The Farm Journal survey says...

Farm Journal's Best-Ever Recipes (Ed. Elise W. Manning, 1977) resulted from the Farm Journal surveying 250,000 cookbook users on their favorite recipes, then compiling the results into a cookbook. That's why it's titled "best-ever." 

The Farm Journal users apparently had pretty plain tastes, so there's not as much for me to cringe over as I might have hoped-- just lots of straightforward recipes for things like beef stew and dinner rolls and layer cakes.

The readers did branch out a little, though. The picture in the upper-left corner of the cover is their 1970s midwestern take on enchiladas.

I guess I should call them "American-Style Enchiladas." Rather than starting with tortillas, they use crepes-- and the filling mixes chili powder into spinach and spaghetti sauce, making this a kind-of fusion dish. At least it calls for a substantial amount of chili powder: more than two tablespoons! (Of course, it's spread among 30 enchiladas...) I love the touching testimonial in the headnote that "This dish looks so elegant I can't believe I made it."

The book offers up typical midwestern "salads," from the brightly-colored and shiny hunk of gelatin with vegetables...

(and topped with a cheese-horseradish dressing)...

...to the frozen salad that's so sweet the title admits that it's kind of a dessert.

Well, the headnote claims that "The youngsters like it as an after-school snack-- it's not too sweet," but kids aren't exactly known for being afraid of sweets! You better hope the concoction of heavy cream, mayonnaise, marshmallows, crystalized ginger, pecans, and fruit, fruit, and more fruit is well-liked by someone, though, as the recipe makes NINE QUARTS of frozen fruit-salad dessert.

At least the slices look pretty in cross-section.

And finally, to tie together the mid-century midwest's shaky grasp of the meaning of  "pizza" with its love of apple pie with cheese, there's an Apple Pie Pizza.

Nope-- the cheese isn't used as a topping, though having melted cheese on the top might be a reasonable expectation, given the recipe title. It's part of the crust. The crumb topping is more like part of an apple coffee cake, with powdered non-dairy creamer as part of the crumble, so I guess it's vaguely cheese-ish? Pair that with using a pizza pan as the vessel, and I guess that's all you needed to declare this a pizza. Nobody who is coming in for a meal after a day running the combine is going to argue with what you call it.

In any case, it's difficult to be too much of a grump with these recipes, as they come with such glowing recommendations in the headnotes. Somebody loved these recipes. Hell, even I kind of love them in my weird, roundabout grudging way.

Pillsbury does the mashed potato!

Something about Bake-Off Cook Book (Pillsbury, 1968) made me suspect that Pillsbury started selling potato flakes in the mid-to-late 1960s. Was it the puffy soufflé made with potato flakes?

Was it the "Super Supper" baked on a potato-flake-based crust?

Was it these biscuits that were made with not only potato flakes...

...but also a packet of gravy mix?

Maybe it was the fact that two different desserts put the potato element right in their titles.

If you're not excited about the Scotch Spud Cookies, maybe the Chocolate Butter Tater Cake is more your style.

Maybe it was the weird mixture of canned salmon, eggs, Italian salad dressing, pimiento, and green beans capped off with a coating of potato flakes and gravy mix combined with mayo.

You know, the one that looks like cat barf garnished with green pepper rings and mandarin orange slices for some reason.

Maybe it was the fact that even a wad of mashed potato flakes bound with eggs and flour and then rolled around in crushed cereal before being baked could make it into the official Bake-Off.

Why this inundation of weird potato flake recipes? It seemed like a new product must be the explanation, but I was wrong. They'd been around since the 1950s.

Maybe this was the first year potato flakes were allowed as a Bake-Off ingredient? Nope. Wrong again, as they were apparently part of "Bachelor's Bake" the preceding year. 

I guess the Pillsbury Bake-Off judges just really wanted potato flakes that year. Or maybe their brains were turning to mashed potatoes from looking at so many recipes? Not that I'd know anything about that....

Pennsylvania Dutch hunks!

I like the cover of the Pennsylvania Dutch Cooking (Conestoga Crafts, 1960) in part because the males are such hunks.

I don't mean "hunks" in the "Aren't they so hot?" way. I mean, the illustrations of men in this booklet remind me of hunks of wood. They're just so squat and static looking. The women and girls generally seem more animated, perhaps because they're usually cooking and the artist was better at drawing people who are doing something rather than posing. (And yes, I know the girl with the tureen looks pretty blocky too, but she's posing! That's generally a man's job in this book.)

As for the recipes, this time I was taken in by all the noodles, dumplings, and other usually-carby delights-- perhaps because I'm cold and it's soup weather. As the "usually carby" suggests, they're also not as carb-forward as I expected. Along with more traditional dumplings, the book recommends Egg Balls for Soup.

I'm not sure I ever saw a recipe that called for mixing hard-boiled egg yolks with raw egg yolks before, and these use only "enough flour to hold the [yolk] paste together," so they're more protein-forward than I would have expected.

And while the Liver Noodles are not simply liver cut into noodle-like strips and boiled...

...they are also more egg and liver than flour-- again, just enough flour to bind it all together, making these relatively low-carb for the time. I love that they were to be served "swimming in the soup."

While the book offers a traditional egg noodle recipe...

...it also encourages cooks to fill the noodles, so they're pretty similar to ravioli. 

I definitely didn't expect to find ravioli-sh pasta in a Pennsylvania Dutch cookbook.

I did find the carb-on-carb action I expected in the dessert section, though, in a pie that I just don't  understand.

Rivels are usually tiny dumplings made by beating flour into a salted egg until it gets crumbly and then boiling the crumbles into a soup. Here, rivels are more like bits of shortbread dough baked onto a pie crust. I'm baffled because why would you want shortbread bits baked onto a pie crust? Wouldn't the whole thing burn after a half-hour at 400°? Or is the "stew" instruction not a misspelling of "strew" as I'm assuming, and there's supposed to be some kind of fruit filling that is entirely missing from the recipe (and the entire page)? Would a couple tablespoons of molasses make a big difference in any of this? I have no idea, so I'm throwing this in as a mystery. In any case, work this mystery over in your head. If you work it enough, you'll earn the right to binge on whatever your favorite foods are, because...

Of course, you may end up looking kind of hunky if it's too hearty...

Microwaving some less-than-snacktastic nibbles

While I've already noted the too-complicated-to-bother-with-if-you're-just-microwaving-anyway recipes and the very sad diet recipes offered by A Guide to Microwave Cooking (Richland, 1981), I haven't given proper attention to the weird little snacks the book also offers. 

In addition to the usual English muffin pizza recipe (labeled "Individual Pizza Treats"), the book offers a sausage-y variation.

I've got no problems with the substitution of browned sausage (obviously not microwaved if it's browned) and green pepper for the pepperoni, but then the book suggests "plac[ing] a mound of sauerkraut over sauce for added flavor"! Can't say as I've ever wanted sauerkraut on an English muffin pizza, or that I can imagine the (often similarly picky) target audience for English muffin pizzas clamoring for this either....

If you want something to do with the pepperoni saved by not using it on a "Pizza Treat," the book offers an unusual appetizer idea.

Arrange those pepperoni slices in a pie plate, sprinkle with lemon juice, and microwave until they sizzle! I have to admit that my childhood self would have thought it was a brilliant idea to use straight-up pepperoni as an edible spoon for chip dip. (And then I would have wondered why I had indigestion half an hour later.)

The snacks aren't all quite so lowbrow, though. A Guide to Microwave Cooking also provides a recipe for Chicken Kiev Appetizers.

You can (as always!) correct me if I'm wrong, but I thought the whole attraction of Chicken Kiev (or perhaps now more properly "Chicken Kyiv") was that the chicken was covered in a crispy coating and concealed a warm pocket of herby melted butter, waiting to spill out when the diner cut it open. I don't think I'm being too much of a snob to suggest that chicken that was once wrapped around butter (or margarine!) before it was sliced into pieces so the filling could run out as the poultry was microwaved to rubbery doneness DOES NOT COUNT as Chicken Kyiv. Not even remotely.

I'm glad Richland was so creative with the snacking ideas, but I can't imagine these were ever too popular....

The Banana Bonanza Evinces Some Winces

Need a smile? Try saying The Dole Banana Bonanza (1977) five times fast. 

And maybe some of the recipes would bring a smile to your face too, like the Jamaican Cream Pie (with a brown butter rum crust) or the Banana Streusel Coffee Cake. You know you're not getting those recipes here, though. Nope. I'm not in the business of making anyone smile. I mostly prefer wincing.

That's why I'm posting a sad Slim Jane Salad:

Loaded with bean sprouts, soy sauce, banana, celery, cucumber, radishes, green onion, and despair.

Or maybe, for a more indulgent take on a weird salad, I'll post the Mystery Salad:

Surprise! Those aren't potatoes! They're boiled green bananas with potato salad ingredients. There's no real mystery here, though. Why use bananas instead of the standard potatoes? Dole wants to sell more bananas. Isn't that all the reason you need?

Maybe the most wince-inducing recipe will be the guacamole-adjacent Sally's Secret Dip.

Yep! The secret is that usually the lump in the avocado-and-cream-cheese dip is a piece of banana, but occasionally it's a bit of raw onion. There's a fun guessing game that might well call for a wince.

My favorite recipe, though, is arguably less weird than any of these. I winced a little just because of the short story the title conjured in my mind.

Somebody has been working hard all morning. Maybe welding together Firebird parts, or welding together Caprice parts while pretending they were actually Firebird parts, or whatever hard workers did in the late '70s. Then the noon whistle blows. Time for a hearty lunch! The worker has been dreaming of a big slab of cold meatloaf, or maybe thick layers of ham and cheese on rye. And then he opens up the battered lunchbox to find a Tupperware containing a banana spread with a dab of thyme-and-walnut cream cheese hiding amidst a jumble of lettuce, olives, carrot sticks, and a couple thin slices of cooked salami. That's a big wince, right there. And maybe it's a hint that the worker might want to pack his own damn lunch in the future.

And now I'm smiling a little at that thought.... 

Funny name: Soapy Edition

I've heard of bathtub gin. I've heard of recipes for bath bombs, soaks, salts, etc. But I am  not entirely sure what to make of this bathtub recipe from Second Helpings (Hospital Ladies Aid Milford-Whitinsville Regional Hospital, Milford Division, undated, but maybe from the 1970s).

What turns a chocolate cake into a chocolate bathtub cake? It's not big enough to fill a bathtub. I hope the cook doesn't make it in the bathtub. (The instructions certainly don't call for bathtub construction!) It doesn't seem to be a Chopped-style novelty, like a model bathtub constructed of tempered chocolate and filled with a chocolate-cake-based trifle that chefs need to incorporate into a main course (along with cardoon, lamb kidneys, and a boxed macaroni and cheese dinner). I have no idea. I suspect that the cook hopes putting "bathtub" in the title will worry other diners enough that there will be a few extra leftover slices to savor later....

The bar for perfection is pretty low

Is the high cost of living getting you down? Never fear! I know a cookbook that can help you cook an entire meal for just two cents! The back cover promises this.

Yes, "An entire meal cooked for 2 cents cuts the 'High Cost of Living.'" (I'm not sure why it's capitalized this way or why "High Cost of Living" is in quotation marks, but just go with it.) "What is this wonder?" you may ask.

It's the New Perfection CookBook (undated, but the stove looks similar to one in this 1922 ad, so I'm going to say 1920s, though I might be able to get a more exact date if I had the patience to go down a rabbit hole of finding the dates of production for every single New Perfection item this booklet advertises, such as the iron-heating plate).

The "For Best Results Use 'Pearl' Oil" printed very lightly on the bottom should clue you in that this is an oil-fueled stove, one that is operated "generally like ... a lamp, and quite as simple" followed by pages of instructions on wick care, ways to prevent and fix oil leaks, instructions on draining the feed pipe, etc. Cooking for two cents sounds less and less appealing, never mind "simple."

The recipes are mostly for baked goods-- cakes, cookies, puddings, pies, breads. Those less familiar with terms for old-timey cooking utensils might be alarmed by the "Spider Corn Cake."

The instructions to "Melt the butter in a hot spider" should probably tip you off that it's just a name for a type of pan that has little legs on the bottom so it can cook above a flame. No arachnids are involved!

There are also recipes for things to do with leftovers, like stretching out that last 3/4 cup of chopped meat or fish...

...by scalloping it with hard-boiled eggs and cracker crumbs under a pint of white sauce.

And what old-timey collection would be complete without recipes for invalids, like good old Arrowroot Gruel?

Yay! Water thickened with a flavorless powder! Cream or milk may be added if the cook is feeling extravagant.

So... Not the most exciting recipe collection, but certainly fun, if for no other reason than that it allows me to spend an afternoon feeling grateful that I don't have to spend it posing in a gingham jumper handing out biscuits and pretending that I'm downright stoked to have an appliance that requires wick care and regular feed pipe drainage, all for the low price of two cents a meal and the possibility it could spring a fuel leak at any time.

Waiting out winter with cashews, root veggies, and disappointingly-flavored butterfat

Welcome to February. 😬 The Political Palate (The Bloodroot Collective (Betsey Beaven, Noel Giordano, Selma Miriam, and Pat Shea), 1980) says that late winter officially began on February 2, so we're on the back half of the cold weather season! It may eventually end.

The book suggests warming up with some Cashew Chili.

I'm impressed that this includes multiple seasonings-- not just chili powder but also cumin and oregano (though I'm a little iffy on basil in chili). There's no real explanation for the presence of cashews, but my guess is that they're supposed to stand in for the beef that's usually found in chili. I'm waaaay less enthused about the raisins, though. It would be so disconcerting to be eating a bowl of chili and bite into an intensely sweet spot!

And just because it's late winter, that doesn't mean you should skip out on the salad course. Winter is root vegetable season, so the book suggests shredding some.

This salad involves eating shredded beets... So that's gonna be a hard pass from me. (A topping of raw onion doesn't help matters.)

And for dessert, the book offers one of those staples of '70s-style health food: carob! This time, it's in cheesecake.

In this case, the carob disappointingly substituting for cocoa powder can be bolstered by a disappointing substitute for coffee like Pero or Bambu. At least the recipe calls for real cream cheese and heavy cream-- but that just makes this seem like a disappointing waste of dairy fat. But hey-- it's late winter! Everybody-- especially health foodists-- needs insulation at this point. I think I'm going to go back into hibernation and hope late winter will end early.