A couple 1939 recipes in my 2016 kitchen; or, thoughts on fresh herbs

As I explained at http://favoritefoodthisweek.blogspot.com/2016/11/cookbook-countdown-november-2016.html , I'm joining the wonderful cooks over at http://starbakes.blogspot.my/ to post about my use of one of my cookbooks, in my case the 1939 Modern Meal Maker by Martha Meade.

It's my opinion that I should stick to using her menu ideas, and not use her recipe ideas so much. The recipes were fine but not amazing, though definitely not difficult, but I'd rather find recipes that taste a bit better. I wonder if her readers had less access than we do to fresh herbs, for example, which could make the below vegetables better. Similarly, adding berries to another recipe really made it tastier. Anyway, here are the recipes I tried before I decided not to try any more...

There was a recipe for Rice Muffins, which cleverly used leftover rice. I was excited because for the first time in years I had muffin tins -- my old ones had been lost in an international move, and it took me a long time to find stainless steel ones rather than nonstick ones -- I like to use paper liners. Here are the ingredients -- I added blueberries to some of the muffins (which turned out the best, by the way), and also substituted olive oil for the butter for which she called (which would've been fabulous, I'm sure) (the pasteurized eggs are because we've had 'way too much salmonella on local farms this year)...

The end result:
...and when I had them for breakfast (the blueberry ones were gone by then -- I also served these for dinner -- so I added blueberry preserves -- hmm, and obviously enjoyed a magazine on kitchen design -- and fresh herbs on my accompanying omelet):

...and for lunch (with fresh herbs, surprise surprise):
The next time I make muffins, though, I'll probably return to my old favorite Beatrice Ojakangas's Light Muffins, which taste amazing.

The other recipe I tried was for Baked Shredded Vegetables. It was basically grated vegetables arranged in ribbons then topped with salt, pepper, and a bit of sugar, along with oil or butter, then in between them buttered breadcrumbs. I found that I needed to triple her time guess for cooking -- perhaps her vegetables were less fresh so less crisp/hard? All the vegetables were root vegetables, which she may have picked from her garden and kept in a cellar rather than a refrigerator. (I didn't have any problem with her muffin temperature and time, so I don't think it was her oven. Though, hmm, look at that temperature -- I usually roast vegetables at a hotter temperature.)





The beets were quite awful, but it wasn't the recipe's fault -- I used already-steamed ones from a brand I should avoid (the steaming is why I didn't shred them, as they were already tender).


Here is her suggested menu for with those vegetables, though I didn't use it:
Here's how I served those vegetables, for a lunch with some amazing eggs (with fresh parsley!) from Fern Green's Breakfast Morning Noon and Night, which so far is totally amazing:


But back to fresh herbs! I'd like to close with a quote from Pliny! which this cookbook has for this month! Pliny suggests that students wear a crown of mint while they are studying, because it "exhilarates the mind"!

May your time in the kitchen be exhilarating, dear friends!