Mr Rathbone and myself decided to celebrate spending 57 years on this here planet by attempting to consume 57 Heinz based meals in a year.  Did we manage it?  YES!  It was loads of fun as we sourced lots of Heinz things that aren’t on the supermarket shelves here in the UK, and used lots of Heinz ingredients in movie star recipes.  Here’s a rundown of what we had, with the star-spangled dishes up first.

We kicked off on my birthday in December 2021 with Marlene Dietrich’s Hot Dogs and Champagne Mr R had bought this quite frankly DELICIOUS hot dog relish on the internet as a surprise gift to kick off the project.  Why is this not sold in the UK?  I have no idea!

This was followed a few days later with Edie Adams’ Boiled Ham and Vegetables Edie served with Mr Rathbone’s personalised Christmas ketchup.

Making Jon Pertwee’s Spaghetti Flan was an absolute hoot – surprisingly delicious too!

Betty Driver’s Lancashire Hot Pot was so good I made it the recipe of the month for February.

Jenny Agutter’s Courgette and Tomato Bake had to be tested for the Murder, She Cooked book, I used some Heinz chopped tomatoes so that was another for the Heinz 57 list.

Denver Pyle’s way of serving Baked Beans was fun for one.

I served a portion of Linda Gray’s Oven-Steamed Asian-Style Fish with a portion of charred hipsi cabbage with Heinz “Made for Veggies” Chilli and Miso Sauce. Delicious!

A Heinz promotional film featuring Charlie Drake was the inspiration for this Cottage Pie which included Heinz Beef Broth in the filling and tomato ketchup in the piped potato. It was so good, I’ll definitely be making this again.

Richard Basehart’s Frankfurters with Beans was a fab alternative to our usual Sunday fry-up brunch.

Those beans were Heinz, pimped up Sharon Gless style – her recipe is called The Blonde’s Beans

I also used some of Sharon’s Beans in a Diana Dors Bean Omelette.

I pimped up a Robert Quarry Texas Potato Salad with some Knoblauch Sauce that Mr R scored on the internet (we can’t get it here in the UK which is a shame because it is DELICIOUS).

A recent cook up of some Farrah Fawcett Pedigreed Sausages with Peppers (recipe coming soon to the blog) left me with a couple of delicious snags to use up.  Voila a sausage sandwich with hot chilli ketchup – a superb hangover buster.

We threw a big Heinz extravaganza dinner party way back in January that included Jane Asher’s Salmon Fishcakes (containing Heinz Salad Cream)

and Joanna Lumley’s Bean Pâté (main ingredient Baked Beans)

So, my friends, that makes 15 movie star numbers so far.  At that dinner party we also had prawn cocktail made with some super delicious cocktail sauce Mr R scored somewhere on the internet (not available here in the UK as far as I know)

A recipe from the Heinz Tomato Ketchup Cookbook for a really good Red Pepper Salad

and a weird dessert of Heinz baby food and Heinz baby biscuits – hahahahah!

I am counting that one as a 2 Heinz number so now the total is up to 19.

We’ve also shared the classic childhood favourite of spaghetti hoops on toast for a Sunday brunch several times over the last few months…

We have also had a “cowboy lunch” featuring beans with pork sausages.

Mr R bought me a fabulous vintage Heinz 57 cookbook for my birthday and the first dish I made from that was Beans En Cocotte…

The Heinz test kitchen version can be seen in the top left corner of the photo below, but I didn’t have any little dishes with lids so I made my version in a big ovenproof dish…

I see from my photo archives that on the day after my birthday in December we had a bacon sandwich with Heinz tomato ketchup for our hangovers

we’ve probably got through 3 or 4 bottles of this best of all Heinz products during this project so I won’t count them all here, BUT, I had some alongside bubble and squeak I made with some of Richard Arlen’s Buttered Cabbage a la Maryland so I’m counting that as another Movie Star Heinz 57 number…

We had Heinz Beef Ravioli on toast (of course) one day when we returned quite drunk from Jonny Trunk’s annual Groovy Record Fayre – Italians look away now!

When we woke up the next day we reminisced about the ravioli, and I said, “That was just what we needed” and Mr Rathbone said, “It tasted just as I remembered” – we both ate this as kids in the 1970s as did every other kid in the UK probably….

I managed to score a can of Heinz Christmas Dinner Soup as a Christmas gift for Mr R (it was a bit like trying to get a ticket for Glastonbury)

I thought it was really pretty delicious so was hoping they will do it again this year but I haven’t spotted it yet.  I fancified it up with parsley and something else I can’t remember – walnuts?!

Tomato soup can also go on the list of 57 because Mr R got his personalized Tonto can and I got my Brixie one, so the multiple cans of this we’ve both consumed in our 57th-year count as one.  This is my ultimate childhood comfort food, my mum always gave me this when I was feeling under the weather and I still love it.

I found a packet of Mexican Tomato Soup-in-a-cup in a huge bag full of stuff behind my sofa last week.  It was the bits and bobs I brought back from work on the day we were all sent home in 2020 because of the impending Covid crisis.   This served me well on a busy day working from home as I had what my friend Jane Fryers calls “a kettle lunch” I do so love soup in a cup.  It feels more comforting than in a bowl somehow.

All of those Heinz individual sauces were also in the work-lunch stash bag so I am bunging those in pride of place on the dining table for the last few weeks of the Heinz 57 challenge.  Got to get the Tartare Sauce in somehow.

I see that I nabbed a bottle of the mayonnaise with garlic and caramelized onion sometime in January.  It looks as though I’m having tuna and gherkins on toast with some here.  No shame!

The truffle mayonnaise was really tricky to get hold of but eventually, I scored some and used it in a Tom Selleck Tuna Melt (write-up coming soon).  This mayo is FABULOUS, I just had to sneak off and have some on toast, mid blog-post.

I made a batch of Phyllis Diller’s Garbage Soup last night

and popped these YEARS out-of-date Heinz Creationz Mexican Beanz in.  There were no ill effects…

Salad days are pretty much over here for a few months, but I sneaked in a few squirts of Heinz Zesty Lemon Salad Dressing before the days of wearing fingerless gloves in the house really draw in.

We had a lot of fun when we ordered in a HEINZ PIZZA from Dominos.

We ordered one with red and one with brown

but whaddya know THEY HAD RUN OUT OF KETCHUP.  How can this happen?!  Luckily, WE never run out of ketchup so we did our own drizzle.

At some point we had a Minions and Veg Hoops mash-up

That’s two Heinz products!

Oh, I almost forgot the Halloween hotdogs with Heinz Yellow Mustard

and I’ve just remembered we had Cream of Chicken Soup together one Saturday recently at mine

which put me in mind of that brilliant Victoria Waters “two soups” sketch.

Recently we knocked two curry related Heinz products on the head by having fish and chips and curry sauce (just as Mr R remembers chip shop curry sauce tasting, but not as runny)

and curry flavoured beans (do they have these in the USA I wonder) with our Sunday fry-up.  These were a very nostalgic taste, SULTANAS – school curry for me.

So I make that 38/57 we have either eaten together or I have rustled up for myself here at Silver Screen Suppers Towers.

Here’s what Mr Rathbone’s Wall of Heinz was looking like at the end of 2021.

He’s been working through some at his place when I haven’t been around to get the scorecard moving.  He LOVES chicken and sweetcorn soup

and as a regular consumer of soup at lunchtime, he’s also had:

Pea & Ham Soup

Mulligatawny Soup

Chicken and Bacon Big Soup

Lentil Soup

Beef and Vegetable Big Soup

Sausage and Vegetable Big Soup

Chicken Noodle Soup

and Scotch Broth.

Mr does love to pimp his Heinz.  He added some mushrooms to his tin of Spaghetti Bolognese.

and has also consumed regular spaghetti (on toast I hope)

I am going to count Spaghetti Hoops on Cheese on Toast as a unique meal (even though spaghetti hoops has already appeared in this list), because I have never thought of doing this and now I am going to.

Famous for his Bolognese, he gave the new Tomato Sauce for Bolognese a whirl

He also tried the new Tomato & Lentil Ragu sauce (he much preferred the bolognese sauce).

These are also pretty new I think, he scoffed the Mediterranean one and gave me the Moroccan one, which I can’t really remember much about, but I ate it!

We are up to 54!

Mr R went back to his childhood by getting out his Thomas the Tank books and jigsaw and having Thomas the Tank spaghetti on toast.

I had to buy THREE jars of this weird “closest I could get to India Relish” sweet relish

for Ernest Hemingway’s Wild West Hamburger (blog post coming soon…).  I only needed one teaspoon! But boy, oh boy, these were so good I know I’ll be making them again.

For the FINAL Heinz 57 it was Alphabetti Spaghetti!

Hahahahah – that was FUN!

Two products we remember from our youth that we wish we could still get are Haunted House

and Noodle Doodles but Mr R Senior got these brilliant dominoes out of his Heinz archives to show us. I just love them!

Eating 57 meals based around Heinz has not diminished our love of the brand.  There are still plenty of things in my sideboard

and in the “box of Heinz” to work my way through…

and I’m still hoping Mr Rathbone will attempt to recreate this iconic photo session.

Plus, there is a Charlie Drake liver recipe still awaiting my attention!

But I think that’s enough about Heinz for now, don’t you?!