For breakfast we had French toast Tarzan style with bananas baked inside. She gave the concoction one opposable thumb up and I think I’d rather have some HIH waffles instead. The Pizza Planet Cheesy Calzones and the Be Cool Peppermint Parfaits were yummy but by dinner time the book was back in the cabinet and take-out magically appeared on our table.

I still have my favorite cookbook from 1978, Meals of Many Lands. I loved searching for new recipes and thinking that every French kid had fruit & cream for breakfast. I was jealous of the children in Russia for having my favorite dish in the book, Tomato Cucumber Salad. American kids had Oven Fried Chicken, Green Beans & Apple Crisp on the menu which I found quite boring. Guacamole Salad in Mexico and Coffee Tortoni in Italy sounded much more exciting.

Meals of Many Lands from 1978

It’s fun looking at the cookbook now with the cute drawings, and riddles like:

On the hill sits a green house,
In the green house sits a white house,
In the white house sits a red house,
In the red house are a lot of little
black and white men.

I remember finding great joy in cookbooks but it was  even more fun making recipes that my favorite pop culture characters made. I don’t know how many times I drank Milk & Pepsi in honor of Laverne De Fazio on Laverne & Shirley.

Even as a teen I was making Cap’n Crunch and Pixy Stix sandwich’s inspired by the basket case in The Breakfast Club. Speaking of Cap’n Crunch, I was searching for a cool commercial to embed here and found one starring that famous Pirates of the Caribbean pirate Marty, a.k.a. Martin Klebba the accomplished actor. Check it out on his official site by clicking here.

For retro Cap’n Crunch commercials featuring the great voice actor Daws Butler, watch this:

Whatever you do don’t snort Pixy Stix like so many YouTube videos demonstrate. You can have the same effect by viewing this:

Do you still have any childhood cookbooks? Any pop culture inspired recipes you recall making? In the words of Bender, “What about you?”