Here a carb! There a carb! Everywhere a carb carb!

I love terrible gelatin molds and 10,000 uses for cream of mushroom soup (or both together)! The food isn't the only attraction, though, as cookbooks send us a picture of the culture. It's one thing to realize that we spend a much lower proportion of our incomes on food now than people did in the 1960s, or to know that obesity was much lower in the 1960s than it is now, but it's another thing to see what that means in terms of recipes.

That's all a very fancy way of saying that when I read through Favorite Recipes of Home Economics Teachers: Casseroles Including Breads (1965), I was surprised at how hard so many of the recipes doubled down on carbs. So many people are on low-carb diets now (and in the past, as we saw on Wednesday!) that it was a bit jarring to see recipes that bragged about extra carbs right in the recipe name:

That's right-- Double Noodle Casserole has carbs from BOTH the main mid-century noodle groups: narrow noodles (presumably egg noodles) AND chow mein noodles, and it wants cooks to know this.

Some are a bit more subtle.

Only noodles get the headline in Chicken Noodle Casserole, but the concoction also has a quarter-loaf of bread in the filling and topping.

And while the Chicken and Tiny Biscuits has the promised biscuits...

...they also rest on a layer of chicken-y rice. Double carbs again!

And back in the time before Karen was known for calling the manager...

...she called in the carbs, mixing an entire box of macaroni (ground, for some reason, in the first step?) with a cup and a half of soda crackers.

Of course, when initial meals were so carb-heavy (to help stretch the budget AND to make sure all 3.625 kids had something to eat so they wouldn't waste away to nothing!), there were plenty of leftover carbs for the casseroles too.

How about double potatoes (leftover mashed PLUS chip crumbs!) mixed with noodles?

Or maybe, if your family is heartily sick of carbs, just tell them dinner will be a Cheese Dream!

Don't mention that the dream has three times as many carbs as cheese: three cups each of rice, macaroni, AND bread crumbs.

Those 1960s home ec teachers knew budgets had to stretch and carbs were cheap. I can't really blame them. 

(Bonus secret: One of my favorite food memories from childhood is being left to my own devices for lunch one day and having macaroni and cheese with a blueberry muffin. Double carb heaven!)