Book Review: Southern Living 1985 Annual Recipes

Title: Southern Living 1985 Annual Recipes

Author: Southern Living magazine staff

Publisher: Oxmoor House

Date: 1985

ISBN: 0-8487-0679-X

Length: 339 pages, plus indices and space to write in additional recipes

Quote: “Even though Southern foods, generally speaking, are becoming lighter and fresher, they still offer down-home appeal with typically Southern ingredients. We are grateful to you, our readers, for sharing with us your treasured recipes.”

This was the seventh of Southern Living magazine’s big, hardcover collections of all the recipes from the magazine (sorted out from the ads, the landscaping and decorating ideas, the tour guides, the feature articles…most of the splashy full-color pictures, too, though not all of them). Some serious magazine collectors want to have them all and, though it’s not in mint condition, I have an intact copy of this early volume.

Most of my comments on the 2004 annual [LINK] were already applicable to the 1985 annual. Things that have never changed were the magazine’s goal of featuring foods that grow in kitchen gardens in the Southern States—all of them, not excluding the Southwest—without excluding contributions from readers who, no doubt for good reasons, are writing in from the North, and of highlighting a few of the minority communities in the Southern States in each collection; of featuring updated versions of traditional favorites like cornbread and pinto beans, and a few “diet” recipes (in 1985 they were a separate monthly feature) and microwave recipes, and some elaborate confections made a little less time-consuming by using prepackaged food, and some locally achievable variations on trendy recipes. About half the recipes have been contributed by subscribers; in 1985, local lurkers will want to know, the magazine didn’t print any recipes from Gate City but did print a handful from Bristol and a handful from Kingsport.

One thing that’s changed: in 1985 the magazine either wasn’t big enough, or didn’t choose to offer, a collection of recipes sent to them by grateful advertisers. Another thing that’s changed: in 1985 the magazine readers and staff liked pecans, and who doesn’t, but they weren’t yet throwing them into everything. In 1985 many Southerners’ idea of lightened-up recipes still favored butter over olive oil. All but a few of the salads (in the December section) are drowned in mayonnaise, which many Southerners do like, but not this one.

One thing that’s changed at this web site: When Amazon, blaming the coronavirus panic, imposed sales quotas on Associate and Affiliate web sites, this web site notified youall that it could pay for some of you to order a few books through this site. (I posted that in time for Christmas shopping, too.) If youall had needed the Amazon links, you would’ve bought some books here in December. You didn’t. Google made it more time-consuming to throw in the links. The memory of my late lamented blog buddy saying she didn’t want to read a blog cluttered with Amazon links, which she said didn’t work with her computer, lingered in my mind. I had more on my mind, with a new truck in the family, and the absolute worst illness I’ve ever had in my life (coronavirus is NOTHING), and the never-ending drama of wasting a lot of my “stimulus” money testing various private Internet connection plans and finding that none of them worked, than buying stuff just to please Amazon. So this review surely does look different from my review of the 2004 volume. This web site is no longer Amazon-affiliated. You don’t have to look at all those photo links.

Anyway: If you’re not a cookbook collector, you have room for only one cookbook, and you live in a Southern State, there are valid reasons why a Southern Living annual might be a good choice. These are not cookbooks for raw beginners, although they do have short glossaries for people whose grandmothers didn’t use that technique or that name for it. They are for people who already know how to scramble eggs, toast bread, put together sandwiches, chop up almost any combination of fresh vegetables for a salad, and even simmer soup that did not come in a can—the kind of thing most Southerners eat every day. These are the recipes for the fancy confections we serve at parties, which are the only kind of recipes many Southerners need to bother writing down. Even the ones identified as light, quick, and easy aren’t very; there’s no separate feature for budget-friendly recipes, and most of these aren’t very budget-friendly either, unless you have an acre of garden for “back yard” and a few pecan trees up front, as many Southerners do. So if you’re a good plain cook planning a feast, this would be the cookbook for you. The sideways stacked cakes were so quirky that they’d probably seem new again.

But when I display Southern Living annuals for sale, they’re always bought by collectors.