story. Tonight’s tale is “Why You Got a Stomachache.”

It began this morning. Bill was late to breakfast, which annoyed Father. When he finally got to the table, he bolted his food down as the amoeba slithered around in the wallpaper. After eating half his overly elaborate weekday breakfast, he dashed out of the room.

At lunchtime, Bill, still running around like a squirrel on amphetamines, decided not to buy soup to go with his sandwich. Instead, he ate his sandwich like a typewriter and scurried out of the cafeteria so he could play ball or whatever game he was in such a hurry to get to.

After school Bill went to the corner candy shop where he used his soup money to buy soda pop and candy. He stuffed it all in his mouth like a hamster and followed it up with a cookie. This brings us back to dinnertime when Bill just poked at his plate and slumped upstairs to watch his model train go round and round and round and round and round and round and [falls over from dizziness] .

Mother tucks Bill in and leaves him to contemplate his Bad Eating Habits. He tosses and turns all night, haunted by nightmares of the food he ate and didn’t eat that day. The cookie looms over him ominously.

The next morning, Bill feels better. He gets to breakfast on time and has a wonderful time drinking his orange juice. Father gives Bill his oatmeal. Bill chews it well and drinks his milk. The he has some bacon ‘n eggs ‘n toast. He chews them for hours on end. He also cuts his bacon with a knife like some kind of weirdo. The amoeba continues to crawl.

At school, Bill is shocked to find out that there’s a clock on the wall of his classroom. How long has that been there? Never mind, it’s time for lunch. This time Bill buys a bowl of soup to go with his sandwich and what looks like a rubber ball.

After school, Bill drinks some water from the fountain before going home to a snack of graham crackers and milk. Then he’s ready for play. Hard play, like flying a kite. It’s quite difficult if you don’t know what you’re doing, which Bill doesn’t.

At suppertime Bill is hungry again so he actually eats his dinner. He shows off his plate like Oliver Twist asking for more and is rewarded with two lumps of something unidentifiable. After supper he goes back to his room to watch his model train go round and round and round and round and round and round and suddenly the world ends. I knew that amoeba was up to something.

Foundation Foods

Today’s Saturday Short is “Foundation Foods” in glorious, washed-out color. It’s narrated by a woman with a very pointy voice. I’m not kidding, her voice will hurt you if you don’t pay attention to the importance of Foundation Foods. It’s all angles and edges.

We begin with a chart of the seven (7?) food groups before switching to Sally Brown cutting out pictures of food from a sheet of paper. She’s pretending to plan dinner before she goes home to make the real dinner with her mother. Mrs. Brown already knows about Foundation Foods because her entire life is spent in the kitchen.

Sally’s father also knows about Foundation Foods because he’s an architect working out of his living room. He tells his children that bodies are like buildings: if the foundation is good the building will be complete and beautiful. We are then treated to a montage of construction workers laying the foundation for a hideous Brutalist block building. Ugly is beautiful! Black is white! Up is down! Don’t question the narrator!

In the kitchen, Mrs. Brown contemplates a head of lettuce and wonders where she went wrong. We fade to a farmer in the field contemplating another head of lettuce wondering where he went wrong. The narrator tells us all about the farmers, dairymen, poultrymen, fishermen, ranchers, truck drivers, railroad engineers, and sailors who bring food from the fields to the store.

Back at the Brown house, it’s time to gather for dinner in a room with the ugliest wallpaper in the world. I’m not sure but I think this might be the wallpaper that Oscar Wilde was in a battle to the death with. The narrator tries in vain to distract us from it’s jarring pattern by telling us to eat slowly, chew thorougly, clean your plate, and don’t drip eyeblood on the tablecloth.

Later Mrs. Brown sits in the kitchen (of course) studying recipes in a magazine before switching on the radio to learn more about cooking and Foundation Foods. Sister needs a hobby.

Finally, finally we get to the seven (7?) food groups. And they are:

1. Leafy, Green, and Yellow Vegetables
2. Citrus Fruit, Tomatoes, Raw Cabbage (Who’s eating raw cabbage?)
3. Potatoes and Other Vegetables and Fruits Not in Groups 1 and 2
4. Milk, Cheese, Ice Cream (Ice cream is a food group!)
5. Meat, Poultry, Fish, Eggs, Dried Peas, Beans
6. Bread, Flour, Cereals Whole-Grain, Enriched, or Restored
7. Butter and Fortified Margarine (Butter is a food group!)

Maybe it’s just me, but this list seems a bit overly complicated. Perhaps we could combine and reorganize the fruits and veg a bit? Like just have one group for fruits and one group for vegetables? No? We have to break them up by nutrients? Okay, you do you then.

The narrator also wants us to know when we are suppose to eat: 7 a.m. is breakfast time, 12 noon is lunchtime, and 6 p.m. is dinner time and don’t you dare deviate from that schedule! If you do you will never get through the day or night in the narrator-approved fashion. Remember her voice? Remember how it will cut you? Don’t. Break. The. Schedule.

The proper breakfast is milk, cereal (of the Cream of Wheat variety), poached eggs, and sliced oranges. First of all, what time did Mom get up to cook all this? Second of all, why can’t you just break the oranges into segments like a normal person? It’s easier and less messy than all that slicing. Plus they’re easier to peel whole.

We go to lunch with Jim Brown who is on the track team. He gets milk, rice pudding, stew, bread & butter, and the world’s saddest salad consisting of a sliced tomato on a pitiful lettuce leaf. Please note how big the portions are. Or maybe that’s what school lunches look like now, too. I don’t know, last time I had a school lunch was in the 1980s when we counted ourselves lucky to get a breadtangle of pizza with a single, solitary pepperoni on it. (I brought my lunch to school most days.)

After school we join Sally while she drinks a glass of milk and awkwardly eats a bunch of grapes. You are allowed to pick them off the stems with your fingers, Sal. Meanwhile Jim is turning down a candy bar. That’s pleasure food and he’s not allowed any pleasure. He’s in an educational short.

For dinner we’re having overcooked meat, soggy peas & carrots, another sad two-ingredient salad with no dressing, bread & butter, fruit cobbler, and milk. Appetizing! Excuse me while I explode your bathroom after all that milk! Have you heard of this thing called “water?” It’s really good and an essential building block of life!

Sally goes to bed at 7:30 for some unknown reason. I guess she’s not allowed to be up when the sun goes down. Maybe a witch cursed her at her christening. Jim, however, is allowed to go to bed at 9:30 because high school people need less sleep. Excuse me, Ms. Narrator? I have a sheaf of research from later in the century that proves that statement wrong. Shall I leave it on your desk?

Madame Pointyvoice wants us to know that we are not like automobiles. We don’t turn off when we go to sleep at night. We need the energy from food to keep tossing and turning all night long. Maybe the Browns should invest in some better mattresses for the kids’ beds?

We end the short by reciting the Overly Complicated Pie Chart of Foundation Foods. All together now! Seriously, do it or the narrator will cut your jugular with her sharp voice.

Eat for Health

Today’s Saturday Short is “Eat for Health,” part of the Deathmarch to Fun series. It’s the story of Ralph who has an extremely annoying voice.

Our tale begins with Ralph calling his mother to ask if he can have dinner at his friends’ house. Mom, thrilled that she can spend one evening without having to listen to his shrill unpleasantness, gladly agrees. The narrator jumps in to tell us that the reason we all enjoy having dinner at our friends’ house is because eating with others is FUN!

Ralph’s friends Frank and Judy Scott agree with the narrator. Mealtime is lots of FUN! but Ralph isn’t so sure. When Mrs. Scott asks if Ralph would like some peas he shrieks “Gee, Mrs. Scott, I don’t like peas.”

“Well that’s too bad,” Mrs. Scott says. “You rude little brat,” she doesn’t say.

Ralph grudgingly accepts a baked potato instead. Frank gives himself a milk mustache and asks Ralph if he remembers the picture they saw at school with the hand and the five food groups. Ralph tells him that was just schoolwork as he picks at his potato.

The next day is Saturday. Frank and Judy come by to see if Ralph can go skating with them. Ralph comes downstairs in his robe trying to look like he’s been on a three-day bender and says he can’t go skating because he’s too tired from picking at his meal last night. “That’s too bad,” Frank and Judy say as they leave to find someone more fun.

They truly are their mother’s children.

Ralph goes back to his room and has a vision of the picture of the hand and the five food groups. The five groups are: fruit, vegetables, meat and eggs, milk and cheese, and bread and butter. Wait, butter is a food group? No wonder heart attacks were so common.

Bread and butter remind Ralph of Kenneth, a boy in his class, because those are “energy foods” and Kenneth is very energetic. We see Kenneth aggressively buttering a slice of bread before he stuffs it in his mouth. Energetic or hasn’t had anything to eat today? You decide.

Milk and cheese remind Ralph of the tallest children in his class because dairy helps you grow. The narrator once again claims that milk is “the most perfect food there is.” Narrator, do we really need to have this conversation again? Need I pull out the Ace Ventura clip to remind you why one does not give milk to the lactose intolerant? Or should I just drink the quart of milk you claim everyone needs and give you an object lesson? If I have to suffer, so will you. So. Will. You.

Who am I kidding? The narrator isn’t listening to me. He’s telling Ralph that the reason why Linda has such a “bright smile” is from all the milk she drinks.

Meat and eggs remind Ralph of George, the “huskiest” and strongest boy in class. We cut to George sawing into a steak. Or maybe that’s shoe leather. Hard to tell in a black and white film. We then switch to close-ups of various types of meat before the narrator tells us all the different ways to cook an egg.

Now on to vegetables. Ralph thinks of several children in his class, one for each vegetable. There are so many types of vegetables: potatoes, green and yellow vegetables, broccoli, cabbage, string beans, “sparagus”, lettuce, etc. etc. etc. Please note that vegetables include the shiniest carrots in the world. Are those real or glass? They can’t be real. Doesn’t matter because they remind Ralph of Wendy, the prettiest girl in class.

Finally we reach fruit. There are two kinds, the narrator tells us: vitamin C-rich fruits and dessert fruits. We see a child laughing hysterically as she drinks her orange juice because it’s just so much FUN! The narrator tells us that vitamin C fruits also include tomatoes and raw cabbage.

Wait a minute, you just said cabbage was in the vegetable category. How can it be both? Stop messing with our heads, narrator! We all know cabbage is a vegetable. It meets none of the requirements to be a fruit, either culinarily or botanically. Shenanigans!

Dessert fruits are things like apples, peaches, grapes, plums, and bananas. Also nuts. NUTS ARE NOT A FRUIT. YOUR NUTRITIONAL ADVICE IS SUSPECT, NARRATOR.

Ralph, meanwhile, has had A Revelation. He realizes that the children he’s been dreaming about eat from all the food groups, not just the one he associates with them. Hungry from thinking about food all morning, he goes for a candy bar in his drawer but he pauses. He counts his fingers. There’s no finger for sweets. He can only eat foods that he can count on his fingers. He can’t make up new categories. It’s just not done!

Ralph begins to try different kinds of food without being shrill and annoying about it. At night he would sit up counting all the foods he ate on his fingers to make sure they fit into the proper categories. After a month or two, Ralph discovered that eating was FUN! because he was well on his way to developing OCD and/or an eating disorder. Which, according to the narrator, can also be FUN! Detrimental to your long-term health, but who cares, it’s FUN!