Ancient Holiday Appetizers, Part 6!
Wellp, it’s time for my favorite Dino Drac feature. Get set for more weird holiday appetizers!
As is now an annual tradition, I dug into my vast collection of ancient recipe books, searching for snacks that’ve fallen out of fashion. I’ve been doing that for longer than I’ve even had websites, but you’ve been my excuse to stop marveling at the photos and start making the dishes.
I aim to select recipes that “sound” vintage, but aren’t so strange that they’re totally repellant by today’s standards. This isn’t an exercise in grossing you out. (To that end, more than half of the appetizers shown below are good enough to come with genuine recommendations!)
I found this recipe in a cooking magazine from 1985, when Chinese cuisine was super chic. (I don’t know much about the culinary zeitgeist from the mid ‘80s, but given what I see in these books, the easiest way to broadcast one’s fanciness was by messing around with snow peas and spare ribs.)
Shanghai Beef is a simplified-yet-souped-up version of fried rice. Brown steak strips in a little oil, dust them with cornstarch, and then add beef broth and soy sauce. Toss in water chestnuts, diced red pepper and some scallions. Once everything starts to boil, add a small box of Minute Rice and remove from heat. Stir like crazy, wait five minutes, and it’s ready to go!
SCORE: 9 out of 10. It’s ridiculously tasty — not exactly like standard fried rice, but somewhere in that family. Smells and looks wonderful, too. I’m amazed that I could get something this good on the table in under twenty minutes. Read More…
Christmas Memories in Crayon, Volume III!
I know that I just posted one of these “Christmas Memories in Crayon” articles last week, but would you mind if I went back to the well? Inspiration hits where it hits.
Below: Five more memories from long ago Christmases, rendered in crayon.
Yuletide Yoda!
As you know, my family opens its gifts at midnight on Christmas Eve. Time moved slowly when I was a kid, and the wait was torture. I was usually allowed to open one small thing early in the day, which was essentially my mother’s hush-money payment. It kept me out of her hair while she went about setting the table and frying the galamad.
The first “early gift” I can distinctly remember was the vintage Star Wars Yoda figure. This was probably in 1983 but no later than ‘84, so I would’ve been four or five. Most of my memories from that age are hazy and holey, but this thing with Yoda feels like it happened yesterday.
I sat on the couch with that tiny little Yoda for fifteen minutes, fawning over his pet snake, which he wore in classic Jake Roberts style. I eventually stole Yoda’s snake and carried it around for the rest of Christmas Eve. He was my buddy for the day, and I was sss-o proud to introduce him to everyone. Read More…
Dino Drac’s December Funpack is here!
Dino Drac’s December 2018 Funpack is here, and guys, it’s Christmas in a box. I’m like Santa if Santa was a for-profit business.
AVAILABLE FOR THREE DAYS ONLY! UNITED STATES ONLY!
I assume y’all know the drill by now. Dino Drac’s Funpacks are available on a subscription basis, and for as long as you remain subscribed, you’ll keep getting new boxes of retro nonsense each and every month. The cost is $25 a month (that includes shipping), and you can cancel at any time without penalty.
The December 2018 Funpack is loaded with deep cuts, with a particular focus on the early ‘90s. Scroll to the bottom for ordering info, or keep reading to learn about everything you’ll receive in this month’s box! Read More…
Christmas Memories in Crayon, Volume II!
Welcome to the second edition of my now-annual series, Christmas Memories in Crayon. (Not to be confused with my maybe-annual series, Thanksgiving Memories in Crayon.)
Below are five mini-essays about assorted Christmas memories, supplemented by bad crayon doodles. I may have written about a few of these memories before, but, well, just gonna be honest here… I really wanted to draw and color the Zelda game box, even if it meant repeating myself.
Old News!
When I was a kid, the Christmas season didn’t properly begin until we carted the decorations down from our attic. Honestly, that was one of my favorite days of the whole year.
Giant cardboard boxes littered the living room, dusty as hell and smelling faintly like glue. Strands of lights, still coiled like snakes, were tested in every available socket. Christmas arrived not with a flurry, but a full-blown blizzard.
The thing I loved most about the ordeal was admittedly kinda weird. Like many families, we used newspaper to wrap our decorations before returning ‘em to the attic in January. Unlike many families, we almost never refreshed our newspaper stock.
Even by the later part of the ‘90s, I was still finding crumpled pages from 1985 in those boxes. Reading old comics and checking out the obsolete movie ads became an annual event, totally outside of the Christmas season’s bubble, but still so integral to its success. Read More…