Rice and quick bread that defy categorization

It's time for another dip into one of my favorite recipe genres: the casserole! If it involves dumping a bunch of stuff in a casserole dish, throwing the whole mess into the oven, and seeing what comes out, well I am here for it! (Well, at least for reading about it). (And also, don't tell anyone, occasionally eating it.)

So what is our casserole cookbook this time?

Today's special is The Garden Club Cookbook Casseroles Including Breads (The Montgomery Federation of Garden Clubs, 1969). Granted, the cover doesn't look much like it belongs on a casserole cookbook, with a chowder-esque concoction next to an aspic filled with artichoke hearts, but the actual recipes inside are generally more casseroley.

Rice-based casseroles seem to be special favorites of the garden club, and the members were not too particular in their naming conventions.

Trying to eat more whole grains? If you don't read the recipe, you might think that Mrs. Lewie P. Henry's Brown Rice would be a good choice.

The "Brown Rice" is not actually the whole grain stuff we usually mean when we say brown rice, though. It's just regular white rice cooked in beef broth and soup. If the mushroom soup is the "cream of" variety, the rice isn't even likely to be that brown. (It might be a little darker if it's supposed to use golden mushroom soup, but who knows? Accuracy of titles and clarity of ingredient descriptions are not always priorities in this book.)

Speaking of accuracy of titles, well...

It seems to have escaped Mrs. B. M. Brown (Who I would imagine would have preferred to use an actual name rather than initials...) that fried rice is generally, well, fried. I guess she's counting browning the rice before it's boiled as the frying step, but fans of Chinese-style fried rice are likely to be disappointed when they discover the fried rice is just a pilaf...

...just as they are to be disappointed by Mrs. Durwood Jones's Chinese Molds.

I'm sorry. Perhaps it should be "Chinese" Molds. I'm pretty sure that people hoping for Chinese-style rice are not imagining rice baked in a cheesy custard (just as I imagine that people who are actually familiar with Chinese cooking would wonder how this recipe got paired with that name).

All of this is to say that the preceding dishes are enough to make this purportedly Pakistani rice pilau look downright authentic by comparison...

...even though Mrs. Hubert F. Oswalt "Americanized it to simplify and suit American tastes. The Pakistani version is extremely hot." Have no fear, though. You can always throw in whatever flotsam you have in the kitchen: "almonds, raisins, pineapple, mushrooms, peas or celery or combinations. Dish may be seasoned with 1/4 teaspoon ground cumin, cayenne pepper, cardamom, ginger, saffron, red hot pepper or turmeric or combinations to make it more authentic." Yes, it's the good old trash can approach to authentic foreign dishes! Slop in whatever you may have lying around in the kitchen and it's bound to be more authentic than the stripped-down rice cooked in chicken bouillon and yellow food coloring.

The book isn't all weird rice dishes, though. There's a highly questionable Lasagna.

How a crescent roll crust filled with Spam, eggs, and cheese translates into a lasagna, I have no idea. It looks more like a low-rent quiche to me.

Maybe it's best to just make a quick bread and call it a day.

I really hope this recipe means self-rising flour, or the Mayonnaise Bread is more likely to turn into greasy hockey pucks than biscuits.

Maybe Mrs. Gilbert Cooper prefers hockey pucks, though, as this book has taught me that I never know what to expect from the garden club. The members seem way more interested in planting things than in actually cooking and eating them.