The singular ladies of Saint Edward's

Since I'm not doing much thrifting/ antiquing right now, that means I've been digging through mounds of accumulated books that I didn't have a chance to look at before. I'm glad I have the chance, as I recently unearthed a great regional cookbook my little sister sent me at some point when I must have been busy grading papers or setting up classes. (Well, in truth, I wrote this in June and I am once again grading like crazy, but do me a favor and pretend that I am now enjoying leisurely warm fall afternoons reading old cookbooks on my back porch that is exactly large enough to accommodate my folding chair. At least I can have fun somewhere, even if it's in someone else's imagination.)

Anyway, here's Saint Edward's Cookbook (undated, but I'll guess it's from the 1970s). Saint Edward's must really have expected people in the area to know about the organization on their own because the book offers very few clues. Where is/was Saint Edward's? Is/was it a church or a school? What were they hoping to accomplish with a cookbook? Usually there's at least half a page about the organization and its cause, but this just has a list of chairs and committee members without even naming what committee they were on(!), so I'm starting this one off feeling a bit lost. The name Saint Edward's is common enough that I don't have the interest or patience to use the cover art and list of members to try to figure it out, so this one will remain a bit of a mystery.

In any case, I love that the women of Saint Edward's have their own particular way of looking at the world, and it comes through in their recipes. For example, when I see a recipe that starts out by calling for cake and pistachio pudding mixes and ends with maraschino cherries and cinnamon sugar, I expect it to be a cake recipe.

Nope! This is Pistachio Bread. It's clearly bread and not a cake because it's baked in loaf pans. (Eating this as bread means there will still be room for dessert!)

And if you might want cake for dessert since the bread was clearly not cake, well, the cake may be a bit unusual.

Popcorn balls become Popcorn Cake if the sugary corn is molded in an angel food cake pan, right?

I think I sense a bit of resistance on that question, so let's try this again. Popcorn balls become Popcorn Cake if the sugary corn is molded in an angel food cake pan, right?

Bonus points if the "cake" is set in the refrigerator and becomes so dense that it has to be cut with an electric knife.

The ladies of Saint Edward's actually realized they were a little different. They'd admit to liking their meatballs crazy--

--by which they meant soaked in onion soup mix, sauerkraut, cranberry sauce, chili sauce, and brown sugar. Yep. That's crazy.

Hell, they even sliced their own baby food.

Just kidding! They didn't actually make solid baby food and then have to cut it up again so the babies could eat it. Baby Food Slices were cookies presumably meant for people with teeth, and the recipe writer just thought the best way to make the cookies sound appealing was to advertise that they were packed with sweet, sweet baby food. Yum!

These ladies liked to save money, too. The most intriguing recipes I found suggested that people loved Baileys Irish Cream-- all creamy and beige-- but not Baileys' prices-- so they made their own versions!

The homemade version is kind of like a chocolate egg nog mixed with your favorite liquor.

And lest you think only the younger women were up to these high jinks, Grandma was in on it too.

And grandma liked it so much that the "shelf life" of the mixture could never be determined....

I still don't know a lot about Saint Edward's, but I am really happy I got a chance to discover just how much the women's committee loved sugar in all its many forms.