Corn and dogs for a crowd

It's Super Bowl weekend! I think! I am not exactly a sports fan but the buildup has reached the point that even I have noticed it, so this thing must be pretty soon. I have no interest in the actual game but want an excuse to party, so every year I make some Morningstar Farms "wings" and watch a movie that could be considered thematically appropriate if you squint at it hard enough. One year it was Australian horror movie Razorback about a wild boar on a rampage in the outback. People call footballs pigskins, right? So a pig movie fits.

Since this is a big party weekend, I thought I'd dip back into Good Housekeeping's Cook Books (1958) "Company Meals and Buffets" booklet to see what it recommended to feed to a crowd. The answer appears to be hot dogs and corn-- lots of hot dogs and corn. (Sorry the recipes are photos rather than scans-- the book is too big to lay flat on a scanner and I don't want to cut it up!)

If you want to defy the early February date and pretend you're having a beach party, Weiner-Corn-and-Potato Bake is the way to go. It requires baking massive amounts of corn, white and sweet potatoes, and hot dogs together and drenching the whole thing with butter and parsley. This actually sounds pretty good-- a bit of summer in the middle of winter.

If you want to acknowledge that it's still winter and warm everyone up with a steaming hot bowl of comfort food, there's Corn-Doggie Chowder: creamed corn, bacon, potatoes, and again, a whole mess of hot dogs.

Or, if you want to go the totally bizarre route (as always, my favorite), there's the Club-Supper Quickie: enough franks, onions, canned spaghetti, canned corn, and Parmesan cheese to feed a whole army of fans with empty bellies and no taste buds!

Have a happy Super Bowl weekend-- just avoid getting buried under pounds and pounds of weiners!