Dieting with the home ec teachers

I hope you're not sick of wacky diet recipes. If you are-- too bad! I'm not. Today's diet recipes are from one of my favorite sources-- home ec teachers:

Dieting to Stay Fit (1978) covers a whole spectrum of concerns. There's a chapter on low-calorie recipes, of course, but there is also one for weight gain recipes. Some chapters seem a bit dated (low-cholesterol recipes), while others match current diet trends (high protein, natural foods).

I'm a little bit confused about how the recipes were categorized, though. For example, the next two recipes are from two different chapters: one from the low-cal chapter and one from the weight gain chapter. Which one is which?

Given that I just told you I was confused about how the home-ec teachers decided which recipes should go in which chapters, I hope you guessed correctly. That's right: the Hawaiian Cool-It, full of sugary Hawaiian Punch, ginger ale, and fruit juices, is the low-cal recipe. It doesn't even use diet ginger ale! Maybe the fact that it doesn't call for a hearty pour of straight-up corn syrup and/or heavy cream makes it diet?

The recipe for lean chicken breasts stir-fried in minimal oil with non-starchy vegetables is billed as a weight gain formula. It even has a reasonable serving size, dividing the two chicken breasts among four people! Maybe Susie Devoll forgot to add that the whole thing is supposed to be served on top of an enormous mound of fried noodles and/or rice?

Not all of the categorizations defy logic, though. I'll bet you can guess what chapter this recipe comes from:

Yep, "Hip Padder Bars" are from the weight gain chapter. I'm not sure how caramels, German chocolate cake mix, margarine, and chocolate chips will help with the "fit" lifestyle the title suggests, but they are pretty certain to add some padding!

I may have been most fascinated with the high protein chapter because that's a current diet trend and I always wonder how people will cram extra protein anywhere they can find a space. Here's an idea that I still see in "new" recipes:

Turn the carby pizza crust into something else. I see chicken breasts as the go-to option today, but Meat-zza Pie uses meatloaf as the "crust." (I think I would have minded meat loaf a lot less as a kid if my mom had topped it like a pizza!)

Other high-protein recipes, however, seem largely abandoned:

Nutritious Lemonade, anyone? Or even better, to reflect the egginess of this recipe, "Lemon Nog"?

No matter the name, I think I'll pass.

Happy Wednesday, and you have my permission to work on padding those hips!