Recipes from the straight and narrow

I've heard the south side of Chicago is the baddest part of town. I don't think the same could be said of the Southside Christian Church in Muncie, Indiana.

Two Hundred Tasty Treats (Christian Women's Fellowship of Southside Christian church, undated, but addresses have no zip codes and phone numbers are two letters and five numbers, so I'd guess sometime in the '50s or early '60s) suggests this is a pretty straitlaced place.

Want a nice punch recipe to make your party more memorable (or maybe less memorable, depending on how many cups the guests drink)?

Tough. The above recipe is the entirety of the "Beverages and Sandwiches" chapter. Unless your guests want a big cup of sandwich spread, you'll have to get your sin-juice recipe elsewhere.

Want some fancy hors d'oeuvres for the party?

Well, there's no point in putting on airs. This is the whole chapter, so you can either make popcorn balls or the ubiquitous Lipton onion dip.

And if you want some luxurious seafood recipes, well...

That's the full seafood chapter. If canned tuna sounds luxurious, you've hit the jackpot. Otherwise, you're clearly not tithing enough and you've got too much money left over to spend on frivolities.

The women's fellowship really loved to bake, though, so the cakes and frostings section is filled. Even here, though, they're pretty uptight. I've seen the Bible Cake recipe dozens of times-- to the point where I almost believe it was a requirement for all those old church cookbooks.

They almost always have the actual ingredients listed after the Bible verses, though. That's not the case here. If you don't have your verses memorized, the Christian Women's Fellowship expects you to haul out the Bible to figure out the recipe.

Looks like the south side of Muncie is the austerest part of town.