Mrs. Duggar's Chocolate Icing

Mrs. Duggar's Chocolate Icing

I almost want to cut this recipe a little slack.  Almost.  It calls for oleo, and oleo is the common term for margarine during WWII.  In fact, it's short for oleomargarine.  Recipes with oleo listed as an ingredient are usually recipes from a time when there wasn't enough food for anyone to buy all they wanted.  If you wanted a cup of sugar for a cake, you were going to have to go without any in your coffee for a couple weeks.  You couldn't just buy more.  You couldn't buy all the butter you wanted.  It was rationed.  There was more oleomargarine to go around.

Chances are this recipe is from that period.

But I don't cut it slack because there are a couple chances that could be made without sacrificing the integrity of the icing.

I knew that this couldn't be a bad-tasting product, but it was too thin for the job.  Look at the spoon and you can see the wording on the bowl near the handle.  This is after cooling.

Margarine will never set as firm as butter.  Pull a tub of it out of the fridge and a stick of real butter, and you'll notice how one is spreadable and one needs to be set on the counter for a while.  Changing the oleomargarine to butter would have made a product that is not so runny.

Another easy fix would be to use the margarine, but to instruct the maker to ass the powdered/confectioner's sugar until an icing consistency is reached.  A box just wasn't enough with a little over 3/4c of wet ingredients.

Made according to the direction, I have what is more like pudding.  It's tasty, but it's not going to do the job it's made for.

As an incing, I give this a 6/10 as it's written.  With one or both of the changes I suggest, it would be an 8/10.  But since I judge recipes on how they are written, it's a 6/10.

Overall I'd give it an 8/10, and eat if like pudding, which is what we just did.  My daughter's still scraping the bowl.  It's not the best pudding, but it's not awful.  But this recipe isn't meant to be a pudding.  So we're back to that 6/10.

Alfredo spaghetti

Alfredo spaghetti

It's not fair to judge this recipe as a recipe.  See, it's a partial recipe.  It has to be.  Like a recipe for cookies that has flour, sugar, and butter, as the only ingredients listed.  Cream, butter, and parmesan cheese doesn't make Alfredo sauce.  Where is the seasoning?  Where is the garlic?

For the sake of this blog, and because I knew I could fix it, I made this recipe for dinner tonight.  It was as bland and gross as it sounds.  I used bow tie pasta because my little one is neater with that than spaghetti noodles.  I only made one bowl with the not-a-sauce, then added stuff to remedy the remaining sauce into something edible.  Because the Duggar recipe calls for an entire freaking stick of butter, by which they probably mean margarine, I have an extra jar of sauce I'll use later.

I tastes a bit of the Duggar recipe, put a few bow ties on a plate for the child, and placed the bowl in front of my unsuspecting husband.  He took a bite and asked, "Am I in trouble for something?"  Yes, dear readers, my husband thought this was a punishment.

It is as bland as it looks.  And you see how it almost congeals in places?  That's not congealing.  The cream didn't want to mix with that much butter.  That's a stick to a quart with a cup of parmesan cheese.  Bad ration.  Icky.

I added garlic and seasonings and chicken to what ended up being our real dinner.

I'm going to be generous in the rating, and only because it doesn't completely ruin the ingredients.  Consider this a base to start with for making Alfredo sauce, but not a finished recipe.

As directed, this get a 2/10.

Three-bean chili

Three-bean chili

This was gross.  Bland, icky, and what a waste of buying Amino.

This reportedly a favorite is Josh's when served with Fritos, cheese, and sour cream.  That explains a few things.  I tried it with that stuff since we had a small bag of Fritos laying around, and ew.  Icky.  I've got Mexican in-laws who've shared an authentic chili recipe, and it's very different.  It's delicious.  The Duggar chili is to real chili what Taco Bell tacos are to real Mexican tacos, only Taco Bell is good for what it is.  Duggar chili is just nasty.

The amino can be used in place of soy sauce, so imagine chili with soy sauce and lots of oregano.  It is as cringeworthy as it sounds!  I regret making a double batch.  From now on, only small batches of things so I don't waste too much money.
I give this a 1/10.

Cheesecakes, both recipes

Allie's No-bake cheesecake
Amy Cornett's Cheesecake

These don't count as "Allie's" or "Amy's".  I've made these recipes.  An ex loved the first one, which I found on the back of the the lid of a tub of Cool Whip.  And the second one, except for the pretzel crust, was on the paper for a Keebler graham crust!

So I'm really familiar with these.  The second one is a lot better.  I used to pop Vanilla Wafers in cupcake papers and then add in the cheesecake layer and top with canned cherry pie filling.

The first cheesecake gets a 2/10
The second gets a 5/10, though it's passable in a pinch, if you need to make a quick pan of something for a potluck.  Make it the way I said.  The pretzel crust won't make it as good as a real cheesecake.

Best yet, go to Costco and get a real Cheesecake Factory cheesecake for $13.

Garlic dill pickles

The recipe

I'm starting with the ones that have to cure.  I used the full 3/4c of salt.  My arteries are cringing and I can feel my blood pressure rising.

I'll let them cure the 12 days, and see how they are.

In which I kill myself

This link contains some of the Duggar family's favorite recipes.  I don't know how there can be any fertility in that household with as unhealthy as most of those recipes are.  I'm endlessly amused that laundry soap is in with food.  Maybe the hungriest, those who didn't get enough out of the two pans of tater snot casserole expected to feed nearly two dozen, eat it.

Since I don't want to die from sodium overload, I'll make these recipes at the rate of about once a week and review them.