Padgett Sunday Supper Club

I use this most often to make creamed potatoes (as in the photo) or creamed carrots, but it can be used for any pre-cooked vegetables, including canned vegetables. You can also, of course, substitute diced, cooked meat or flaked fish. The cookbook even says you can “substitute sliced, hard-cooked eggs for the vegetable… using 6 eggs.”

This is a fascinating cookbook; each recipe is provided with three columns, for cooking “For 2”, “For 4”, and “For 6”. I usually alternate between cooking for 2, just for myself, and for 4, to have leftovers. This one makes good leftovers.

Also fascinating is that this is pre-1945, and so irradiation has not yet been sullied by its relation to the atomic bomb. Within the text, Pet almost always refers to their product as “Irradiated Pet Milk”. This does not appear to be for the purpose of sterilization, nor is it even nuclear radiation. It’s for adding vitamin D:

“You have, of course, noticed the word “Irradiated” on the face of the label on Pet Milk cans—the vital word which means that the Pet Milk in that can contains an extra supply of the priceless sunshine vitamin D… This additional supply of vitamin D is put into Pet Milk not by adding some foreign substance to the milk—but by shining ultra-violet rays, created artificially in the Pet Milk plants, on the Pet Milk as it is produced. These ultra-violet rays are the same rays that come from the sun and create this vitamin D in our bodies…”

You’ll be “delighted… that the cost of Pet Milk to you has not been increased because it now contains this extra vitamin D. It still costs less generally than ordinary milk—much less than cream.”

I don’t know about all that, but I have found that evaporated milk is a great thing to keep on hand just because it can replace either milk or cream in many recipes. In this case, it makes a quick and easy creamed side dish or creamed main dish.