Old school casseroles

 I am always excited to find books from the "Favorite Recipes of Home Economics Teachers" series because 1. They have LOTS of recipes and 2. Home ec teachers had the weirdest ideas about made for a good recipe. I remember taking one home ec class in which we were required to make a salad out of cold fast-food French fries slathered in mayo. (Okay, I mentioned this before, but it was once and more than six years ago, so I feel justified in once again registering my bemusement.) What was the point of the thing? Fries are best hot and crispy! Salads are supposed to be nutritious (or at the very least, allow you to pretend that something delicious but clearly unhealthy-- like a mound of cream cheese sweetened with Jell-O and Cool Whip-- is really nutritious because it has a few flecks of canned pineapple or something)! What's the point of gross, cold fries in gloppy mayo as a "salad"? Only home ec teachers seem to know, and they never successfully conveyed that information to me.

So of course I was thrilled to spend an afternoon pawing through the collision of one of my favorite recipe genres-- casseroles!-- with one of my favorite types of cookbooks: Favorite Recipes of Home Economics Teachers: Casseroles Including Breads (1965).

The recipes did not disappoint in their haste to throw together entire ranges of disparate ingredients for no particular reason. Sometimes, I think the home ec teachers may simply have been staving off boredom by throwing in a little something extra. Sick of Tuna-Noodle Casserole?

You might think I'm going to suggest that using salmon instead of tuna in this typical recipe is the innovation, but nope! Look more carefully at the topping. 

That's right! Peanut butter breadcrumbs! Who doesn't love a good PB&S?

The home ec teachers who had a little more money to burn could make their tuna casseroles weird in an entirely different way.

Just throw a layer of avocadoes under the peas and the tuna-chicken soup mixture! Using corn chips on the top instead of the usual noodles will continue the theme to give it a vaguely Mexican vibe despite the lack of spices, maybe? Who knows? It's not Tuna Noodle Casserole, so quit whining, Frank!

There are also recipe titles that seem designed to get the family's hopes up, only to dash them when it's actually dinner time. Tired of canned fish? Well, how about a British pub classic instead?

Hear that it's Fish and Chips night, then sit down at the table to discover that there are no flaky batter-dipped fillets emerging golden brown from the fryer, taking their place next to some crispy fresh-cut fries. Nope. This Fish and Chips consists of potato chips on top of a mixture of canned tuna, cream of mushroom soup, hard-cooked eggs, and still more potato chips, for those who prefer them mushy rather than crispy. Yay!

Or if the family was entirely sick of canned fish in casseroles, the cook could always go to the "Including Breads" part of the book for this classic:

I am no authority on southern cornbread, but I am pretty sure it doesn't usually have salmon in it.

The book is not all canned fish recipes, of course. There are plenty of let's-just-throw-it-all-together-and-see-what-happens recipes. Can't decide whether to serve beans seasoned with bacon, pizza, or a mini-Thanksgiving? Why not have all three?

Can't decide whether you want spaghetti with a meaty tomato sauce or hot dogs cooked in sauerkraut for dinner? Just make your usual sauce with chili powder instead of Italian seasonings and then...

...add sauerkraut and frankfurter chunks for the last few minutes! Then maybe serve it on spaghetti? Or in hot dog buns? Who the hell knows? Just use whatever you've got left in the kitchen that didn't already go into the Sauerkraut and Beef Special.

Need a way to use up beef, apples, golden raisins, Parmesan cheese, and a bag of frozen peas and carrots?

Throw it all together with a little curry powder so you can claim it's curry! Then dump a cornbread mix with chunks of Cheddar on top of the whole thing so you can claim it's Mexican if the kids object to curry! What could possibly go wrong?

And once the family is sick of all the random junk thrown together, try to make it up to them with a pie. Grandma always said Grandpa would happily eat "cow flop" if she put it in a pie shell, so this should look gourmet by comparison:

Ham, onions and eggs in a pie shell sounds like a middling quiche. (No dairy fat? Only middling, then.) Ham, onions, eggs, and a whole head of lettuce, though? WTF?

I am pretty sure I'm never quite going to figure out the thought processes of home ec teachers, but it's sure a lot of fun wondering just what they were thinking. Now, go to your kitchen and figure out the best way to casserolify the first seven ingredients you see. Looks like I'm making Rotini Oatmeal Cocoa Powder Carrot Clementine Green Pepper Silken Tofu Surprise!