Natural?

The premise for Feasting Naturally from Your Own Recipes (Mary Ann Pickard, 1980-- mine from the June 1982 fifth printing, but feels like it's from the 1970s) is that the author will tell you how to convert the presumably unhealthy recipes you already use into more nutritious fare. 

Honestly, though, Pickard seems to lose interest in this premise pretty quickly. There are a few pages at the beginning explaining things like how to sub in honey for regular sugar or whole wheat flour for white flour, and a very few sample recipes demonstrating the techniques, but it's all pretty quickly abandoned. Most of the book is just the writer's own recipes, and sometimes it's difficult to figure out what her idea of "natural" actually is, aside from NO REGULAR REFINED SUGAR. She is very consistent about telling readers to use fructose (which is likely to horrify modern readers, and which even the author admits is not actually a natural food in its refined form), honey, pure maple syrup, date sugar, or fruit juice concentrate instead of regular granulated, powdered, or brown sugar. Otherwise, the ideology is pretty vague. 

The book often seems like it might be an old-school vegetarian book, with recipes like Lentil-Cheese Bake.

At least it's very straightforward, with nothing but the star ingredients, a bit of salt and onion, and those inescapable stars of 1970s health food, sunflower seeds.

Some of the vegetarian recipes call for ingredients that don't really seem to fit the '70s idea of health food, like this Vegetable Stew featuring canned cream of celery soup. 

Have you ever craved cream of celery with raisins in it? Me neither.

But then recipes for fish pop up, like the Creamy Tuna Surprise.

Yes, you should be skeptical of any old recipes with "surprise" in the title, as this features a commingling of canned tuna and pineapple with cream cheese, onion, two types of peas, and the inescapable sunflower seeds. Or, "for an unusual creamy soup," the cook can cut down the thickener in the recipe and serve this as a thinner mess. 

So maybe the cookbook is pescatarian? Nope-- I spot a recipe for Cheesy Chicken and Rice Casserole.

And while this casserole is filled with the health-food standbys of brown rice and broccoli, it's topped with Doritos! Pickard actually names the big brand, too-- not some health-food-wannabe company that makes snacks with "natural" ingredients to try to replicate the big names-- but actual Doritos! Although the author clearly has it in for sugar, she doesn't seem as worried about "harmful flavorings, colorings, additives, or preservatives" as the back cover would seem to suggest. I guess part of the ethos of the book is admitting we've all got to find our little pleasures somewhere... They just better not be the regular, mainstream versions of refined sugar!