A Barrage of Beans from Mary Margaret McBride

Now that I've finally kind of got a handle on turning my in-person classes into online classes and the emails from students and administrators have slowed from their initial drink from the fire hose intensity, I'm trying to enjoy quarantine by checking out a book I picked up just before all of this hit. Luckily, it's a doorstop of a book, so it should keep me happy for a while.

Okay, you probably can't tell how massive Mary Margaret McBride's Encyclopedia of Cooking Deluxe Illustrated Edition (1959) is just from the cover, so here's a picture from the side.

My Half Price Books must not have imagined anyone would want to wrestle with (much less store) approximately 1500 pages of recipes (not counting the index and the extra pages for recording one's own recipes), so I got it for $5! (The cheapest listings I see online are ten times that.)

Of course, I haven't had time to look at all those pages, but since everyone is looking for pantry recipes now, I thought the "Bean Bakes for Parties and Meals" might be the right chapter. Well, it's right if you count staying at home as a party, which I totally do! If you're down to cans of beans, the book has all kinds of ways to doctor them up, as grandma used to say.

If you still have a few fresh veggies and some bacon, there's Boston Bean Casserole.

If you a bit of syrup and ham, well, there's Baked Beans with Ham and Syrup.

Use corn or maple syrup! Bonus points for flexibility.

If you're down to just processed meats and condiments, there's Baked Beans with Meat.

If you're a guy living alone and want to pretend that this is somehow made more exciting by eating canned beans, there's Bachelors' Beef and Beans.

(I guess there's nobody to get bent out of shape when the flatulence sets in.)

If you have lots of cans (baked beans, kidney beans, and luncheon meat!) and you want to imagine you can actually invite people over, there's Surprise Company Special.

The surprise company may just be thankful that they are imaginary.

If you're just about ready to snap, there's Snappy Baked Beans.

Yay for beans, ketchup, cookies, and a hot dog.

And if you want to pretend you're going on a fun trip to the Southwest, try Texas Bean Bake.

I'm not sure curry powder in kidney beans and deviled ham is the first thing that comes to mind when I think of Texas, but who knows what the outside world is like anymore? I'm just happy that I'll have this book as a souvenir of being able to go on mini-vacations to the bookstore.