70s dinner party

[Alida]

Okay, this sounds funny, but... my DH is on a nostalgia kick (hey, I was in elementary school until the early 80s, he's older!).  BUT neither he nor I had standard American upbringings.  He grew up in Mexico and I grew up Sicilian-American.  Not exactly middle-America Wonder Bread   

What types of foods would have been served in the 70s at a dinner party?  I'm looking for a way to recreate a typical American meal from that decade.

[VorFemme]

Mom would serve lasagna or spagetti & meatballs with a green salad and maybe garlic toast; another frequent menu was tacos, Spanish rice, and refried beans (we lived in Texas).  Fried chicken, mashed potatoes, gravy, corn (on or off the cob), a lettuce & tomato salad, and rolls were a frequent Sunday dinner.

The folks got a smoker in 1977, suddenly a number of company dinners started to feature smoked brisket, smoked goat (did I mention we were in Texas?), and smoked turkey (whole or breast).  I was married by then, so I got treated to "company dinners" not just family dinners. 

[FoxPaws]

I was very young then  , but fondue was a big trend. And I think that's when they came out with JiffyPop popcorn. That's also when diet sodas first went mainstream - my mother drank enough Tab and Diet Shasta to fill a swimming pool.

You could also check out a few episodes of "The Brady Bunch" or "That 70s Show" and see what Carol and Kitty are whipping up. Or check used bookstores for cookbooks from that era.

Sounds like fun - let us know how it turns out.

[DottyG]

I posted several links about this in the old forum.  Here are a few:

http://www.inthe70s.com/generated/food.shtml

http://www.robinsweb.com/70s/70s_party_foods.html

http://www.kidspartyfun.com/pages/themes/70s.html

http://www.casagordita.com/70s.htm

http://www.party411.com/theme122.html

Quite a few foods were introduced in the 70s.  There are lists of them on the internet.  Just do a search.

[Ehelldame]

I don't think any 70's dinner would be complete without Watergate Salad.  I remember when that recipe hit the local mommy network back then.  My mom probably made it weekly. 

[Clara Bow]

Crushed potato chip crusts......

[Alida]

Thank you all!

[NotCinderell]

Definitely fondue and/or quiche, both of which are back in.

[MadMadge43]

My favorite appetizer from the 70's were asparagus roll ups.

You cut the crust off of Wonder bread, flatten the bread with a rolling pin.

Spread cheese whiz on one side and put in a spear of canned asparagus.

Roll it up and brush with butter and bake at 375 till they're golden brown. I think my mom got the recipe from Good Housekeeping to serve as an elegant hors d' oeuvre. Only in the 70's did they ever think anything with Cheeze Whiz was elegant.

We love them so much that we still have them every Christmas eve and can't wait for that evening to get here just so I can eat them all up.

[DottyG]

Only in the 70's did they ever think anything with Cheeze Whiz was elegant.

  I almost choked on the piece of candy I had in my mouth when I read this line!

[Bijou]

Here are some 70's cookbooks to check out:  Laurel's Kitchen, The Moosewood Cookbook and Diet for a Small Planet.  We had one called Ten Talents cookbook and one called The Hippie Cookbook. All of these came out in the 70's and had alot of vegetarian (good, too!).  Laurel's kitchen had one dessert called Riata or something like that made with bananas, dates and cream.  WOW!  The original Moosewood Cookbook, if you can get it, is all written in the hand of the author, who owned a restaurant called Moosewood, or some such thing.  These are good books and reflect what I recall of that time period, which was a change in the way people looked at food with more openess to vegetarian meals.   

[Gileswench]

The Seventies were the days of using convenience foods to imitate elegant dishes that used to take hours to do. If you could find a way to use Cheese Whiz, Jell-o, etc. or get it canned, frozen, or freeze dried, that was considered wildly superior to using fresh ingrediants. Yes, there were those who followed the Moosewood cookbook, but they were the minority, and most people scoffed at such crunchy granola vegetarians (says she who uses her Moosewood Cookbook and one of its follow-ups, The Enchanted Broccoli Forest, all the time).

I well remember that sometime in the Seventies, Jell-o came out with this new dessert called 1-2-3 that was made just like ordinary Jell-o gelatin, but wound up as this funny parfait. One layer was gelatin, one was sort of puddingy, and the third and top layer was like Kool Whip flavored and colored like the rest of the parfait.

You can't get 1-2-3 anymore, but it would be fairly easy to replicate (albeit probably in a slightly messier form) with a box of pudding, a box of gelatin, and a tub of Kool Whip.

If you want to know what a lot of cooking in the Seventies was like, you can always turn on Semi-Homemade with Sandra Lee on the Cooking channel. She terrifies me, but her attitude towards food is pretty much the one that reigned in the mainstream of the Seventies: use lots of convenience foods without consideration of cost or quality, booze everything to death, and cover your table with lots of co-ordinated junk.

[DottyG]

use lots of convenience foods without consideration of cost or quality, booze everything to death, and cover your table with lots of co-ordinated junk.

Forgive me for laughing here!   You're right - that's exactly what she does!!!

[Alida]

If you want to know what a lot of cooking in the Seventies was like, you can always turn on Semi-Homemade with Sandra Lee on the Cooking channel. She terrifies me, but her attitude towards food is pretty much the one that reigned in the mainstream of the Seventies: use lots of convenience foods without consideration of cost or quality, booze everything to death, and cover your table with lots of co-ordinated junk.

I think - no, I KNOW - that that scares me!

[Lisbeth]

A typical meal back then was probably a TV dinner-you might use that as a style for service rather than the actual menu.  If you can get trays or plates that have been divided into sections, you might serve the meal that way.