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The Gallery of Regrettable Food | 
 enlarge | Author: James Lileks
Publisher: Crown
Category: Book
List Price: $22.95
Buy Used: $4.00
You Save: $18.95 (83%)
New (27) Used (35) Collectible (1) from $4.00
Avg. Customer Rating:  122 reviews
Sales Rank: 40539
Media: Hardcover
Edition: 1
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 192
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.6
Dimensions (in): 8.6 x 7.7 x 0.7
ISBN: 0609607820
Dewey Decimal Number: 641.50207
EAN: 9780609607824
ASIN: 0609607820
Publication Date: September 11, 2001
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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Product Description
WARNING:
This is not a cookbook. You'll find no tongue-tempting treats within -- unless, of course, you consider Boiled Cow Elbow with Plaid Sauce to be your idea of a tasty meal. No, The Gallery of Regrettable Food is a public service. Learn to identify these dishes. Learn to regard shivering liver molds with suspicion. Learn why curries are a Communist plot to undermine decent, honest American spices. Learn to heed the advice of stern, fictional nutritionists. If you see any of these dishes, please alert the authorities.
Now, the good news: laboratory tests prove that The Gallery of Regrettable Food AMUSES as well as informs. Four out of five doctors recommend this book for its GENEROUS PORTIONS OF HILARITY and ghastly pictures from RETRO COOKBOOKS. You too will look at these products of post-war cuisine and ask: "WHAT WERE THEY THINKING?" It's an affectionate look at the days when starch ruled, pepper was a dangerous spice, and Stuffed Meat with Meat Sauce was considered health food.
Bon appetit!
The Gallery of Regrettable Food is a simple introduction to poorly photographed foodstuffs and horrid recipes from the Golden Age of Salt and Starch. It's a wonder anyone in the 1940s, '50s, and '60s gained any weight. It isn't that the food was inedible; it was merely dull. Everything was geared toward a timid palate fearful of spice. It wasn't nonnutritious -- no, between the limp boiled vegetables, fat-choked meat cylinders, and pink whipped Jell-O desserts, you were bound to find a few calories that would drag you into the next day. It's just that the pictures are so hideously unappealing.
Author James Lileks has made it his life's work to unearth the worst recipes and food photography from that bygone era and assemble them with hilarious, acerbic commentary: "This is not meat. This is something they scraped out of the air filter from the engines of the Exxon Valdez." It all started when he went home to Fargo and found an ancient recipe book in his mom's cupboard: Specialties of the House, from the North Dakota State Wheat Commission. He never looked back. Now, they're not really recipe books. They're ads for food companies, with every recipe using the company's products, often in unexpected and horrifying ways. There's not a single appetizing dish in the entire collection.
The pictures in the book are ghastly -- the Italian dishes look like a surgeon had a sneezing fit during an operation, and the queasy casseroles look like something on which the janitor dumps sawdust. But you have to enjoy the spirit behind the books -- cheerful postwar perfect housewifery, and folks with the guts to undertake such culinary experiments as stuffing cabbage with hamburger, creating the perfect tongue mousse when you have the fellas over for a pregame nosh, or, best of all, baking peppers with a creamy marshmallow sauce. Alas, too many of these dishes bring back scary childhood memories.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 117 more reviews...
 A Cure for Modern Ills July 15, 2008
Had a rough day? Stressed about the looming Apocalypse and your dwindling bank balance? You need James Lileks. You need The Gallery of Regrettable Food -- actual food illustrations and photography from the Depression through the swinging 70s. There are a few recipes, but the focus is on the unappetizing pictures and Lileks's delicious commentary. Imagine the mind that could dream up hot dogs in aspic. No, don't. Not if you're eating. Or about to eat. Or ever want to eat again.
Most of the content in Lileks's books is no longer on the website, but truly they are worth buying. He describes a loaf of mottled red meat sludge in aspic as "a core sample from a mass grave." He tells the hidden stories of the people in those illustrations. Truly, he is the MST3K of old advertisements -- and his wit is as sharp as his eye.
The effect of reading anything by Lileks is, first, laughter, tinged with horror. Then, as you read on, uncontrollable spasms of laughter. Then choking, screaming convulsions of something that might be laughter or agony, garnished by tears. Then full-fledged hysteria. It's absolutely guaranteed, and it's one of the best ways I know for dealing with a horrible day.
Why yes, I had a . . . regrettable day. Any day in which one's automobile, freshly emerged from the shelter of a warranty period, demands repairs that will cost almost a month's rent (which, incidentally, has just been raised again), that day cries out for Official Cheer.
(It worked, too.)
Spelunking into a forgotten culture May 14, 2008
People think of the era covered by Lileks book as "recent history" because we have television and film from this era, but really, it's not very recent at all. Sure, there are some people alive now who were alive then, but the cultural upheavals and historical lava flows that have occurred since then make them more like visitors from a foreign country than people of our time.
Lileks answers the burning question: what nameless horrors did Wally Cleaver eat, that made him think becoming a hippy and destroying Western Civilization was a good idea? This book shows some of these culinary atrocities. It was the last era where corporations were seen as more or less benign entities. You can see where Wally Cleaver got the other idea: I mean, food made with 7-up? All those marshmallows? The twinkie defense was invented not long afterwords. After reading the book, you can understand why the kids were so angry in the 1960s. They'd been eating sinister marshmallow covered 7-up roasts prepared by their moms in the 1950s. Sure, they railed against sexism and racism and colonialism, but considering what the same people did in the 70s and 80s, perhaps it was just indigestion.
Hilarious from page 1 March 16, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
I have the feeling that Lileks could write about garden grubs with the same caustic wit and humor. It's really all about his writing in my opinion. I couldn't stop laughing through the whole book, but you either appreciate this kind of thing, or not. I would love to see Lileks and Lewis Black on stage together - major insightful irreverance.
No Regrets February 26, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
At first this seems like simple recycling; take some old recipe books from the age of streamlining and World's Fairs, and assemble them into a condescending look back at how primitive our parents were. But Lileks does much more--his running commentary made me laugh so hard my eyes watered. You can read two pages or twenty, and not regret a moment of your time. If you were ever confronted by Campbell's Mushroom Soup poured over something, you will enjoy this book immensely. And there's no calories or guilt!
Absolute jewel! January 18, 2008
This is one of the funniest books I have ever read, and it gets funnier upon being revisited. It is a treasured piece that conjures up feelings of nostalgia similar to those one might get from watching "A Christmas Story".
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