Recipes fit for a Kansas yacht

Have you ever been yachting in Topeka, Kansas? I doubt that the answer is yes, but apparently Topeka has a yacht club despite its landlocked status.

Or had one, at least. The only reference I can easily find to the Central Yacht Mariners of Topeka is a record stating that the Topeka & Shawnee County Public Library has a copy of this same book-- C.U.P. of Goodies. The library dates it to 196?, which seems about right. I noticed that most of the business addresses in the book do not have zip codes-- including the Kansas City, Missouri, printing company. A few have them, though, so this undated book is probably from sometime near 1963, when zip codes were introduced.

This is one of those little books that has nearly as many pages of advertising, filler content from the publisher (like metric conversions, calorie tables, and those sappy little "recipes" explaining how to preserve a husband or children) as it does actual recipes from the Central Yacht Mariners, but I did find a few that melted my hard little heart (or that hardened it right back up again).

I melted for the homely little name of "Cracker Doos."

It's so unpretentious-- "Maybe you could make those little cracker doos I like." It also sounds a little disgusting, like the crackers were supposed to be housebroken, but.... now we've got cracker doos everywhere. And honestly, it feels a little nostalgic for me. They're just a slightly more involved version of the plate of graham crackers covered in frosting that I remember grandma offering me when I was five and the seemingly endless drive to her house was finally over.

It kind of breaks my heart a little to see how modest the cooks were, too. Sure, the title of this recipe is Five Bean Casserole, but if you check the directions...

Mrs. Harold Spear only uses four beans. She leaves out the green beans, but she's too modest to just straight-up send in her Four Bean Casserole and note that a can of green beans can be added as a variation. She sends the "official" version (though we have not idea where it came from) and quietly suggests the actual one she uses. I didn't expect such modesty from a yacht club!

You know my heart is set on finding new weirdo Jell-O recipes as often as I can, and the Fruit and Nut Salad had a little surprise.

While the repulsive yogurt/ mayo combination is not a huge surprise, I'm really not used to seeing peanut butter in a gelatin salad! I could maybe see it in a raspberry gelatin salad as a nod to peanut butter and jelly, but it seems plain weird with lemon gelatin mayonnaise yogurt.

Finally, the "For Junior Cooks Only" chapter has a recipe that hardens my heart and sets my teeth on edge... Not so much because it sounds nasty. It's just for sugar cookies. The issue is that it's a song.

I can just imagine trying to make this recipe with a kid. The fun of singing the song would get old after about three repetitions... and the urge to strangle someone with a dish towel would set in soon thereafter. Good luck baking these with a kid, too, as the instructions stop at flattening the dough balls and topping them with sugar. I assume they're supposed to be baked, but no word on the time or temperature. Are you supposed to just let the kid guess? That sounds like a recipe for ending up with anything from still-raw dough to charcoal! 

Then again, Kansas Yacht enthusiasts are clearly not the most practical bunch, so what should I have expected?