amylsacks' photos with the keyword: apricot

"Chosen by 100,000 Homemakers at Golden Gate International Exposition, Treasure Island, California." Front and back covers of a 34-page promotional, "Published by California Dried Fruit Research Institute, One Drumm Street, San Francisco, California."

Imagine the years of therapy you'd need after being served this slop at an impressionable age. Ma, it won't stop staring at meeee!!!! Published in the March issue of Western Family magazine.

There are a lot of really nice illustrations in here. No artist's name given, unfortunately.

In case you heathens still don't grasp the mountainous purple majesty of prunes and their ilk, here's one last recap. Enjoy!

The bread pudding above has quite a hypnotic gaze. The pie below seems harmless enough, though. Sorry I ran out of room for the lecture about prune juice. However, its packaging is a masterpiece of design. It'd be easy to pretend that your daily glass of "helper" was fine cognac, so long as you kept the bottle in view while sipping.

Dig the state-of-the-art stemware and ignore the rest. That would be my advice.

Food as ladies church hats. Or vice versa. The Surrealists (if any were still around) and Borscht Belt comedians alike were shouting with glee when they got to these pages.

Here, we definitely enter into the realm of Trying Way Too Damn Hard. Prune Ham Rolls (l): Deep-fried rolls of boiled ham, prunes, and ketchup, coated in eggs, milk and white bread crumbs. Yikes. Veal "Birds" (upper right) were disturbingly contorted fried-then-boiled (!!) pieces of veal steak got up to resemble chicken. Because chicken was more expensive and/or harder to get back then and apparently you couldn't just give up and eat beans and rice like the rest of the world.. The "Jack Horner Fritters..." Oh, Dear God. You don't want to know. Let's just move on, quick!

I don't know about "Prune Pie Majestic," though its presentation is impeccable. As for "Prune Devils, well... As late as the 1950s, Stan Freberg was still explaining to execs at Sunsweet that "Gentlemen, Gentlemen, we're a long way from prune hors d'ouevres."

I admit that I'll probably try the Apricot Upside-Down Cake at some point. I was raised in the Seventies, when dried apricots were almost a fifth food group for health-conscious Moms and their sporadically cooperative kids.

At this point, we do get the inevitable mating of prunes and (2 ozs. of) chocolate (lower left). Even so, "Tufruit" is a term that should not have faded into obscurity.

I'm not sure why they called it a "Steamed Brownie" (lower left). There's no chocolate in it. Maybe because "Victory Chocolate" sounded too bleak this late in the war. [shrug] On the upper right: "This cake gathers moisture and will keep a full week without loss of flavor." At which point you can wring it out and use it to refinish the furniture.

Skipping through most of the medical testemonials, we get right to some lovely late Art Deco stylings plus the wonders of "Prune Juice Gelatin," "Prune Half and Half," etc.

A lovely purple hue, suggesting royalty (l), and some cousin in the Bush clan who looks like he stared wayyyy too long directly into that Western sun (r). From a 42-page promotional published by the California Prune & Apricot Growers Association, San Jose, California.

"...But, in spite of these factors...each fruit and vegetable has some inherent characteristics which do not change..." but which you will obscure under heaps of mayo and/or sugar so your family will actually deign to eat them.

"...Then, too, ever-changing marketing and distribution conditions-- the section in which a commodity is grown, the manner in which it is graded and packed, distance to the market and the available transportation facilities-- all influence the quality and price of the fresh fruits and vegetables you buy." Also laborers. You know how they are. Always expecting to be paid and stuff.

I wonder whatever happened to their line of Non-Food Drinks. From the September issue of Everywoman's magazine.

(L) Advertisement, c1956. (They should've just gone all out and had an illustration of Alice Paul and her forces marching up Fifth Avenue brandishing jam jars.) (Upper R) A Photoshopped detail from an earlier 1958 ad posting . (Lower R) An illustration by Chris Ortega, from the article "Exciting New Cakes From Today's Miracle Package Mixes," published in the October 1955 issue of Western Family magazine.