When bad food happens to good people

Disclaimer: by reading this disclaimer you absolve Awesome Mom from all responsibility should you choose to actually attempt to feed your family any of the following recipes.

We are going to enter the way back machine. We will go back to a very carefree time when Awesome Mom was a young tyke who was totally innocent about the awfulness heading her way.

One Christmas my very health obsessed grandmother gifted my father with a recipe book called Recipes to Lower Your Fat Thermostat. My father was a tad pudgy and heading towards high blood pressure according to my grandmother, so in an attempt to head off this descent into bad health she gave him the book and made him promise to make some recipes from it.

The recipes in the book were low fat, low taste and generally just plain awful. It was pretty clear that the author had not actually taste tested her own recipes or she would not have produced the book in the first place. The only recipe that was any good was a chicken noodle soup that my father dumped salt in.

To illustrate my point about the awfulness I am putting up two of the more memorable recipes. The first is a lovely little concoction called bean loaf. It should never be made with kidney beans as the texture of it will be similar to something you would find in a diaper after a stomach virus had hit your child (that is about as delicately as I can put it). On a good day my sisters and I would call it dog poo. Sadly my parents actually served this to us several times before our whines eventually got it off the menu. The next recipe is called Unusual Oatmeal Soup. It is very aptly named as it has a very unusual appearance, texture and taste. Sadly that really is not a good thing. When this gem was present at the table, even my mother (who tried to present a united food front with my father) refused to eat it. This was never served again but it became a family joke that has lived on through the years.

Bean Loaf

3 C cooked beans
1 chopped onion
1/2 C chopped mushrooms
1/4 C wheat germ
1 C grated carrots
2 egg whites
3 T tomato juice
3 T catsup
To taste seasoning with out salt
1 C Beef bouillon

Use pinto, lima, black, garbanzo or the bean of your choice. Grind or chop the cooked beans. See, it starts off bad texture wise and never recovers

Satue onions and mushrooms until tender. Add to chopped beans.

Combine wheat germ, carrots, egg whites, tomato juice, catsup and seasonings with bean mixture in a large bowl. The mixture should be thick. Pat it into a non-stick loaf pan or mold onto a non-stick baking sheet

Bake at 350 for 45-60 minutes. Pour a little beef bouillon over bean loaf during cooking to keep mixture moist. If you have to do that then maybe you should not be making this at all Serve if you dare.

Unusual Oatmeal Soup

1 C sliced onion
1/2 C sliced mushrooms
2 Cloves of minced garlic
1 C rolled oats
7 C chicken stock
2 1/2 C stewed tomatoes this is where the recipe really looses it for me since I am not a huge fan of stewed tomatoes aka peeled eyeballs
to taste seasoning with out salt
1 C skim milk or chalk water as my husband likes to call it

Saute onions, mushrooms and garlic until tender. They don't say what you should saute it in but you can bet it is not butter.

Stir in oats, stock and tomatoes.

Bring to a boil, reduce heat and simmer for 5 minutes.

Season and stir in milk I really don't get why you would stir in the seasonings last since in theory you would want them in there longer so the flavors blend. Serve hot and watch your family disown you.