Mysteries of the Peanut's Y's Mice

Today's book, Three Y's Mice on Cooking was bit of a mystery when I picked it up. What are "Y's Mice"? 

A quick look inside the cover revealed that this cookbook was a fundraiser for Young Women's Christian Association, Bristol Tennessee-Virginia, so the "Y" in the title is the YWCA. Then I wondered what "Tennessee-Virginia" was, and learned that Bristol is a city the states share. Then I tried to track down the date for this book. The cover page brags that this is from Walter's Publishing Company, which has been "serving Church, School, and Civic Organizations for over 25 years." Walter's Publishing Company was founded in 1939, so I assumed that meant that this was from the mid-1960s. After all, if Walter's had been around for substantially longer than 25 years, it probably would have said for over 30 or 35 (or 40, 45, etc.) years, right? That mid-'60s guess is wrong, though, as this book has a recipe for Watergate Salad, which puts it squarely in the mid-1970s. The mysteries of why Walter's makes such modest brags and why it loves random capitalization remain.

Let's move on from the mysteries of the book to a menu of mayhem, though! First, we need a good appetizer.

An appetizer, anyway. I know just about everybody loves bacon, but it seems pretty underwhelming to get it wrapped around a saltine. (And even more so when you see that the recipe encourages cooks to make these a day or two ahead of time, then reheat them. I can't help but imagine the saltine will end up being stale-tasting at best and a bit soggy at worst, regardless of any reheating efforts.) 

Maybe it's best to just get on to the soup.

You might think I've accidentally uploaded a dip recipe when I meant to post a soup (as this recipe is extremely similar to the popular Velveeta and Ro-Tel Queso dip). I assure you, this is in the soup section. Plus, I guess the added stick of oleo makes it runnier, so maybe that is supposed to make it soup? (It will also help make this one of the greasiest soups you're ever likely to eat.)

We probably should just move on to the main course before you fill up on bacon, oleo, and Velveeta. How about a meat loaf?

Another mystery: What makes this a Homemaker's Meat Loaf? Maybe it's that this one uses ground pork with chopped hot dogs and ham instead of the more traditional ground beef, so bored homemakers will get to spend some time mixing pork products for a change? Maybe it's the inclusion of raisins, so homemakers can look forward to expressions of surprise when the kids unexpectedly hit a pocket of dried fruit? Who knows? We should probably have a few more veggies, though, beyond just a bit of canned tomato with jalapeno in the soup and a fragment of chopped carrot in the meat loaf.

Creamed Onions with Peanut's what? I guess I'm wandering further into the mystery zone again, trying to figure out what belongs to Peanut. (If the recipe writer thought that apostrophes were simply meant to warn readers of an impending -s, I'd think the onions would have gotten an apostrophe too!)

We'll round things out with a dessert mystery that is only a mystery to me because I'm not a southerner.

I wondered if Pig Picking Cake had sausage in it. Nope! Well, then, what's with the name? Was it supposed to be a quick cake to make early in the day, before a trip to the barnyard to pick out which hogs to slaughter, so there would be something waiting when the family came home? Not as far as I could tell, as this has no explanation. A quick internet search, however, showed that the name is no mystery to southerners. This is apparently a popular dessert at barbecues where an entire pig is roasted, so people eat the cake when they're done picking the meat off the pig. (It's apparently usually written as "Pig Pickin' Cake," too. Maybe Linda Crowe was worried about the people of Bristol seeming too uneducated after that whole "Creamed Onions with Peanut's" debacle, so she decided to be more formal and add the "g.")

I had no idea that this little booklet would send me down so many rabbit holes of speculation, but it was an interesting way to spend an afternoon... way more interesting than wrapping saltines in bacon or chopping up hot dogs and ham. The pork levels in this menu make me think that Pig Picking Cake is the right dessert for the menu after all, even if there's not an actual whole hog involved.