The Amazing Mackerel Pudding Plan: Classic Diet Recipe Cards from the 1970s [Paperback]

Wendy McClure (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: May 2, 2006

A collection of the notorious retro Weight Watchers recipe cards in all their foul, full-color glory.

In the words of Wendy McClure, author of I'm Not the New Me, blog trailblazer, internet favorite, and fearless discoverer:

I found them while helping my parents clean out their basement. Plenty of the dishes seemed normal enough, but as I flipped through them, some of the recipes began to alarm me. And then I found the card for Rosy Perfection Salad.

I fell over. I mean I Iaughed so hard I started coughing and I fell back on the floor and I waved the card at my mom, who just rolled her eyes."Can I please have these? Please?" I begged. "What do you want them for?" she asked. "To cook?" "No," I said...

And here they are: the disturbing dishes made famous on the Internet and many more. From Fish Balls to Celery Logs to Caucasian Shashlik to Frankfurter Spectacular in all their scary goodness. Mmmmm, Shashlik...

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Several years ago, while dutifully helping clean out her parents' basement, Wendy McClure struck comic gold when she discovered an intact and well-preserved collection of Weight Watchers Recipe Cards from 1974:

They were neatly arranged in their own plastic file box. Plenty of the dishes seemed normal enough, but as I flipped through them, some of the recipes began to alarm me. And then I found the card for the Rosy Perfection Salad. I fell over. I laughed so hard I started coughing, and I fell back on the floor and I waved the card at my mom, who just rolled her eyes. 'Can I please have these? Please?' I begged. 'What do you want them for?' she asked. 'To cook?' 'No,' I said. She let me have them. I think they might have been my grandma's, but she never copped to actually buying them. Nobody else did, either.

What McClure unearthed were astonishingly grim, unintentionally hilarious recipe cards (sample dishes: Aspic-Glazed Lamb Loaf and Snappy Mackerel Casserole) containing no nutritional information but illustrated with eerie photos clearly staged by a props department not averse to self-medicating. Compelled to share her discovery with the world, McClure posted the cards on a website, framing each with her own side-splitting and appropriately warped comments. The Amazing Mackerel Pudding Plan--a titled borrowed from one of the myriad improbably named recipes contained within--unleashes the entire god-awful collection. No review can quite capture the horrors of the recipe cards or the genius of McClure's riotous quips. Suffice to say these are milk-through-the-nose, tears-down-the-cheeks funny and a striking reminder of just how bent the 1970s were. Worth the price for the Molded Asparagus Salad and the Stuffed Apples Ganges cards alone. --Kim Hughes

About the Author

Wendy McClure holds an M.F.A. in poetry from the Iowa Writers' Workshop. She is the author of I'm Not the New Me and the creator of the online journal Pound, as well as the humor site Candyboots. She is a columnist for Bust and a regular contributor to the website Television Without Pity, and her writing has also appeared in Glamour, Chicago Sun-Times, and New York Times Magazine, among other publications.

Product Details

• Paperback: 128 pages
• Publisher: Riverhead Trade (May 2, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 159448208X
• ISBN-13: 978-1594482083
• Product Dimensions: 7.8 x 5.9 x 0.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 7.2 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (50 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #370,890 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Wendy McClure is a columnist for BUST magazine and a children's book editor. Her essays have appeared in the The New York Times Magazine, The Chicago Sun-Times, and in numerous anthologies. She was born in Oak Park, Illinois, graduated from the Iowa Writers' Workshop, and now lives in Chicago with her fiance, Chris, in a neighborhood near the river.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

38 of 40 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Fresh From The Kitchens At The Department Of Repulsive Foods, May 25, 2006

By 

Robert I. Hedges - See all my reviews
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Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: The Amazing Mackerel Pudding Plan: Classic Diet Recipe Cards from the 1970s (Paperback)

Wendy McClure has produced an absolute culinary gem with this book, but not in the traditional sense. She has assembled an amazing array of revolting recipes from the 1970s that are thoughtfully arranged for the gourmet in categories like "Soups, Salads, Snacks, Sorrow," and "Main Dish Malevolence."

Most (if not all) of these recipes came from glossy and colorful, yet extremely unphotogenic "Weight Watchers Recipe Cards" that were supposed to be both slenderizing and delicious. I can imagine that the success of anyone dieting using these cards was largely due to loss of appetite. Sample recipe titles selected at random include: "Sloppy Joes Manila" (which is the only Filipino soul food recipe I have ever seen,) "Crown Roast of Frankfurters" (which may well be the most ridiculous looking dish ever made,) "Piquant Salmon on Toast" (I'm not even going to tell you what this looks like,) something called "Frozen Cheese Salad" (which doesn't even conceptually make sense to me,) and "Fluffy Mackerel Pudding," to which words can't begin to do justice. Who, exactly, thought the three words "fluffy," "mackerel," and "pudding" could ever be used as the title of a remotely palatable dish no matter what order they are listed in? (It is worth mentioning that it is garnished lovingly with sliced hard-boiled egg, for extra temptation.)

Truly, this is a book of gastronomic nightmares that is comparable only to "The Gallery of Regrettable Food" (which I also highly recommend.) If you are serious, and I mean really serious, about losing weight, buy this book and make these dishes religiously: if you do so you will likely be veritably skeletal in no time flat.

This is an utterly brilliant, yet haunting, book.

22 of 24 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Dig In, January 29, 2007

By 

Polkadotty (Mountains of Western North Carolina) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Amazing Mackerel Pudding Plan: Classic Diet Recipe Cards from the 1970s (Paperback)

The funniest thing, my Mom owns these cards and by now they must be quite valuable. (eBay anyone?) But maybe even funnier is that Mom NEVER made a one of these recipes, choosing instead to display her little plastic box in a prominent corner of her avocado green kitchen, "just to look at."

Mom honestly revered this collection, was proud of it, and of her membership in Weight Watchers, with all their scientific bulletins and helpful hints they'd mail to her on a regular basis. She felt special, a step above. Not many women in the neighborhood were on Weight Watchers at that time. Slavic cooks go heavy on the pork and sauerkraut and noodles and dumplings. Mom was cutting-edge, in-the-know.

That said, Mom thought the food too delicate, too pretty, too TOO ... to actually fix and eat. And in a Cinderella Princess type way -- "nice" pretty, candlelit-restaurant pretty. Too good for your regular weekday when-Dad-gets-home-from-work supper. And also likely a little too challenging for Mom's limited culinary skills, which I've inherited. On and off diets all her life (sound familiar?) Mom stuck to cottage cheese and carrot sticks mostly, which is why she was more off a diet than on. But from time to time she'd eye her little box, dust it off carefully, flip through it reverently, sigh to herself and say, "I wonder if the Jewel has red cabbage or olives on sale this week. I JUST might try and fix this elegant gorgeous beautiful fancy salad .... "

12 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Weight Watchers gave her the base material, but McClure's commentary makes this book a smash success, July 4, 2006

By 

Jessica Lux (Rosamond, CA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Amazing Mackerel Pudding Plan: Classic Diet Recipe Cards from the 1970s (Paperback)

McClure's paperback is a collection of over two hundred Weight Watchers recipe cards, circa 1974. She originally published a subset of the cards, accompanied by her mocking comments, on her web site in 2003. Her web site disclaimer reads, " This site is not affiliated with Weight Watchers International, Inc., whose present-day recipes are very nice and do not look like a-- at all." The book is a terrific complement to the online version, which only offers a few dozen of these delightfully kooky recipes.

Ever wonder how "diet" food got a bad rap? Look no further than these full-color pictures taken with "a prop department that was clearly out of control." The dated dishware and table accouterments top off recipes such as Spinach and Egg Mold, Rosy Perfection Salad, Mexican Shrimp-Orange Salad, Fish Balls, and Frankfurter Spectacular. Any criticisms that McClure had an easy job because she just happened upon a recipe card bonanza are way, way out of line. Sure, Weight Watchers provided some great base material, but this book is a terrific success because of McClure's narration, puns, and critical commentary. I wouldn't have had nearly as much fun flipping through a box of recipe cards without the commentary.

McClure even inspired me to dig out a 1970's Good Housekeeping book and email around the best photos of molded salmon puree and exotic "Mexican" food.