Bird's Eye Frozen Vegetables

Here's another item that'll be familiar to those of us who spend a little time in the frozen food aisle at the local supermarket. Bird's Eye frozen foods was created in 1923 by Clarence Birdseye.General Foods bought out Birdseye's patents for flash-freezing foods in 1929 for $22 million, an amazing sum for that era.

When you read the recipe for Emerald Isle, it doesn't sound nearly as bad as it looks. This ad comes from 1946, so we're entering that weird era of food photography here. I'm not sure if it's the lighting or film or the translation from print to digital, but any food photographed in the 40's or 50's looks hideous. The brilliant humorist and newspaper man, James Lileks, has several wonderful books of hideous foods including his Gallery of Regrettable Foods which I highly recommend if you really want to plumb bad foods. This particular dish has a Lovecraft-ian look to it, all goggling eyes, seeping ichor, and waggling tentacles.

The last thing that struck me was the box shown in the lower right. Is it really supposed to contain fruits, vegetables, poultry, meats, and seafood? I haven't seen this Bird's Eye variety in my freezer section, and I'm kind of glad.