(upbeat music)
- [Hannah] Oh my God.
There are scales
- Tastes kinda like chicken nuggets
- [Hannah] pasta salad, shall we?
Oh boy.
- Strong pot pie vibes.
- [Hannah] our dinner, party feast.
(upbeat music)
- [Hannah] Hi, I'm Hannah. I'm the world's Okay-est mom,
and the other night I had a thought.
Thank you. Pregnancy, insomnia.
I love making wacky foods for my kids
and interesting new foods for them to try.
So for an entire week I'm gonna only cook recipes
from the 1950s.
I really wanna put myself to the test and see
if I can withstand this 1950s challenge.
Well, I tried my best to get a variety of proteins
really get a good sense of what the cuisine was like
in 1950s America.
So I really wanted to accumulate this week
with a giant 1950s dinner party.
So of course I had to reach out to my mom.
I had to find all of my old vintage cookbook.
I had to definitely pick her brain for some advice.
Hi Mom.
[Mom]Hi Honey.
- [Hannah] So I need some help because I'm planning to
host a 1950s themed dinner party for my friends
and I just wanted to know if you have any advice
- [Mom] Time of the party, have your hair done,
your makeup done.
You're ready you know
you've got your little hostess apron on
and have all the ambience like fifties, right?
- [Hannah] I don't have a tablecloth or an apron.
Is that necessary?
- [Mom] Yes. Yes honey, it is.
You don't do fifties without that.
I wanna buy that for you cause I know you probably won't.
I don't wanna send you the cash for though.
Which should I do?
- [Hannah] Oh you can actually
just send me the money with Zelle.
Cause we already enrolled you.
Do you Remember?
- [Mom] I do remember.
- [Hannah] It makes it so easy.
All you have to do is add my phone number
and click the money will go to my bank account in minutes.
[Mom] Oh my God
You've trying to get me to buy a tablecloth.
- [Mom] I know you won't regret it.
It's gonna be so much fun.
[Hannah] Thank You for sending me money,
even though I'm in my thirties
- [Mom] Anytime, honey.
- [Hannah] All right, love you mom.
- [Mom] Love you honey bye.
- [Hannah] I'm armed with a very lengthy grocery list
and we'll see if I can find anything.
It wasn't complicated, but there were a lot
of items that I had never purchased before.
So I'm gonna head home and sort through all these groceries
and hope I didn't forget anything and we will see what's up.
It is dinner time and I'm gonna make something that actually
sounded really fancy when I saw the recipe title
but it actually is really, really simple.
So the first recipe I wanted to try was chicken croquettes.
I've never made a croquette personally and I definitely
wanted to start this week off with something that everyone
would enjoy and so it's got some of those core
foods that everybody likes.
A lot of these fifties recipes are very chicken heavy, lot
of chicken going on.
There's not a whole lot of vegetables.
So I think I'm gonna have to pair this with a salad
of some sort.
Two tablespoons of minced, celery, which is basically
the equivalent of like if I thought about celery
while I was eating this dish, there are some ingredients
that feel like they're just there to be there.
I was a little confused over the celery, but at the end
of the day it was something fresh.
This feels very under seasoned.
I will just say that.
Okay,
one
patty.
(kids playing in background)
Now these are not cooked in butter.
These are fried in
shortening.
How very fifties
- [Henry] Put food on there
- [Hannah] Oh, are you hungry?
- [Henry] Yeah.
- Hannah] Okay.
- [Wyatt] Tastes kind like chicken nuggets.
- [Jackson] It's amazing.
- [Hannah] You like it?
- [Matt] What would you give it out of 10?
What number?
10?
- [Henry] Two.
- [Matt] Two?
- [Henry] Yeah.
- [Hannah] Oh, well he's going in for another bite,
so that's good.
Okay, let's see what the biggest kid likes.
- [Matt] Mm. You know what I'm getting Like strong
pop pie vibes.
- [Hannah] Oh
Poultry seasoning is very thyme.
It's very good.
It was something that my family didn't even
realize might have been out of the norm for this day
and age.
It's all ingredients that everyone's very familiar with.
Everyone enjoyed it, everybody ate it.
It was really tasty and really easy.
This morning I'm making a classic fifties breakfast.
You see it at every American diner.
It's kind of still here, like the classic fifties breakfast.
But what I did not factor in is that I have a 9:00 AM
doctor's appointment and I didn't time manage well enough.
I was very tired this morning, so I'm a bad fifties
housewife. What do you think of when you think
of like a classic American breakfast?
cause for me it's eggs, bacon, and pancakes.
Okay. Jackson requested a smiley face.
This reminds me of a goofy movie.
Look how cute.
- [Jackson] ooo I like it.
- [Hannah] It's lunchtime
and you know what we're having for lunch.
Vegetables? No, no.
Some hardy ham sandwiches.
I mean, sometimes in life you just throw together
a ham sandwich and that's lunch.
And so I felt very realistic to me.
Are you redressing your sandwich?
- [Jackson] Yes.
- [Henry] yes
- [Hannah] I dunno if mustard is something that...
- [Henry] yes.
- [Hannah] Oh yes.
- [Jackson] Oh yes?
- [Hannah] You have a deconstructed ham sandwich.
Wouldn't be a fifties week without a little bit of tuna.
I couldn't let the week go by
without making a tuna noodle casserole.
- [Henry] Tuna?
- [Hannah] It's tuna
Yes. What do you think?
- [Henry] It good.
- [Hannah] It's good.
Oh, this is a little full.
Okay. What am I doing?
Oh, I made a mistake.
The final thing
that
my mom said
I cannot forget
is crushed potato chips on top.
Close your mouth.
What do you think?
You don't like it?
Do you like it?
Yeah. Okay.
But with Henry and Wyatt, we're hesitant to try it at first
I think just cause tuna is a strong smell.
But once everyone got that first bite in
everybody loved it.
What do you think?
- [Jackson] Really good
- [Hannah] Tasty?
- [Jackson] Yeah.
- [Hannah] Oh yeah
While we were on a roll with fish casserole
I had to try one other fish casserole that I had seen
in a couple recipe books, which is a salmon surprise.
My hope is that the surprises, it sounds very bland
but it's actually very flavorful.
I bought this like bougie can
of salmon and when I opened it
it had all of the bones and skin in it.
Oh my god.
There are scales
but I wasn't gonna let this salmon go to waste.
So I spent a lot of time picking out all of the bones.
I realized my mayo's vegan, I hope this is okay.
Parmesan. So I found a lot
of these recipes from family recipes and I feel
like the Parmesan is an addition after the fact.
That doesn't seem too authentically fifties.
maybe we're cheating a little bit with this Parmesan
but most of the recipes I've seen are
like American cheese or cheddar.
So basically what I think the surprise was is
like layered almost scallop potatoes on top of the salmon
two layers down and one to go.
I had to add the green salad.
I just had to, It was there were so much beige
but I think the green salad is allowed.
I didn't add anything to it.
It's just greens.
Jackson is my garbage disposal.
I say it all the time.
He loves everything I make.
He's really easy to please just give him a plate of food
and he's happy.
So he was thoroughly impressed with all of these fifties
recipes because it was something new.
Here you go.
Love Jackson's not feeling so good.
So we're just being careful.
Yeah, and there's your
surprise.
- [Jackson] It really looks like scalloped potatoes.
- [Hannah] It does, right?
You like it?
- [Jackson] Yeah.
- [Hannah] Oh good.
Oh my goodness.
You like it.
You got creamy potatoes and cheese.
It's gonna be good.
And the salmon honestly was very mild.
It wasn't super fishy.
The tuna casserole was a lot fishier in taste.
What do you think of your dinner?
Do you like it more
than the other meals or what's your favorite so far?
- [Matt] think I like the chicken........
- [Hannah] Croquettes?
- [Matt] croquettes.
- [Hannah] Today's dinner sounds interesting
but it actually looks very good.
It's a ground beef biscuit casserole
and it actually has quite a few vegetables in it
so I'm very excited.
You we're really on a casserole streak here.
I feel like it's not all casserole this week.
I promise.
It's about one cup of celery and one cup of carrots.
It honestly, it was almost like the beef version
of a pop pie or like a drop biscuit pop pie.
I was supposed to drain and discard the grease
and I just added my butter to the grease.
Ugh, hold on.
Oh geez.
I dropped you.
I'm sorry.
What do I put this in?
Oh boy.
So I really wasn't equipped
with the amount of cooking utensils needed
or maybe I just wasn't a good enough fifties housewife.
Keeping up with the dishes quick enough.
Don't mind my beater.
Whisk. My whisk is always dirty these days.
Trying to mix this butter with the flour.
Nobody panic.
I'm gonna add these veggies
seasoning with a little garlic powder
and I'm gonna bring this
to a boil so I don't have a cookie cutter
so I'm cutting the biscuits out with a glass.
This is not as pretty as I envisioned
What did you put in your mouth?
That's not food.
- [Jackson] That's very good
- [Hannah] for Wyatt it definitely was a challenge,
but the biscuits
on top made it a lot more palatable for him.
- [Wyatt] Mhmm the biscuits really good.
- [Hannah] Matt said it reminded him of his childhood.
Does it please My husband?
- [Matt] It pleases me.
- [Hannah] While I was on a roll
with Nostalgic Foods this week
I had to bring back a classic and make some beef stroganoff.
That's some mushrooms and onions cooking down here.
This smells absolutely incredible.
Extra egg noodles and some steak.
I knew it was gonna be a creamy dish.
I just didn't realize how much sour cream was
in that meal.
Another kind of gray dish but it smells fantastic.
Here we have the plated dish
and of course I'm serving it alongside a salad.
I think they just called it a salad, like not meaning salad.
I think I'm just reading into this, but I love the idea
of serving it alongside a salad made out of jello.
Everybody loved it.
So that's a win for me.
That means it's
on my list of repeat meals, but it is intense.
You leave the table feeling full.
Well, someone dug right in.
Is it good?
- [Matt] Mhmm
- [Wyatt This is actually Jello
- [Hannah] mmhmm
- Time to serve.
Now the key to a good dinner party is plenty of appetizers
and plenty of entrees.
All of these recipes had extensive preparations
so I needed to carve out an entire day for dinner.
Party prep.
I have this cream cheese with which I'm going to
make olive stuffed celery.
Lot of seasonings for our fifties recipe done on here.
So the thing that threw me off for the olive stuffed celery
was it had a ton of chopped pecans in it, which when
I'm thinking of a bunch of different types of olives
and pickles and like cream cheese and celery
I'm not thinking like, Let's throw some nuts on this.
Looks and smells.
Very good.
It's not a fifties week without an ambrosia salad.
Mini marshmallows.
I've pineapple tidbits and canned mandarin oranges.
So my final dish is potato salad.
I've never made potato salad from scratch.
I am a very big fan of buying potato salad
at the grocery store.
And as for entrees, I wanted to make chicken al la king
because that was another dish that Matt recognized and
remembered.
- [Matt] my Grandma used to have boxes of it in her freezer
- [Hannah] Every fifties dinner party needs
like the crown jewel dish.
So I decided to make a giant spiral sliced ham.
Come on, stay on.
Come on friends.
Two more slices.
Where should they go?
Right now I'm making a cherry angel food cake.
I have my sifted flour,
I have my bunt pan
I have my diced maraschino cherries.
I have my egg whites.
I'm gonna fold the flour in until there are no more streaks.
It's got a couple lumps
but I just don't wanna mess with it or deflate it anymore.
Doing great, everybody.
I'm just gonna clean it up a little
get the straggly stuff and then pop it in the oven.
This cake was vert touch and go
and did not want to come out of the pan.
A good dinner party host is put together.
She's got her hair done, she's got her makeup done
she's got her cute apron.
And I just, I wanted to look the part.
Actually these rollers are kind of nice.
Kind of like 'em.
- [Jackson] Wow I look good.
- [Wyatt] It looks like you own ah like a a
fancy business area.
- [Hannah] So the final step to an epic dinner party
is the table scape.
All right, here we are.
(sparkly music)
Here it is.
What did you think of the canape
- [Jackson] Best thing ever
- [Hannah] You like em?
- [Jackson] mhmm
- [Hannah] two different kinds of pickles.
- [Voice] Okay.
- [Hannah] Three different kinds of olives.
- [Woman Off Screen]this is how my Grandma made hers
- [Hannah] Yeah. How's the ham?
- [Matt] This reminds of my grandma.
- [Hannah] Okay, the chicken al la king
(talking in background)
- [Hannah] I am so bad at filming when I have people
over because I'm trying to host the whole time.
But the dinner party was a big success.
The food went over really well.
So that's all for now.
I'm Hannah, and please tell me would you eat
or make any of these 1950s recipes?
Let me know on Instagram and if you'll please excuse me.
I'm gonna put my feet up and just be horizontal for a while.
Spend a lot of time on my feet.
Till next time
(upbeat music)