Thursday, December 18, 2014

Federal Reserve Bankers Christmas Dinner: 1966


I got mixed up. I admit it. Yesterday I intended to start the post with “On This Day in 1966,” but unfortunately (or fortunately) I got side-tracked due to having too much fun with my English visitors.

So – “On yesterday’s date in 1966”,  members of the San Francisco Federal Reserve Bank Club sat down to their “Christmas Party and Forty-Eighth Annual Meeting” at the Sheraton Palace Hotel. A group with a name like that has got to be fun-loving, right? I am unsure therefore, why they would chose to ruin their Christmas dinner with an Annual Meeting. However, they did, and this was their menu:-

Seafood Salad
Thousand Island Dressing
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Assorted Relishes
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Roast Prime Ribs of Beef
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English Roast Potatoes
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Buttered Asparagus
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Coffee
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Tia Maria Parfait
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Petit Fours Secs.

I am also a bit puzzled why such a fun-sounding group would have such a boring menu. But what do I know about Federal Bankers and their meal preferences anyway?

For this rather Ho-Hum menu, I give you two versions of Thousand Island Dressing from the Elyria Chronicle Telegram [Elyria, Ohio] of August 9, 1967.

Thousand Island Dressing 1.
1 cup mayonnaise
2 hard-cooked eggs, chopped fine
2-4 tablespoons catsup
1 tablespoon finely chopped or grated white onion or shallot
Combine all the ingredients. Chill. Makes 1½ cups.
Recipe contributed by Mrs. Bernice Richards of Elyria, Ohio.


Thousand Island Dressing II.
1 cup mayonnaise
½ cup chilli sauce
1 tablespoon horseradish (optional)
1 ½ tablespoons minced onion
3 finely chopped hard-boiled eggs
¼ tablespoon minced green pepper
½ cup whipping cream, whipped.
Mix thoroughly and fold in the whipped cream just before serving.

This recipe was sent by Mrs. Bill Tidwell, of Oberlin.

3 comments:

  1. Hi, Janet -- as a former San Franciscan I can give you a bit of background for this menu, I think. The seafood salad with Thousand Island dressing is a seasonal item for SF because Christmas falls close to the high point of crab season, and our seafood salads feature large proportions of crab at this time of year; also, the dressing used here is rather sharper than the recipes you were able to find (I think there's more lemon juice). And the financial industry in general, here, has always been a heavy consumer of beef; prime rib was the meat of status in the 60s in SF, with several very expensive restaurants devoted to it, and it's still prominently featured in many restaurants. Modern attitudes to cuisine were slow to be adopted here before Alice Waters appeared on the food scene.

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  2. Hi Piet - sorry for the late response, I am only just catching up after the holiday season, and overseas visitors ... Thanks for your local insight, it is really interesting and useful.

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