Graham abuse

Summer means S'More season! Kids love the opportunity to set marshmallows ablaze and then menace everyone within a half-mile radius with their impromptu torches. The adults in the vicinity don't care because they're too busy surreptitiously scarfing down the chocolate. What gets left out of the party?

The graham crackers. With their stodgy image as the boring bread on a heavenly sandwich, they don't get nearly the same love and attention. What to do with these lonely, half-crushed S'Mores leftovers?

Good Housekeeping's "Quick 'N' Easy" cook-booklet (from the 1958 Good Housekeeping's Cook Books collection) suggests this frozen dessert... salad. (This is probably yet another case of thinking that calling a mound of jiggling sugar a "salad" will somehow make it healthier.)

If graham crackers could have a choice, I'm pretty sure they would they rather be paired with a flaming marshmallow and a cooling chocolate bar than serve as the frozen case for a fruit-cocktail-and-mayonnaise-based dessalad. Salert? (Okay, I have clearly not figured out a good portmanteau word to combine "salad" and "dessert.")

Doing time in a frozen "salad" looks like a day in the book section of the antique mall (or whatever activity you non-weirdos consider to be fun) compared to this next recipe (whose origins are a bit of a mystery. I got a little envelope full of recipe cards with "For you-- our valued customer...a package of DIL-ICIOUS IDEAS from the folks at DILS" written on it in a grab bag full of old recipes. There's no date, but my best sleuthing suggests these are from a store called (surprisingly enough) Dils Brothers & Company Department Store. It was in Parkersburg, WV, and closed in 1988, so this must be pre-1988, at least, if my sleuthing is correct):

I will admit, nothing that starts with 2 to 2-1/2 pounds of ham loaf mix is going to be a dish I will consider promising. Mixing it with graham cracker crumbs and bathing it in a slime composed of pineapple, vinegar, cloves, Karo syrup, and dry mustard upon its removal from the oven makes me want to run for the hills! 

If the graham crackers have any sense, they will play dead and be forgotten by the campfire so some nice little skunks and raccoons can gobble them up. Better that fate than being tossed into these recipes!

Have a great weekend, and respect the graham cracker!