It was a stare-down, a showdown, a lowdown shame.
As I stared into its red eyes, lines were clearly drawn in the sand.
“Is it supposed to look like that,” my friend Michelle asked, peering over my shoulder.
“I did everything the way the book said to do it,” I replied, wiping my hands off on my apron. “I think it’s supposed to look like that.”
Michelle and I were gazing at the most hideous concoction we have ever seen in our lives. There was something unnatural about the whole thing...the vintage tuna fish mold.
My friends and I got the great idea to host a vintage cooking party at my house that spring weekend. We were finished with the stress of college exams and decided to have fun preparing and tasting some of those quirky recipes from the 1950s and 1960s.
Being a “anything vintage” collector, I had a great selection of recipes from my personal cookbook collection. From family heirlooms to estate sale pickings, I had a variety of authentic cookbooks from the golden era of domestic goddesses.
Handing a few out to my friends, I immediately went for the tuna fish mold because the recipe always fascinated yet frightened me.
But as the olive eyes and Jello jiggliness of that fish stared up at me, I felt like I was in a real 1950s sci-fi thriller. The Blob was testing my courage.
“The book also calls it Tuna Mousse,” I said, scanning my finger over my book. “That has a nice ring to it. Let’s call it that when the girls get over here. Otherwise no one is even gonna eat this thing.”
“Who would eat that,” Michelle asked, bringing her covered dish into the kitchen. “That looks too gross. It’s jellied seafood...”
“It’s a masterpiece,” I responded, adding a few pepper rings to serve as the fins.
Michelle slowly lifted her covered dish, and she had a competitive gleam in her eye.
“Well, you are not the only one who took on the tuna,” she said, lifting her lid. “But I think mine will win everyone over.”
It was a beautiful disaster. It was a gelatin souffle salad with tuna in the middle.
“Why is it that color,” I said, poking my finger into the gel.
“It’s lemon,” Michelle replied, popping my hand back.
“Oh, I’ve got this one in the bag,” I said, returning to my tuna friend. “Mine may look funny, but it has to taste better than that.”
I ate my own words as I watched Michelle adding a few tomato roses around her mold. Well played...well played.
As we laughed over our tuna creations, my back door flung open with my friend Katie rushing through at a high rate of speed.
“My stupid meat log crumbled at the last minute,” she shouted. “I am so stressed out. How did our grandmothers do all this?”
Her backup recipe was what Michelle and I called a “lazy way out.” Katie pulled out a platter of grapefruits with toothpicks holding cocktail sausages, cheese cubes, ham squares and olives.
It served as our centerpiece and a reminder that when all else fails, cubed cheese can make it work.
Mary arrived with dessert, and I must admit...it looked great.
It was a fluffy pink icing cake with red, sparkly bells (those might have been fake) lining its circular edge. But then she had to go and screw the whole thing up.
“There,” she said, shoving a huge red candle in the middle of the bundt cake. “It’s called a cherry candle cake.”
“What are you supposed to do with that,” I asked, rethinking this whole party.
“You light it,” Mary replied, striking a match.
We all took a seat and gazed upon our creations. And we couldn’t bring ourselves to try anything...except the grapefruit centerpiece.
But one recipe that tested true that day was the gathering of friends.
Laughter traveled through my house that day as we huddled around tuna molds, olive-eyed fish and a melted cake with red candle wax oozing down its side.
That laughter made everything taste much sweeter...except for that tuna mold. Nothing could help that.
