You can't do that with raisins...well, you could, but why?

Back in 1986, Cookie was first exposed to the genius of Billi Gordon and her cookbook, You've Had Worse Things in Your Mouth Cookbook. It was a transformative moment.

In the book, which includes a section on "Revenge Cooking" filled with such dishes, well that polite people don't discuss.  Gay men and queens?  Yes. Because everything is on the table in theory.

But this vintage recipe an ad in a 1970s women's magazine from the California Raisin Advisory Board, aka CRAB?  Raisin Celery Sauce.

This is not a Billi Gordon original.  But, the CRAB? These people were serious.

It was mainstream, honey.  No camp here.

Now, who would do this to Cream of celery soup?  Cream of celery is the milquetoast of the soup world.  It's an excuse to sell something thick, whitish, and tastes like glue as the basis from "Casserole Culture".  No one ever says, "would you like to join me in a bowl of cream of celery," for a reason.   Cream of celery is the food equivalent to the nerd in your sixth-grade class who still wears mitten clips and eats paste.

Cream of celery has its own problems so why add raisins to its misery, right?

Now Cookie is going to tell you that when some promote something as "Taste Surprising" you have to ask yourself, does "it" taste surprising?  Or do they mean "be surprised" by what you are tasting?  Dare I say that anything that looks white, runny with black lumps in it that - that right there is surprising and its a reason either protest and say that you are on a diet and would love to indulge but... Or, more crassly, if you see that after sex, you to call your doctor for a shot of penicillin.

Ah well, the best of intentions, gone horribly wrong, are still very wrong.

I do give credit to someone in the group where I found this who girded her loins and decided to try this. So she made it according to the recipe, fixed herself some Stove Top dressing and went for it.  And did she taste surprising?

"Sweet Jesus Christ!  HORK!"

As I do with every raisin post, thus comes Dorothy Parker's comment "This wasn't just bad.  This was terrible bad.  This was bad with raisins in it," to remind us of the possibilities and certainties of the flexibility of raisins.