Wacky Weight Watchers

The diet days of the 1970’s and 80’s are long gone, but this site is still around and is still fantastic.

It’s a collection of Weight Watchers recipe cards circa 1974. These recipes are hilarious, creative and disgusting at the same time.

Some gems include “Cabbage Casserole Czarina,” “Fish Balls,” “Chicken Liver Bake,” “Frankfurter Spectacular,” and “Fluffy Mackerel Pudding.” Seriously, who doesn’t like mackerel and pudding? Now if only someone could make those two ingredients fluffy…

Oh, and be sure to note the props in each photo. Like the urn strategically placed in the “Chicken Liver Bake.”

According to the sites founder…

I found them while helping my parents clean out their basement a few years ago. 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. Like 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. 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.

These cards mystify me. None of them have calorie or nutrition information of any kind, and in some instances it’s hard to tell what’s dietetic about the recipes at all, except that they’re unspeakably grim. And yet also, completely insane. They appear to be from a much kookier era of Weight Watchers. There’s a certain serve-it-at- your-next-key-party freakiness to a lot of these dishes.

Once upon a time the world was young and the words “mackerel” and “pudding” existed far, far away from one another.

One day, that all changed. And then, whoever was responsible somehow thought the word fluffy would help.

Oh, and eggs, too.

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