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The Amazing Mackerel Pudding Plan: Classic Diet Recipe Cards from the 1970s
The author of I'm Not the New Me presents a zany, frequently disturbing collection of recipe cards from the 1970s, featuring such classic dishes as Fish Balls, Celery Logs, Caucasian Shashlik, and Frankfurter Spectacular. Original. 40,000 first printing.
176 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2006
256 people want to read
About the author
Wendy McClure
22 books343 followersWendy McClure is an author and a children’s book editor.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 50 reviews
March 23, 2020
➽ And the moral of this rereread is: this book might not be the cure for covid-19 (then again, who knows?), but it sure is one of the best cures out there for self-isolation and lockdwon-induced depression. And that, my Little Barnacles, is a scientifically proven fact. Because I said so.
Oh, and by the way, looking for inspiration for tomorrow's lunch? Here's the recipe for a super extra healthy, nutritious, yummy as fish salad that is sure to delight the whole family:
Bon appétit and stuff!
[August 2018]
➽ And the moral of this reread is: it's nothing short of a miracle that some people a) made the deliberate decision to follow any of the recipes in this book and b) survived eating the product of their extravagantly reckless cooking endeavors.
➽ And the other moral of this reread is: are you feeling sad and depressed as fish? Read this book, it works better thanProzac those LOL tablets that sell for a small fortune on the black market. You can trust me on that one, I'm the one who's behind this deliciously amoral drug scam manufacturing them for the good of humanity.
P.S. It's been uncommonly hot today and I wanted to cook something light for dinner, so I quite logically opened this wonderfully inspiring book in search of a mouth-watering yet refreshing recipe. It took me a while to choose what dish to prepare (there are so many appetizing ones, it's almost impossible to decide which one to pick), but I think I'll go for this one (from the "Soups, Salads, Snacks, Sorrow" section):
What say you? Good choice, no? Yeah, I think so too.
[Original review]
Oh WOW! How could I forget I had this?! It has to be one of the funniest books I have ever read. Okay, to be honest there isn’t much reading to be done here but the little there is is just hilarious.
What is it you ask? A collection of Weight Watchers recipe cards from the 70s that the author found in her parents’ basement. Fascinating you say? Doesn’t sound very exciting you say? Come on people, stop whining and trust me on this will you?! This is ROFL/LOL/LMAO material. The recipe cards will scare you half to death (awful image quality and freaky props included). The author’s comments will make you laugh so hard there’s a good chance you’ll end up crying. Here, I’ve selected a few of my favourite recipes (and McClure's insightful comments) for your personal enjoyment. Bon appétit!
"They’re watching us. They’re among us. They want us to think they’re just seafood appetizers. “Hearty” ones, even – though of course they don’t have hearts at all, just diabolical reptilian eyes. OH MY GOD, DID ONE JUST BLINK?"
"I hope that by “versatile” they mean “you can do something with this chicken besides eat it.” Because clearly, each piece is its own self-contained Grow Your Own Deadly Bacteria Kit. It’s fun! It’s easy! You don’t even need a petri dish! It’s like having an ant farm. Except, of course, with salmonella instead of ants. "
"Frankurfters in a pie under a quilt. You know when you were a kid you walked in on your parents? And when you repressed the memory, it wound up looking like this? Good luck with therapy! "
"Well, as adjectives for mackerel go, snappy is better than fluffy. Snappy! So snappy you need three glasses of cranberry juice to wash it down! So snappy they’ve placed it in a special roped-off area! Don’t get too close to the casserole! ‘Cause it’ll SNAP at ya! Ha! Ha! SNAPPY! "
"Ever wonder what that movie Carrie would have been like if it had been cast with chickens instead of people and also possibly entirely reconceived as a porno? No? Well, does it help to know that now you’ll never have to? No? "
"Inspired by the 1972 film The Poseidon Adventure, the best way to eat these eggplant boats filled with tuna is to flip them over. And then panic and scream, “WE’RE ALL GOING TO DIE! "
"Where do I even begin here? Which bowl is Siegfried’s? Which one is Roy’s? What is going on here? What? What is the meaning of Jell-O, and peaches, and a ceramic cheetah, and paper flowers? And… freaky dried-pod thingies? What are those? Should we smoke them? Have we been smoking them? "
"With the rise of popular psychology in the seventies, this combination dessert and Rorschach test proved to be a big hit, and an ideal diet dish, too. Because once you’ve seen a headless armadillo playing jai alai in your dessert as a result of projected unresolved anger from unspecified childhood issues – well, you don’t feel so hungry anymore"
Need a laugh? Read this book, it’s just what thedietician therapist ordered.
Oh, and by the way, looking for inspiration for tomorrow's lunch? Here's the recipe for a super extra healthy, nutritious, yummy as fish salad that is sure to delight the whole family:
Bon appétit and stuff!
[August 2018]
➽ And the moral of this reread is: it's nothing short of a miracle that some people a) made the deliberate decision to follow any of the recipes in this book and b) survived eating the product of their extravagantly reckless cooking endeavors.
➽ And the other moral of this reread is: are you feeling sad and depressed as fish? Read this book, it works better than
P.S. It's been uncommonly hot today and I wanted to cook something light for dinner, so I quite logically opened this wonderfully inspiring book in search of a mouth-watering yet refreshing recipe. It took me a while to choose what dish to prepare (there are so many appetizing ones, it's almost impossible to decide which one to pick), but I think I'll go for this one (from the "Soups, Salads, Snacks, Sorrow" section):
What say you? Good choice, no? Yeah, I think so too.
[Original review]
Oh WOW! How could I forget I had this?! It has to be one of the funniest books I have ever read. Okay, to be honest there isn’t much reading to be done here but the little there is is just hilarious.
What is it you ask? A collection of Weight Watchers recipe cards from the 70s that the author found in her parents’ basement. Fascinating you say? Doesn’t sound very exciting you say? Come on people, stop whining and trust me on this will you?! This is ROFL/LOL/LMAO material. The recipe cards will scare you half to death (awful image quality and freaky props included). The author’s comments will make you laugh so hard there’s a good chance you’ll end up crying. Here, I’ve selected a few of my favourite recipes (and McClure's insightful comments) for your personal enjoyment. Bon appétit!
"They’re watching us. They’re among us. They want us to think they’re just seafood appetizers. “Hearty” ones, even – though of course they don’t have hearts at all, just diabolical reptilian eyes. OH MY GOD, DID ONE JUST BLINK?"
"I hope that by “versatile” they mean “you can do something with this chicken besides eat it.” Because clearly, each piece is its own self-contained Grow Your Own Deadly Bacteria Kit. It’s fun! It’s easy! You don’t even need a petri dish! It’s like having an ant farm. Except, of course, with salmonella instead of ants. "
"Frankurfters in a pie under a quilt. You know when you were a kid you walked in on your parents? And when you repressed the memory, it wound up looking like this? Good luck with therapy! "
"Well, as adjectives for mackerel go, snappy is better than fluffy. Snappy! So snappy you need three glasses of cranberry juice to wash it down! So snappy they’ve placed it in a special roped-off area! Don’t get too close to the casserole! ‘Cause it’ll SNAP at ya! Ha! Ha! SNAPPY! "
"Ever wonder what that movie Carrie would have been like if it had been cast with chickens instead of people and also possibly entirely reconceived as a porno? No? Well, does it help to know that now you’ll never have to? No? "
"Inspired by the 1972 film The Poseidon Adventure, the best way to eat these eggplant boats filled with tuna is to flip them over. And then panic and scream, “WE’RE ALL GOING TO DIE! "
"Where do I even begin here? Which bowl is Siegfried’s? Which one is Roy’s? What is going on here? What? What is the meaning of Jell-O, and peaches, and a ceramic cheetah, and paper flowers? And… freaky dried-pod thingies? What are those? Should we smoke them? Have we been smoking them? "
"With the rise of popular psychology in the seventies, this combination dessert and Rorschach test proved to be a big hit, and an ideal diet dish, too. Because once you’ve seen a headless armadillo playing jai alai in your dessert as a result of projected unresolved anger from unspecified childhood issues – well, you don’t feel so hungry anymore"
Need a laugh? Read this book, it’s just what the
June 16, 2011
You know, I wrote this review a few years ago, and I got nervous that maybe this wasn't as funny as I remembered.
WRONG.
Please just click this link right now. PLEASE JUST DO IT. And then this one. And then all the rest. Then you will see.
***
OK, listen. Open a new browser window right now and go to this page, which has some of the pages from The Amazing Mackerel Pudding Plan:
http://www.candyboots.com/wwcards.html
It is the funniest fucking thing I have ever seen. I can't even finish this book because whenever I start, I laugh so hard I start to cry and I have to put it away until I calm down.
Wendy McClure is a genius.
WRONG.
Please just click this link right now. PLEASE JUST DO IT. And then this one. And then all the rest. Then you will see.
***
OK, listen. Open a new browser window right now and go to this page, which has some of the pages from The Amazing Mackerel Pudding Plan:
http://www.candyboots.com/wwcards.html
It is the funniest fucking thing I have ever seen. I can't even finish this book because whenever I start, I laugh so hard I start to cry and I have to put it away until I calm down.
Wendy McClure is a genius.
August 15, 2007
This book won the coveted Carol Award for Best Book of 2006. Without a doubt, it is pure genius (though I admit, not everyone understands my strange sense of humor)
I first encountered this book in the back of a Borders book store, where I flipped through a few pages and started laughing so hard I was snorting and crying (I even scared off the little boy standing next to me in the aisle - he must of thought that I had gone into an epileptic fit.)
Obviously the pictures and captions are the stars of the show, but not to be overlooked are the section titles:
Soups, Salads, Snacks, Sorrow
Sauces, Light Meals, Lunches, Loathing
Make-Ahead Meat Creations, Casseroles, and Other Creepiness
Main Dish Malevolence
Drinks, Desserts, Dismay
I first encountered this book in the back of a Borders book store, where I flipped through a few pages and started laughing so hard I was snorting and crying (I even scared off the little boy standing next to me in the aisle - he must of thought that I had gone into an epileptic fit.)
Obviously the pictures and captions are the stars of the show, but not to be overlooked are the section titles:
Soups, Salads, Snacks, Sorrow
Sauces, Light Meals, Lunches, Loathing
Make-Ahead Meat Creations, Casseroles, and Other Creepiness
Main Dish Malevolence
Drinks, Desserts, Dismay
April 11, 2010
Very good, very funny. I liked the theme of the weight watcher's cards. It reminded me a bit of Lilek's "Gallery of Regrettable Food". If you're a fan of his work you'll definitely enjoy this. It's a short read, but don't let that discourage you. I pull the Lilek books off the shelf to read about once or twice a year and this one is definitely going to join that rotation. It's a great coffee table or * embarrassing cough* bathroom book if you keep that particular room stocked with a small library.
December 31, 2017
Hilarious. And pretty creepy that Weight Watchers ever thought anyone would eat some of these recipes.
September 6, 2007
Such a funny book. I’ve been a fan of McClure’s for a long time, having stumbled upon her a couple of years ago on the Internet. She does a great snarky sendup of Weight Watchers recipe cards from around 1974. My coworkers even festooned my office with cutouts of some of the more amazing creations as a welcome back from vacation.
Check out the Frankfurter Spectacular and the Polynesian Snack on her website. Both of these hang in my office. Then go buy the book for a friend…you can read it carefully before you give it to your friend. She’ll never know.
Click on Rosy Perfection Salad to get to the rest of the cards.
http://www.candyboots.com/wwcards.html
This is a book best read with someone else to share the laughing out loud with.
Check out the Frankfurter Spectacular and the Polynesian Snack on her website. Both of these hang in my office. Then go buy the book for a friend…you can read it carefully before you give it to your friend. She’ll never know.
Click on Rosy Perfection Salad to get to the rest of the cards.
http://www.candyboots.com/wwcards.html
This is a book best read with someone else to share the laughing out loud with.
March 8, 2010
Absolutely, outrageously funny! Its like vintage Saturday Night Live and a night out at the comedy club! I laughed so loud and hard, and so many tears fell, that I had to re-do my makeup! This is so very much like what my siblings and I used to do as kids - we'd turn down the volume of the t.v. and ad-lib, or find a funny picture and poke fun at it. However, we never came across such a collection of photos so ripe for mockery! McClure displays comic genius - every page is as wonderful as the last, and many refer back to previous comments, props or recipes, so that it becomes one, big collective good time! A great book to bring out at a party, but why wait?
March 23, 2015
Cute and funny and way too short. The idea of the book is simple: take a bunch of old recipe cards from the 70's and mock them. In many ways, it's similar to James Lileks' excellent books, The Gallery of Regrettable Food, and Gastroanomalies. It's tempting to characterize this book as Lileks Lite. The concept is sound, and McClure's sense of humor works well with the material. She's at her best when mocking quotation marks. And toast. Really the biggest downside to this book is its brief length. It's more of an appetizer, and I find myself wishing it were a meal.
August 26, 2007
I love, love, love Wendy McClure's dry, odd, and flat-out hysterical sense of humor. It's so very much like my own!
This is the diet that will be sweeping the nation - The Amazing Mackerel Pudding Plan (and doesn't that just SOUND yummy???)! So run, don't walk, to your nearest book store to own your very own copy of this book! Your friends and neighbors will be very jealous and will ask to borrow it, but don't let them because you'll never get it back.
This is the diet that will be sweeping the nation - The Amazing Mackerel Pudding Plan (and doesn't that just SOUND yummy???)! So run, don't walk, to your nearest book store to own your very own copy of this book! Your friends and neighbors will be very jealous and will ask to borrow it, but don't let them because you'll never get it back.
March 22, 2007
i just made everyone at my office look at this book. the story is that the author was cleaning out a closet and found a bunch of weight watcher recipe cards from the 70's...all of which were more than a little ridiculous. The author makes incredibly witty quips; this would be perfect for a coffee table book!
January 22, 2008
Ugh. I had hoped this book would be just as funny as James Lileks' Gallery of Regretable Food, but it wasn't. It was just sad and a bit scary. I felt really sorry for all the weight-watching people who consumed the crap herein with a spirit of hopefullness that they'd lose weight. Surely they did, if only because this food is so repulsive--in a sad, not funny, way.
June 22, 2012
This was just funny. I got it when we were in full fledged Weight Watchers mode to
laugh over with Reuben and Goldie. Supposedly someone found old Weight Watchers
recipe cards from the 70's and the food is so gross and the props used are hysterical. You
can see most of the pages here http://www.candyboots.com/wwcards.html.
laugh over with Reuben and Goldie. Supposedly someone found old Weight Watchers
recipe cards from the 70's and the food is so gross and the props used are hysterical. You
can see most of the pages here http://www.candyboots.com/wwcards.html.
June 23, 2014
I can't overestimate how funny this book is. Every time I dip into it (and I've owned it for some years now) I wind up reading the whole thing, howling with laughter. Crying with laughter. Practically peeing in my pants. If you've ever had any experience with Weight Watchers, it's that much funnier. I think Wendy McClure is a genius.
December 3, 2014
While helping her folks clean out the basement, McClure found an old box of Weight Watchers recipe cards from the 60s and 70s. From frozen cheese salad, liver pate en masque, and frankfurter spectacular, its all here. Low fat, low cal. and vilely gleaming on mustard yellow platters with macramé backgrounds. Yum it up kiddies, you know you love those broth-based smoothies!
Read
October 17, 2016I laughed out loud on more than one occasion. This book has commentary on Weight Watchers recipes from the 70s--doesn't include the actual recipes but you're going to be okay with that. Some foul language, for those who don't care for that.
"The first rule of casserole club is we don't talk about casserole club."
"The first rule of casserole club is we don't talk about casserole club."
November 7, 2007
if you want to laugh and cry and be amazed by the food our mothers and grandmothers actually cooked and it didnt kill us...
please enjoy! and pass it along!
I promise you will laugh and or spit/snort
February 2, 2008
How do we resist a book of antiquated Diet Recipe Cards with chapters like "Main Dish Malevolence", actual lurid photos of the "food", and captions like, "Wow, Diet Crab Newburg on pink velvet and this is only your *first date with the Miami drug lord!"?? We don't. You'll laugh 'till you snort.
March 6, 2008
This is a collection of pictures and commentary from a weight watchers recipe card set from the 60's. The food is amazingly awful and fun to look at even though the commentary is not all that witty.
May 29, 2011
HILARIOUS. I know that these have circulated on the internet, but they're great to have in print. A foodie pal of mine was so thrilled with the book I gave her (that I found Brand New on bookswap!) she is planning to order six more copies to give out herself.
http://www.candyboots.com/wwcards.html
http://www.candyboots.com/wwcards.html
July 31, 2011
This book is sit-down-rush-though-cover-to-cover hilarious. Then you sit down again a few days later and read it again, and it gets funnier. Then you show it to all your friends and it gets even funnier. One of my absolute favorite books ever.
July 25, 2012
Maybe because I spent my formative years in the 70's or maybe because I hate to cook (or maybe I hate to cook because I spent my formative years in the 70's), this is the funniest book I have ever read!
December 15, 2016
Between the ab workout we got from laughing, and the disincentive ever to eat again from seeing the words "mackerel" and "pudding" in close proximity, this is the only fitness book my husband and I will ever need.
April 20, 2007
This book is good for a couple of dozen laughs. I didn't learn anything, it didn't make me think and I can't tell you now specifically one thing in it - but MAN did I laugh a lot.
July 4, 2007
Freaking. Awesome. Buy this, keep it within reach at all times, show it to anyone who pops by your house. They will cry with laughter, guaranteed. You will be a hero.
August 9, 2007
I loved the website so much I had to get this book the second it was published. HORRIFYING and HILARIOUS! I do not know why Weight Watchers was pimping Pimientos so hard in the 70's. And Mackerel.
November 26, 2007
Just try not to laugh. "Jelly Tomato Refresher." Mmmm... Refreshing!
Read
February 23, 2008Hilarious!!
February 25, 2008
Do you like to laugh so hard you pee yourself? I know I do and I know I did. Freaking hilare. And better yet, this book was a Christmas gift from a friend that really, really gets me. Nice.
April 4, 2008
Absolutely hilarious.
April 18, 2008
so damn funny
Displaying 1 - 30 of 50 reviews