A cookbook that tells you what to do if you've got too much pig or not enough of it

I get nervous whenever I pick up a community cookbook titled Cook Book: Favorite Recipes from Our Best Cooks. It's got to be one of the most common titles, and a lot of them even use the same levitating cow butt and vegetable wedding chapter dividers (as this one does), so it can be really tough to know whether I'm picking up a new-to-me cookbook when I see one. I didn't remember having anything from Mabie Grade School Parents (Mabie, West Virginia, 1975), so I took a chance on this version, and as far as I can tell, I didn't already have it.

I kind of expected a cookbook from West Virginia to be full of rather down-home, practical, inexpensive recipes, and this one delivered.

People with a taste for tea and no tea budget can still make Sassafras Tea (as long as they can find a sassafras tree).

People with big cuts of pork to store and too little freezer space to accommodate them can find advice on dry curing.

And those with the opposite problem-- no meat budget-- can find a recipe for a Meatless Roast.

It's mostly cottage cheese, carrots, and bread crumbs, but it will be something to put on the table.

There are even non-food recipes. If you can't afford fancy soap, you can make No Boil Lye Soap.

Well, you can as long as you store any extra lard from the hog you sugar cured....

Plus, there are plenty of ways to make the main dish stretch by adding a little extra flour, like Old German Chicken Dinner.

I'm pretty used to seeing recipes for chicken pies with a layer of biscuit dough as the top crust, but this is the first time I've seen two layers of biscuit dough-- one in the middle and one on top! (Considering this entire thing is covered with water and seasoned with nothing but salt and pepper, I imagine the dough ends up as the sodden, flavorless dumplings my mom used to love to make, but hey-- it is cheap!)

Hell, even the WV version of Tater Tot Casserole has a budget treatment. The brand name Tater Tots are replaced with cheaper hash browns AND...

The whole thing is encased in pie crust to make it stretch a little further. 

I'll end with a fun fact about West Virginia. My significant other has relatives there and does not know them well. Whenever his grandma used to mention any of them, he'd ask, "How's their new baby?" She could always answer the question, no matter which relatives she was talking about (and even though we rarely had any idea of their age or family structure). And that's why I'm glad to study West Virginia from the distance of a mid-'70s community cookbook.