Kansas City Food Blog

​With a nod to the archival treasure-seeking master Alan Scherstuhl, creator of The Pitch's Studies in Crap, Fat City will occasionally bring you culinary treasures from the past (both seriously historic and not-so-distant).

We begin with this trove of recipes from 1980, when the conglomerate known as Kraft was having great success marketing its Parkay margarine with TV commercials like this (featuring future sitcom star Tracey Gold) and this one, with another future sitcom star, Vic Tayback, having a late-night conversation with the talking Parkway tub.

This spiral-bound cookbook retailed for $5.95 back when that was real money -- gasoline was averaging $1.18 a gallon -- and opened with the history of margarine (created, the book says, by French chemist Hippolyte Mege-Mouries in 1869) and the story of how Kraft created Parkay, which it introduced in 1937. After that, the book is chock full o' recipes, all made with heaping helpings of delicious Parkay, of course.

There's a heavy emphasis on desserts in this book, which I picked up for 50 cents at the Lawrence Public Library's book sale a couple of weekends ago. But there are scads of side dishes and savory options, including this vaguely pornographic offering, which might just hit the spot on a chilly autumn night:

Tempting Long Loaf

1/4 cup chopped onion

1/4 cup chopped green pepper

1/2 cup soft Parkay margarine

1 cup Kraft shredded mozzarella cheese

1 tablespoon chopped pimento

1 Italian bread loaf

Saute onion and green pepper in 1 tablespoon margarine. Add remaining margarine, cheese and pimento; mix well. Cut bread in half lengthwise; cut each half crosswise into 11/2-inch slices with 1/2 inch of bottom crust. Spread with margarine mixture; wrap each half in aluminum foil. Bake at 375-degrees for 15 minutes.