Our midweek retro recipe is another offering from Aunt Mary’s personal library of vintage cookbooks!
Today’s books is “Serving Food Attractively” from “The Amy Vanderbilt Success Program for Women” series and boy, is it ever snooty!
From the opening page: “Many a family depending on hourly wages can afford even a Cadillac if that happens to be their ambition, although their cultural standards may not totally support one.” She goes on to suggest yokels sitting at “oilcloth kitchen tables” shouldn’t even bother to try caviar, even if they could afford it by some miracle, because their unrefined pallets are just not urbane enough, but maybe with some culture and less ignorance they might be up to the challenge.
Damn! I don’t feel even a little bad making fun of her book and its unrelenting redness. Really, there are only 3 color pages in this book and they are all really really red.
There’s really not so much wrong with this picture, it just looks like a picnic for demons. Truly, human sacrifice is even more enjoyable with a country cottage theme!
The book was published in MCMLXVI and I don’t mind telling your I totally had to google what year that was…It’s 1966. I go the extra mile for my readers!
Aunt Mary's Advertising Storytime 
I can guarantee that Amy V’s book never graced the shelves in our kitchen.
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