Mary, did your family like 'twice-baked potatoes' as a sometimes alternate to regular baked potatoes? We thought 'twice-bakeds' were fancy and special. I particularly liked the cheddar cheese variation and the sour cream & chives ones.

Did you have a favorite gelatin fruit salad? Do you still eat it occasionally? I loved one that my family always called 'that green stuff'. The basic ingredients were lime Jell-O, cottage cheese, crushed pineapple, whipped cream (later convenience-minded cooks substituted this with Cool Whip), and chopped pecans. People who liked a sweeter version added those miniature marshmallows (or before those came out, they snipped regular marshmallows into smaller pieces with scissors). But those who liked a tangier version stirred in prepared horseradish before everything was dumped into a mold (remember those fancy molds?) to set up in the fridge. People who have never had the horseradish version think it sounds ghastly, but when they taste it they often can't resist a second helping. Both are called salads, but I usually eat it as dessert, even the tangy one.

I'm a sucker for New Orleans ambrosia, from the simplest sliced oranges sprinkled with confectioners' sugar to the recipes calling for the addition of shredded coconut and the really deluxe one with coconut, marshmallows, and halved maraschino cherries.

Are you familiar with 'Heavenly Hash', sometimes called 'Lush Mush'? I've only had it in the South or as made by transplanted southerners.

I have to admit Frieda that I haven't done a taste test of the different variations on polony (which does rhyme with baloney :-) ) as it's not my favourite lunch meat. More one of those louche pleasures when you want a sandwich with lots of mayo ;-). Butchers used to as a matter of course give the children of customers a slice of polony to munch on while Mum was busy choosing the week's meat. Now they mostly only do so if Mum asks for it.

Funny you should talk of fried bologna, as I'm fond of fried Leberkase :-), which is a similar though infinitely better product (well at least as made by the excellent German butcher I visit when I can since he's 100km away).

I forgot about cole slaw. We had that when the cabbage, green peppers, and carrots came in. We had potato salad, too, but my mother mashed the potatoes and added chopped boiled egg, homemade sweet pickles, onions, and mayonnaise. Anyone else ever had mashed potato salad?

We used to make several jello salads. My favorite, and one I still make occasionally, is with orange gelatin, cream cheese, miniature marshmallows, crushed pineapple, and extra sugar, of course. One of my aunts by marriage used to bring Frieda's "green stuff" jello salad to family dinners. She usually got to take a good bit of it home. I read a really funny article once about the author's participation in summer Vacation Bible School back in the day. The children all dreaded the days that one mother provided the cookies and drinks because she always made green Kool-Aid.

I didn't encounter broccoli until I was in my 20s. I, too, like all vegetables and served it at home the first time when my daughter was maybe five. I just gave her a small serving, which she pushed around on her plate until her dad told her to eat it and quit messing around. She dutifully ate a couple of bites and then said she wished she were an elephant. When I asked why, she said so she could eat grass and not have to eat that green stuff.

I was brave and ate beef tail, recommended by our tour guide, for lunch in Spain last fall. I had heard of but not eaten oxtail soup, but this new-to-me dish was served with potatoes and carrots and tasted like the best chuck roast ever.

This is an interesting thread.

I found a way to make my two eat their greens. They were allowed to use two forks and be crabs. Disgusting Yuk! noises were encouraged!

It actually worked! Only try this at home...

Fried fritz is delicious! As a South Australian, I would say it is a bit different to devon or polony, but I may be a bit parochial.

My mother used to make something called pineapple flummery, which was jelly (Jell-o) whipped with cream and with pineapple added. She also loved any fruit set in jelly with liberal amounts of pouring cream.

Carolyn, ox-tail stew, rather than soup, was occasionally cooked at home when I was young. If prepared on day one and then reheated the following day, after the cold fat has been removed it made a wonderfully warming meal. The same goes for stews made from mutton/lamb as they dry-up less if first cooked with the fat left on and seem to develop more flavour the second time around.

As we lived in the country (or at least the very edge of a small town) we were often given game by my Father's shooting cronies, so hare and pheasant appeared on our menus. Rabbit, before myxomatosis arrived, was also a useful stand-by.

These days modern UK housewives cannot be bothered to pluck and gut and expect their meat to come plastic-wrapped so town/city dwellers will be unfamiliar with these old-fashioned dishes.

Edited to add that my poor Mother hated all the extra work demanded and fumed with silent rage when several brace of pheasants or some bloody carcass arrived on the back doorstep!

Years ago, kangaroo tail in a stew was the only part that a cook would use from the animal. the rest was considered only fit for pet meat. Now it is packaged and sold in supermarkets along with other game meats.

I have never fancied it or emu, crocodile, snake or other "bush tucker" meats.

I want to throw a Retro Party -- all the foods, dishes, and recipes being those that were actually available, served, eaten, and loved before, say, 1970. What do you all suggest I should include -- those that y'all think are a must? An old-fashioned potluck. :-)

Edited to add: Since this is a 'virtual' party, any course you want to suggest is fine -- anything you particularly remember enjoying or was de rigueur at the time. No real planning and coordinating required. But I might make it a real party; who knows?!

Why the aversion to green foods? All green foods? I might understand kids being leery of broccoli and other strong-flavored green vegetables, but why should that extend to green Kool-Aid, Key Lime pie, green Jell-O, green beans, green peas, lettuce, green Granny Smith apples, green seedless grapes, etc.?

My DH's grandmother was allergic to strawberries, thus she had an aversion to all red-colored foods. I've heard that blue is not a popular food color, either. Personal taste in food is about more than what things taste like.

I have an aversion for purple foods, e.g. beets and cranberries. Strange, no?

Frieda, I must have overdosed on jello salads when a child because now the thought of jello of any flavor turns my stomach.

I meant to add a word about "tongue." I have never eaten it but as a child have such a vivid memory of being with my parents in an elegant lodge in the mountains of NC. Beef tongue was the delicacy offered to guests. I was incredibly shocked, because it looked just like tongues! (The weird things we recall from childhood!)

I am reminded of having seen all parts of the pig on display in certain groceries in the South: e.g. chitterlings (pronounced "chitlins", pigs' hoofs, etc. All edible, I am told but I am not about to try these. I suppose it is no worse than haggis....

I once had oxtail soup and it was delicious, to my surprise.

Mary, what about purple grapes (e.g., Concords) and by extension their juice, grape jelly, and raisins? Although I think they are referred to as 'red' most of the time, many wines appear purplish, to my eye at any rate, as are some of the sauces made with these wines. I'd say you're a bit unusual in that respect, Mary. :-)

Mary, they say you can eat every bit of the pig except its tail! I've never had pig's trotters, or chillerlings and I had tripe once had found it rather slimy. I think you in the US are less keen on eating offal than we are over here. Liver, bacon and fried onions used to be a staple meal, as was steak and kidney pie or pudding (made with a suet crust pastry) and devilled kidneys used to be popular way back.

My put-upon Mother used to make brawn, out of a sheep's head, boiled for hours, strained, all the bony bits removed, chopped up and put into a bowl/s with the liquor added. It was then pressed and cooled. Sounds disgusting but comes out quite jellified and tasty. Ox tongue is again something better not to think about but tastes good in a sandwich with mustard.

I have never prepared any of these 'innards' and can't imagine the younger generation being too keen on the effort required.

Vee, the saying I remember is "you can eat everything of the pig except the 'oink' (or squeal)." I ate pickled pig's feet when my daddy took us kids with him to his favorite beer 'joint', The Elbow Room, to play pool/billiards. (In those days, there weren't laws in our state against taking children accompanied by a parent into beer halls.) On the bar counter were huge jars of every sort of pickles -- boiled eggs, tiny sausages, the aforementioned pig's feet, fish (herring?) rolls, and cucumber dills sometimes a foot long -- everything that makes beer drinkers thirsty for more beer. Another saying: Germans will pickle anything. In recent years I've heard that there is really no reason to pickle anything anymore, but pickling is not going away because many people still like the taste too much.

I recall being served a rather large bowl of 'menudo', a Mexican stew, and at first thought it was very good. But I couldn't identify the white ruffle-like stuff in it, so I asked. I was told it was tripe. To my shame, after that I slowed down and barely managed to eat the rest of it. It was all in my mind, though; I just didn't like the idea of tripe. I have since eaten menudo again, and if I don't think about it too closely I can almost say it's good.

When our godson was very young, he went through a phase where he would only eat brown food (chicken nuggets, French fries, etc.). And for a while he tried to get away with only eating bread, but his parents made him eat other things in order to earn the privilege of eating the bread he wanted.

Mary, once when I was a kid I ordered fried flounder in a restaurant, and they brought just that - a fried flounder, minus its head. So that day I learned to order fish filets!

Donna

Donna, in Israel beside the sea of Galilee we were served fish with the heads on for lunch. The kind waiters would remove the head for the squeamish. I think it was what we know as tilapia; at any rate, it was very good.

My dad used to bring home pickled pig's feet in a glass jar once in a while. I don't think anyone but him ate it.

Frieda, it is just the fake lime flavor of Jello and Kool Aid that I, and I assume others, object to. I like all that other green stuff you named, and I adore Key Lime Pie.

Donna, since the flounder was minus its head, was your discomfort because the flounder still had its bones? The first flounder I had was not filleted and I had fits separating the flesh from the bones. After everyone else had finished, they sat and watched me struggle with my flounder. But I liked it too much to give up.

Yeah, the fake flavor could be a big put-off, Carolyn, plus the neon shade of green Kool-Aid. Frankly, however, I don't think any of the flavors of Kool-Aid taste anything like what they are imitating. The raspberry flavor is the one I detest -- it's a garish purplish red. The lime-flavored Jell-O in the salad I described above barely registers as it is a pale, pale pastel and all the other flavors overpower it. I think it can be made with lemon-flavored Jell-O instead. The Jell-O is really a binder more than anything else.

Crazily, perhaps, I am not fond of Key Lime pie, even when it is made with real Key Lime juice (which makes a rather yellowish filling instead of green -- is green food coloring used in most recipes?) because I find it cloying. The sweetened condensed milk that most cooks use nowadays is the culprit, I think. Even in Key West where I thought I would get a 'different' Key Lime pie, it unmistakably had sweetened condensed milk in it.

Doesn't anyone want to attend my Retro Party? Hmm. If I include the 1970s, would you change your mind? If you don't wish to divulge which party foods tickled your fancy, maybe you can mention a party food that you frequently ran across, whether you actually liked it or not. Perhaps one that you no longer see. I will appreciate any and all of your input.

I've been reading party-and-home-entertaining cookbooks and booklets from the 1940s, '50s, and '60s. Some of them are hilarious. Did we actually eat such stuff?

One booklet called "Easy Hospitality" put out by The Coca-Cola Company and Actor Portable Coolers (printed the year I was born, 1950) includes these reasons for a party or 'event':

• Picnic When Mother Has Had a Hard Day (entirely done by the men in the family) It includes this gem of a recipe: Chicken and Sliced Tongue with Pickled Onions. (We've just been talking about tongue.)
• Sunday Buffet to Show Off Something New (What?!)
• Saw Your Lights on, and So . . . Sardines on Horseradish Toast is the main feature.
• A Sudden Smorgasbord for Sunday Dropper-Inners -- Sudden! my foot. There are fourteen dishes to be made and arranged.
• Your Favorite Pals in for the T.V. Show
• The Sewing Circle Listens to the Opera
• The Husbands Have Gone to Rotary -- And the wives can get together to eat Sardine Fingers, Chocolate Fingers, and Molasses Jumbles, washing it all down with bottles (6.5 fluid ounces) of "ice cold Coca-Cola" straight from an Actor Portable Cooler. Wonder if they spiked their Cokes? Nah, they wouldn't have done that in 1950.
• Sis Brings the Girls in to Help With Her Permanent -- Yeah, that was always a real party!
• For Ravenous Teenage Wolves -- Potato Salad With Bologna Rolls (The wolves hadn't discovered pizza dipped in ranch dressing yet.)

Frieda, the absolute 'must have" at a 60s party in Australia was the Prawn Cocktail, served in a glass (sort of a Martini shape) with one dangling over the edge by the tail.

The prawns were served on a bed of sliced lettuce leaves and had a dollop of Rose Marie sauce on top. This was usually made by mixing a mayo with tomato ketchup and a shake of Tabasco. Sometimes accompanied by a lemon wedge to be really sophisticated...

I'm rather at a loss to describe party food except for the things served at children's parties way back, sandwiches, jellies, birthday cake etc . . . and I haven't attended one of those since I was about 10 years old!

Perhaps we English aren't very good at 'hospitality' (and there's really no perhaps about it) but I don't remember many parties that served anything other than a few inferior drinks - beer, cheap wine, soft drinks etc with bowls of crisps/chips and peanuts, little lumps of cheese and pineapple stuck on toothpicks bristling out of a grapefruit and maybe a few bridge rolls spread with a smear of paté.

You might be invited to a meal (lunch or dinner) in someone's home, usually if you are a relation and its a family birthday/anniversary etc. Perhaps a wife has to impress the husband's boss and put on a fancy spread and polish the silver, but I think these scenarios are more seen in TV shows than 'real life'. Impromptu events during the Summer are likely to be marred by rain/bad weather . .. although I did hear that local friends having a very small family BBQ at about 6 at night were assaulted by a neighbour who ran the garden-hose over the fence and poured water on the gas BBQ causing extensive damage and almost injuring the children . . . the neighbour claimed they were disturbing her too late at night!

I don't know of any group of people, even females, who suddenly descend on a friend's house bearing food and drink all ready to 'make a night of it'. There's the old joke. The Husband or wife sees a group of people walking up the drive/garden path. "Quickly, hide. Hold your breath 'til they've gone."

I think most get-togethers probably take place in local pubs or bars and are booze related.

The flounder had its tail, too....I think that was what got me. I'm not sure I tried to eat it long enough to get to bones! LOL

Proper key lime pie should be yellow - Key limes are yellow inside. If you get green Key lime pie send it back! :)

Donna

Donna, thanks for the tip for proper Key lime pie. I'll remember it, but I probably won't be ordering it unless I can visit Florida. Key limes and/or their bottled juice aren't available in most places I frequent. Is the sweetened condensed milk that I had in the Key West pie, which I so dislike, the usual ingredient in Florida recipes?

I take it that you don't eat mountain trout, either. They are gutted but left otherwise intact, then either pan-fried or grilled. Sometimes they are skewered on long sticks (wood or metal) and cooked over an open flame -- like roasting wieners!

Annpan, I'll definitely put prawn cocktail on the menu. I mostly likely will have to substitute jumbo shrimp for the prawns, however. I know there are some differences between the two, but they can be used interchangeably. The cocktail sauce usually made in the U.S. is tomato ketchup with prepared horseradish stirred in, a little or a lot depending on the amount of zing! desired.

Vee, I'll get back with some comments for you, but right now 'real life' is calling. I can't help but laugh in recognition at some of your characterizations of the English. :-)

Frieda, I don't like jellies, either, with one exception: real orange marmalade. The one exception to my "rule of color" would be that red wine is OK. But, when given a choice, I prefer white wines or champagne.

As for fish heads, etc. it is the big eyes that get to me. I am so squeamish that I will not even eat shrimp (prawns to you?) unless they have been beheaded.

Vee, the one dish you mentioned that was popular and tolerable in my day was liver. Chicken livers in delicate dishes were delicious. Years ago, I worked for a Polish college and the favorite item on the menu was calves' liver with onions. I ordered it often, but later on learned that the liver is the most toxic part of the body, all of the toxins having accumulated in it....

Did your Coco-Cola recipe book include Coco-Cola Cake? It was big here for awhile, but I don't remember the decade. We also had recipes for Hershey Syrup cake and Mississippi Mud Cake that was too sweet even for me. It had miniature marshmallows sprinkled over the top with fudge icing over. I still have all those recipes and will be glad to contribute any or all to your party. The first thing I thought of, though, was shrimp cocktail. In the day it was very elegant.

In my group in the 50s no one had any money, so we had lots of bring-a-dish group dinners. Potato salad featured heavily.

Vee, I quickly learned that answering a doorbell or a knock in an English home can be a fraught experience. When I was sharing a house with two English friends in the early '70s, we were sitting in the lounge watching television one evening when someone knocked on the entry door. I automatically semi-arose from the couch to answer it, but my friend sitting next to me threw her arm across my chest to block me from getting up. She put her finger to her lips with a shush. I realized she wanted me to be quiet, but I was confused so I mouthed, "What? What?"

After a bit when the knock wasn't repeated, she and my other friend visibly relaxed. That was too much for me -- I wanted to know if they knew who had been at the door. They didn't. It just didn't make sense to me. I wanted to know if the rent had been paid. Yes, it had. Turns out that they just didn't want a visitor, although they were friendly, out-going young women away from home. This was the first time I saw this 'behavior', but it sure wasn't the last! I gave up answering doorbells and knocks and let somebody else do it unless I was expecting a visitor myself.

There was a fondue fad in the 1960s in the U.S. Nearly every couple got a fondue set as a wedding present, sometimes more than one set (I got three when I married in 1969).

Circa 1966/67, the home ec teacher I had that year introduced the class to fondue making. She was trying to cure us of our provincial palates. We had to learn to make Eggs Benedict, Beef Stroganoff, Welsh Rarebit, Sukiyaki, Swedish Meatballs, Quiche Lorraine, and a couple of other exotic dishes, as well. She gave a demonstration of how to make Chicken Curry. As part of our grade, we had to at least taste each dish. I never had a problem, but one of my classmates refused to even taste any of it. (She lived on hamburgers, French fries, and Sloppy Joes, plus a Snickers bar each day.)

Anyway, I was well familiar with fondue as party fare. Then when I moved to the UK, I was surprised that fondue just seemed to be catching on there. I thought it should have been the other way around, since the UK is a lot closer to Switzerland than the U.S. is. At any rate, there for a while it seemed like every party I attended in the UK had fondue of some sort (chocolate was particularly popular, other than the classic cheese), besides the usual crisps, dips, and 'cocktail' nuts you mentioned, Vee. Then fondue fell out of favor in the U.S. The UK, too?

Carolyn, I wish I had the Coca-Cola booklet with me to see if the cake recipe is given. I've had Mayonnaise Chocolate Cake, as well as chocolate cakes made with tomato soup. I think there was one made with beets, too. One recipe that I noticed was a Coca-Cola glaze for baked ham, because I've actually had it. I think it is sometimes called Mahogany Baked Ham. I didn't think it was as terrible as it sounds.

My DH likes Mississippi Mud Cake -- but then he likes Rocky Road ice cream. He can stand things sweeter than I like.

Well, my party will include at least one chocolate cake. Not sure which one.

Oh, Carolyn, you asked above if anyone had had mashed potato salad and I forgot to say that I have. One of the major differences of opinion that my mother and grandmother had (besides which was the better book, Jane Eyre or Wuthering Heights) was about potato salad. Mama made chunky style (she used waxy potatoes), but Oma used russets (I think) that fell apart while they were boiling. Oma also used mustard along with the mayo and a lot more vinegar (hers was bright yellow). With all the stirring she did the potatoes wound up mashed whether she intended them to be or not. At our family get-togethers Mama and Oma both usually took their signature potato salads, and it was fun to watch which diners chose which one. Lots took both! I always did because I felt disloyal if I neglected one.

I've read about 'progressive dinners' that were popular especially during WWII into the 1950s and 1960s. One couple would have four other couples over for hors d'oeuvres at their house; then all five couples would progress to the second couple's house for the salad course, and so on to the other three couples' houses for the main course, dessert, and . . . I can't remember the other course. It was a way to share the expenses of entertaining. Sounds fun to me, at least something a bit different. Did any of you ever participate in one of these progressive dinner parties?

Progressive dinners here used to be a popular fundraiser for clubs etc, and I have attended some where up to 30 diners trawled around various locations. For one there was a bus hired to take everyone around.

In the 70s we had a large and really good singles group at my church (where I met my husband, in fact), and one of the things we did was to have progressive dinners during the Christmas holidays. There would be maybe 30 people in attendance. In case you could not guess, I had the dessert segment. One time I asked Bud if he would get a dish down from a high cabinet shelf for me. As he reached for it, one of the other guys said, "Why don't you two get married?!!"

Colleen and Carolyn, thanks for the info about progressive dinners. Somehow I missed these entirely. Your singles group, Carolyn, sounds ideal to me for finding a spouse! :-)

Speaking of fundraisers that focus on food: I have attended Spaghetti Suppers, Chili-tasting Suppers, Pancake Breakfasts (the favorite of men, I think), and Box Suppers. The last were where fancy-decorated boxes, each with a whole homemade meal inside -- made by women and girls, mostly -- were auctioned. Some of these went for $100 or more, the winners (usually men) often sharing the box with the food preparer(s). A box I made included fried chicken and was bought by a group of boys who pooled their auction money. The boys were such gentlemen, too, gallant and effusive with their praise of my food and effort. Such fun!

I almost forgot Cake Walks: Two big circles, one inside the other, were painted onto the floor of a meeting hall or on the pavement in a parking lot. The space between the two circles was marked off with numbered sections, 1 through 50, and a purchaser of a ticket would stand on each number. Some sort of music would be started and all the participants would step from space to space until the music stopped and whatever number you landed on would be the corresponding number of a cake (or sometimes a pie) you had just won. Sometimes there were two and even three of these circles going at one time, with often hilarious results. Ahh! This was creative fundraising and innocent entertainment. I wonder if 'Cake Walks' still happen. I haven't heard of one since the 1960s.

Edited to add: Those Cake Walks are the source of the expression 'It's a cake walk", meaning something easy, breezy, and fun. I've used it for as long as I can remember, but I'm not sure if I ever considered the connection before. I just now looked it up. There are probably many people who use the saying but don't know about the events that inspired it.

I remember seeing a movie with two men sparring over a Box meal auction, topping the bids. Ring any bells? Something old time and folksy!

I'm pretty sure that would be "Oklahoma!", annpan :-) One of my favourite movies. Iirc it was Jud Frye and Curly vying over Laurey's basket.

Re the Cake Walk isn't Frieda's eg with numbered circles, named after the turn of the (last) century dance originally performed by black entertainers? Just wondering.

Old Cake Walk movie

The local Methodist Church, always having to raise funds, has held several 'pudding evenings' . . . and my goodness have these mainly elderly ladies got sweet teeth (DH says it is because they are nor meant to drink alcohol so get their 'highs' from sugar). John made a huge 'old fashioned' rice pudding for one of these events, with lots of 'whole' milk, rather than skimmed, a good grating of nutmeg and a long slow cook to give a golden crust/skin. The 'congregation' fell on it like vultures. We have discovered that we must arrive on time to these events because after about 10 minutes there is almost nothing left!

Colleen, yes, that was the movie!

Frieda, What about tiramisu? That suddenly came into vogue some years ago. When I went to the UK I found that Iceland supermarket did a good family size one. Not too strong a coffee flavour as some I have tried.

I took one to my mother and she loved it (another older lady with a sweet tooth, John!) but couldn't recall the name when she asked my sister to buy one to try. She thought it sounded like "tira-lira"! Luckily the shop assistant worked it out from the description "something like a trifle with coffee instead of sherry".

Those "box suppers" are an American tradition that goes way back into the 1800's. I remember my grandmother writing and talking about them.

I adore tiramisu! I've seen it on the menus of various restaurants in the US, or Italian origin.

Vee, I spent nearly half an hour reading about Cake Walks/Cake-Walks/Cakewalks at various sites and found that, yes, it is generally thought that the Cake Walk fundraiser with the numbered circles is named after the Cake Walk dance, although the circle thing might have predated the dance, only it was known by different names. The history is murky, as this sort of folklore often is.

The dance apparently began before the American Civil War on southern plantations. One of the WPA (Works Progress Administration) projects during the Great Depression of the 1930s included interviewing and recording aged ex-slaves about the dances. The most common impression left is the dancing started after the Black slaves observed the white European descendants (including slave-owning families but also non-slave landowners and tenant farmers, such as the Scottish immigrants who kept their traditions of Scottish dancing) doing such dances as minuets and reels, which usually included a 'promenade' as a finale. The Black people incorporated this feature into their own dances, eventually reinterpreting it into an exaggerated form, perhaps as a parody. The white people who observed the Black dancers' version liked what they saw and the dance became widespread and popular amongst Blacks and whites by the 1890s, usually with a synthesis of the two styles -- African-American and White American.

Evidently the earliest mentions in print of the dances refer to them as 'chalk-line walks', the chalk marking the perimeter of the dance area. The 'cake' part apparently came from awarding the best dancers with a fancy cake, thus the dance was renamed the Cake Walk.

There are other theories, however: One is the dancing was inspired by Native American dances and another that it was a style originating in Africa. Perhaps there are elements of all three.

The Cake Walk party game (that eventually became a popular fundraiser) is one of the many examples of 'raffles' and 'auction' or 'bidding' games and entertainments that were especially popular in the 19th century, some of which held over into the last half of the 20th century. They aren't extinct today, but many of them are in danger of dying out.

Annpan, excellent of you to think of tiramisu! :-)

I think I first had tiramisu in the '70s. I quite like the milder versions, although I am not a coffee lover. I don't drink coffee, even with cream and/or sugar. Is tiramisu usually made and served in one of those transparent trifle bowls with a pedestal or feet?

About "tira-lira": I know that tirra lirra appears in The Winter's Tale and in Tennyson's Lady of Shalott, but does it have any meaning beyond its pleasing sound. I was immediately attracted to Jessica Anderson's book just because of the title, Tirra Lirra by the River,and I was pleased with my reading of it.

All right, I've got a couple of starters and a couple of desserts on my menu, thanks to you all. Does anyone have suggestions for main dishes, perhaps of the chafing dish style?

Rather than cake walks, we held pie suppers as fund raisers when I was young. Girls brought pies (of course, all home made at that time) and stood behind a sheet on the gym stage. A woman held the pie up out front and another woman held a light behind the girl to reflect her shadow through the curtain. The guys bid on the pie--and the girl who ate it with him. It wasn't too hard to figure out who was who, and the popular girls made lots of money for the cause.

Now, like Annpan, I'm thinking that I've seen something about a pie supper in a movie. Was it in Coal Miner's Daughter, the story of Loretta Lynn, the country singer from Kentucky?

Frieda, my mother's use of the similar name sound of tiramisu to tira-lira or tirra lirra would have been a reminder of "The Lady of Shalott" as it was a favourite of hers. She would read it to us when we had our tea after school. Not many mothers did that, I expect but she was unusual!

Frieda, thank you for the Cake Walk information. It is also the name of a fairground ride where customers try and make their way along a shaking/wobbling track. I remember it from my childhood at the annual visit of the 'Mop Fair' to Stratford. I'm sure modern youth are way too sophisticated to enjoy such simple pleasures . . . probably even the Wall of Death would be too sissy for them, 'though as children we were terror-struck by it!

Frieda, if you are doing a Retro party from the 1950's, I can give you 2 favorite sandwiches I recall from my childhood: cream cheese and black olives, and pimiento cheese fillings. The latter has come back into vogue here in Charleston and I've seen it on the menu and various recipes published in local magazines.

Patricia, you will have noted our random changes of topics in the threads! I started posting here years ago when the discussion was about scones. Somehow reading and food seem to be quite an overlap with us!

As attested to by random chocolate smears on book pages.

There is an essential connection between reading and food. If I have a particularly good thing to read I will look for some particularly good thing to eat while I do so or vice versa.

Weirdly enough I also lived in England once so have an interest in what they ate. Wimpy burgers-gack! If they are still around I can only hope they have improved.

Patriciae, Wimpy bars disappeared many years ago. I only ever went into one once and found the whole experience so vile . .. cluttered tables, rude staff, to say nothing of the 'food' that I never entered one again . . . and . . . I must be the only person in the world who has never been to a McDonald's although I understand they are clean with prompt services.

Vee, I have been into a McDonald's once. It was in Hong Kong and I wanted a lunchtime quick snack and drink, so DH and I went for a hamburger.

We took our food to the basement level and I noticed the young people, all Chinese, were staring hard at me for a moment.

My husband told me it was because I was eating my hamburger upside down! That was the best way for me to cope with the mighty mouthful...

Both my children worked for a while at fast food places after school. They received good training in preparing food, hygiene and customer service.

They used to chant "Don't Lean, Clean!"

I remind myself of this when I am waiting for a kettle to boil, lolling at the kitchen bench and gazing out of a window...

Wimpy burgers - yikes! I haven't thought of that in years. I had one the first time I visited England as an impoverished college student and it was, indeed, vile.