All About Sausage

For some inexplicable reason I like to pick up the odd vintage or kitsch cookbook that I run across from time to time. The graphic styles of bygone eras are often a treat to see and they also show how different food and entertaining have been in the past. A very good friend of mine knows of my cookbook interest and once gifted me with "All About Sausage" published by the Oscar Mayer company in 1973. It's enlightening, amusing and disturbing all at the same time.

Beginning with a self-serving glossary that manages to define even the most unfoodlike products they make into "sausage", the authors take us on a meatfest joyride. Stops along the way include party platters, breadless sandwiches and more ways to combine beans and weenies than you can shake a weenie at. My personal favorite is the Holiday Meat Tree. Correcting Mother Nature's oversight we are instructed how to compose a tree-like lump of twisted and folded luncheon meats pinned to half a bread loaf.

O sausagebaum, o sausagebaum! They leaves are pink and greasy.