The best what, exactly?

The Best from the Blade Cookbooks (edited by Mary Alice Powell for the Toledo Blade newspaper, 1960) starts out on a vaguely scolding note, with the first page noting "it is hoped that this edition will help those homemakers who have neglected to save copies of the annual Blade cookbooks." Got to love the judgmental tone, as if every homemaker is supposed to not only keep the sinks shiny clean, keep the kids from murdering each other over whose turn it is to play with the hula hoop, have the pot roast and scalloped potatoes ready when dad gets home (and be wearing pearls and high heels for him!), etc., but also to collect and save all the annual cookbooks from the newspaper. (And having been 12 years old and/or living in another state a decade ago when the first cookbook came out is probably not an excuse. Come on, you lazy homemakers!)

Of course, maybe the homemakers just weren't very excited by the recipes themselves, which often have a "just throw a bunch of shit together and see what happens" ethos.

Sunday Supper Specialty counts on people having had a pretty heavy Sunday dinner, apparently, so no one will have too many objections to canned mushrooms, pimiento, and peas mixed with hard cooked eggs into a white sauce and sloshed over bed of greasy Chinese noodles.

They might not have been particularly smitten by the idea of a chicken-and-avocado salad heaped atop a wedge of cantaloupe.

Am I out of line in wondering what makes Hearty Summer Delite Salad a summer salad (or a "delite")? There's no real season for canned beets or pickles, and cauliflower and onions are cold season crops. So I guess throwing away a couple avocados on this mess of canned goods, French dressing, and American cheese is what makes it summery?

Of course, my favorite of this line of random things mixed up and served combines random ingredients with time-consuming precision.

It's not bad enough that you have to try to eat chicken, walnuts, apple, and onion in cream cheese; the concoction has to be balanced on top of carefully halved cherry tomatoes!

I have to say, though, that those homemakers who were wise enough to plan ahead and save all the Blade cookbook supplements over the years missed out on something good in the officially printed and bound book: the fabulous early-sixties-style sketches gracing the section dividers.

I can never have too many pictures of ghostly oil and vinegar sets posing in front of wood-grained bowls as a cucumber launches an olive at them....

And the Appetizers and Hors d'Oevres section has one of those cheese ball planets being orbited by olive-and-cheese or olive-and-bacon moons. What more could anyone ask?

Well, aside from better recipes... and I'm really only pretending to complain about the recipes. You must love this stuff as much as I do if you're still playing along at home. Just try not to openly admit it.