As part of BCC’s continuing mission to assist the PTB in the development of new methods and materials designed to improve Gospel consumption, we seek the collective wisdom of the bloggernacle regarding the creation of revamped merit badges and requirements for implementation into a youth program that will better meet the needs of young men, women, or anyone who seeks to do a good turn daily. Your input on the requirements for each new merit badge will be requested, collected, and formalized in due time. Today, we ask each one of you to contribute your knowledge of Mormon Cuisine.
BCC’s Mormon Merit Badge #2: Mormon Cuisine
(Replacing: Cooking)
Requirements:
- Basics of Mormon Cuisine:
- a. Illustrate for your counselor the food pyramid. Explain which of the following groups will “nourish and strengthen you” and which are “not for the belly,” and whether these rules apply during all seasons or states of prosperity:
- 1. Grains
- 2. Funeral Potatoes
- 3. Jello
- 4. Meats, eggs, & nuts
- 5. Noni Juice
b. Explain to your counselor the differences between “blessing the food” and “asking a blessing on the food.”
- c. Discuss with your counselor the pros and cons of blessing refreshments at parties.
- d. [Requirement needed]
- e. Discuss with your counselor the precise moment at which Jello becomes a “salad.”
- f. Discuss with your counselor what foods can appropriately be included in a Jello salad, and which foods should not .
- a. Illustrate for your counselor the food pyramid. Explain which of the following groups will “nourish and strengthen you” and which are “not for the belly,” and whether these rules apply during all seasons or states of prosperity:
- Plan a menu for a day of camping. Do the following:
- a. [Recipe needed]
- b. [Recipe needed]
- c. Pour cold maple syrup over the top of 2a and 2b
- d. Make a plan to expand this recipe for use at a Ward pancake breakfast.
- Missionary Dining:
- a. Prepare for future missionary service by eating “missionary food” for a day, including the following:
- 1. Yellow Death
- 2. [Recipe needed]
- 3. [Recipe needed]
- 4. Ramen noodles
- 5. Yellow Death (again)
b. Explain to your counselor the different types of worms found in food from 1) South America, 2) Eastern Europe, 3) Ogden, and 4) Southeast Asia.
- c. Discuss with your counselor strategies for avoiding disgusting foods that members will fix you, such as:
- 1. [Story/Recipe needed]
- 2. Mayonnaise Casserole
- 3. [Story/Recipe needed]
- 4. [Story/Recipe needed]
- a. Prepare for future missionary service by eating “missionary food” for a day, including the following:
- Linger-Longer Cuisine:
- a. If your last name starts with A-H, make your counselor an appetizer.
b. If your last name starts with I-O, make your counselor a main dish.
c. If your last name starts with P-Z, make your counselor a salad or dessert.
- a. If your last name starts with A-H, make your counselor an appetizer.
________________
Previous Mormon Merit Badges here.
By Common Consent, a Mormon Blog 
are we seriously going to mormonize all the merit badges?
me,
Only if we are lucky.
What’s the story that goes with mayonnaise casserole?
1. d.
Explain to your counselor why white flour and refined sugar are similar to poison, and why only whole wheat bread should be used for the sacrament.
Yellow Death?
I think Jello+carrots= salad, whereas Jello+marshmallows= dessert. Jello+carrots+marshmallows is the Schrodinger’s Cat of Mormon food, which can be either one until you serve it.
I’m guessing yellow death is 10 for a dollar generic boxed mac and cheese. Am I right?
3. c. 1. Melon & Cream Summer Rice Salad
A woman on my mission who was generally a fantastic chef made the following monstrosity to serve us on a hot summer afternoon: Brown Rice; Heavy Cream; Cantaloupe/Honeydew Melon. She said that she wanted something light for summer. I’m not sure what she thought was “light” about brown rice or heavy cream, especially in combination with one another. Being the younger missionary, I got the largest helping and choked it down. I later regurgitated the entire helping into the gutter.
Mark (6),
You are correct.
Sara Bay (3),
That story will be part of an upcoming Zeitcast.
3. a. 2. Wad. (Handfuls of raw oatmeal, with spoonfuls of jam, with anything else found in the apartment, bound together with copious quantities of plain yogurt.)
“Wad”
Best missionary food name ever, Ardis.
Ardis, we called it breakfast yogurt or Muesli. I learned to love that stuff, and still make it sometimes. For myself, of course, since nobody else knows what’s good.
Mark, you probably add nuts and brown sugar and dried fruit to your Muesli.
Wad requires truly disgusting things found only in missionary apartments. Some leftovers disguised with ketchup, maybe. Leftover ramen. Stuff like that.
/shudder./
True on the nuts, especially peanuts. That was a staple.
2. a.
Best camping recipe ever, it is impossible for 12 y.o. boys to do this wrong. The dish is called The Kitchen Sink, and the name is self-explanatory.
1. Cook bacon or sausage or both in a dutch oven.
2. Add chopped potatoes, onions, peppers, celery, tomatoes and any other vegetables as desired.
3. Stir up 2 dozen eggs vigorously. Pour the eggs in with the other ingredients. Season to taste.
4. Cover and cook until done. Be sure to get what you want as soon as it comes off the coals, because there will be no leftovers.
Re: 3.4, here is the recipe I learned on my mission for what I call Missionary Special:
Boil Ramen noodles 3 minutes.
While boiling, grate cheese on a plate.
When done, drain water and put hot noodles on grated cheese.
Mix in half a packet of seasoning with the noodles and cheese.
Eat.
I propose that “Lemon Rocket Fuel” should be added as one of the recipes under “missionary food”.
Mark N.,
You have to tell us what Lemon Rocket Fuel is, then.
Oops — forgot the recipe.
Graham cracker crust, either homemade or store-bought.
Sweetened concentrated milk, and lemon juice, in the ratio of two lemons worth of juice per can of SCM, although the ratio of lemon juice per can of SCM can be upped in order to make the stuff more rocket fuelish.
I call mine “Ramen Delight”
1–boil noodles
2–as noodles cook, mix an egg with the seasoning packet included in the noodles
3–add vegetables to noodles–broccoli and cauliflower are my favorite
4–once noodles and vegetables are done, turn off heat and add egg mixtures
5–mix thoroughly with noodles
6–drain as much water as desired
7–pour into that bowl where you originally mixed the egg
8–let cool a bit and then enjoy
I still eat this. Since I served in Japan, this counts as culture.
Way to bring the funny, Scoot. And every time I look at that cover I chuckle. Every time.
Belgian Brussels mission: Tuna truc (pasta, tuna, mayo, corn).
I’m sure there could be a separate post dedicated to shady missionary “recipes”.
There were a couple sister missionaries in my district during a time when cracked wheat mush was mandated for breakfast. After a while the sisters noticed excess hair growth and other strange changes in health. It turned out that they couldn’t read the Japanese label stating that their morning oatmeal was in fact hormone enhance horse feed. Good times.
+1 for the ramen delight #20.
Much classier than sprinkling the flavored powder on the dry noodles and crunching away.
Can of tomato sauce, can of tomato paste, some water, cooked pound of hamburger, cooked macaroni noodles, mix it up, sprinkle liberally with garlic salt and black pepper. Don’t drain the hamburger. Stuff in spoonfuls in between bites of bread. Hearty missionary fare (Yes, I’m looking at you, Elder Little).
#2. Mix can of oyster stew with can of pea soup. Gag it down.
Wes Brown (22),
No, Wes–this is the thread for shady missionary “recipes.”
Wes, the 100 potsticker story needs to be told.
To be clear, I did not partake in night of 100 gyoza. Being only mortal, I merely observed in awe as a companion consumed a kitchen-full of massive homemade gyoza, pausing only briefly to unleash the demons from hell into the bathroom.
I had companions that put Takeru Kobayashi to shame.
My dad talks about how, as a missionary, he’d spend his food allowance on a ham, then just slicing off chunks for his meals. He doesn’t eat much pork anymore…
As for my mission–the first thing that springs to mind was the ward potluck where the food was supposed to come out of the various member’s year supply. I ate something that disagreed with me, and ended up throwing everything back up. It was just a few days after transfers and my new companion asked if I was bulimic.
There was also the sister who liked to make goodies for the elders, except she’d give them the cookies or whatever on the Styrofoam trays that meat is sold on. After they got sick a couple of times, and the mission president made the connection, this particular sister’s cooking was put on the “thou shall not eat” list. Seriously, the list consisted of ludafisk and Sister Jones’s cookies.
3 (b) must also include a discussion of the proper medication to eliminate said parasites/bacteria/fungus/other.
My pharmacology class was simplified by the ability to recall with firsthand experience which nasty critter I was trying to get rid of when I took tinidizol, as opposed to metronidazol, or amoxicillin, or clindamycin, or Augmentin, or tetracycline, or Cipro, or the little black anti-fungals whose name I can’t remember that I had to take once my natural flora had been Chernobyl-ized by all of the above.
3. a and 4- my brother brought home this “delicious” recipe from his mission, learned from a companion. And luckily for us, it stretches for two meals!
I give you: HOT DOG SOUP
Boil a hot dog in two cups of water.
Eat Hot Dog.
Save Hot Dog Water to cook ramen noodles in the next day for lunch or dinner.
Add seasoning packet to liquid and noodles.
Boil until noodles are cooked.
Eat “broth” and ramen together. If you are lucky enough to have some canned Veg-All, add it to the pot for extra nutrional value.
Also, the true Latin American version of Yellow Death mandates that the added “milk” be of the powdered variety.
Yes, one more thing to reconstitute in order to nourish the temple of your spirit.
Hot dog soup. Wow.
I grew up in a home where I thought eating cream of chicken soup straight out of the can (not diluted) and cold hot dogs out of the fridge was normal. When my husband and I first got married, we ate Hamburger Helper for dinner on a regular basis.
He taught me the recipe for “real” spaghetti sauce. It tasted gourmet to me, and I invited some non-member friends over to my house for spaghetti to reciprocate after they had us over for a really fancy dinner.
The spaghetti sauce recipe is almost identical to that in comment 24.
I feel really dumb now.
Re: 3.b.3, Ogden worms = hot dogs under canned spaghetti?
On my mission, we had sizzle. It was cocoa, sugar, and a very small amount of flour. You ate it hot out of the oven, pouring milk over it (providing the sizzle). Then you died as it turned into a brick in your intestines.
Also, if the pan used to make sizzle was not immediately cleaned, the sizzle would dry diamond-hard onto the sides, forever ruining the pan. This is the kind of risky cuisine missionaries prefer.
Hey J Stapley,
Did you ever serve in Valenciennes? Did you ever eat at Berthe or Laurent’s?
3.c.3 – Faggots (meatballs made from sheeps brains and oatmeal). Optional: discuss with your counselor the benefits of abstaining from mammalian nervous tissue, including avoidance of vCJD (“mad cow” disease) and retention of the ability to donate to blood drives.
One end-of-the-month meal in a coastal city was a stew of squid, octopus, chicken, and peas.
One month (actually my last month), we tried a steady diet of heart and liver since they were so much cheaper than real meat. I’d not eaten heart before. Or since.
1d. Define the term “nourish and strengthen our bodies” as it is commonly used in Latter-day Saint prayers. Express your opinion on whether or not you are “tempting fate” to use this phrase in a prayer when you are preparing to eat foods that are known to promote type II diabetes.
HA!
Maybe Mormons should pray to have a little less nourishment in their food.
http://www.mormontimes.com/article/19793/Six-Mormons-try-to-become-8216Biggest-Loser8217?s_cid=newsline
http://www.mormontimes.com/article/20404/Study-finds-link-between-religion-obesity
Or maybe not:
http://scienceblogs.com/deanscorner/2011/03/diabetes_belt_fast_food_belt.php
1D. Discuss how the Sacrament is a spiritual meal and that the deacons should not consume the remaining Sacrament bread after the meeting is over.
3C. 30 years ago on my mission in Bolivia, the members prepared me chicken soup, with the chicken head still in. Many members would suck the eyeballs out, as some of the tastier part of the chicken. Fortunately, I was able to get out from having to try it.
Good call, John. Let me clarify that there is no demonstrated causal link between religion and obesity. Religion is also highly correlated with low socio-economic status, which is more likely to be the culprit of the weight difference. Other than Utah, the South reigns supreme in all of the above categories.
Ron, I never did serve in Valenciennes proper.
Ron, I did serve in Valenciennes and did dine on occasion with Laurent – though he was living in Lille at the time. A more generous member I have yet to meet.
Salade au lard – a delicacy of the Ardennes when done properly but once served to us by a woman whose attempt badly failed:
– Large bunch of dandelion greens (these were gathered from a local field and not really washed: grit, dirt, who knows what else knowing French dogs)
– 6-8 big slices of bacon fat – just the fat- barely heated (it’s supposed to be fried until golden and crunchy)
– 8 boiled potatoes
– 1 shallot diced
– salt and pepper to taste
Mix it all together.
It was the middle of Summer, this was the main dish and I just remember the rock in my stomach as I tried swallow large slightly rancid chunks of fat mixed in with gritty greens.
2.
a.
Krusteaz “blueberry,” pancake mix. Make sure the chemical blueberries always stay hard and crunchy.
Brent,
Ew ew ew ew ew!
When I was at BYU, I loved no-bake cookies, pan-grilled steak from the Creamery, late-night pancakes, and bananas. I had a very good Mormon dinner last Sunday of grilled chicken, cheesy rice, and broccoli.