Whiz Gee! Mixing up some menus with peaches and onions

Now that I've worked my way through the 1970s offerings from my community cookbook shipment, let's move into the '80s! Today's featured book is Gracious Goodness! A Peach of a Cookbook (The Junior League of Macon, Georgia, first printing October 1981, though mine is from the October 1985 third printing). 

I wonder if people in the 1980s immediately thought of butts when they saw the cover. 

In any case, the book's defining feature is an entire peach-colored chapter of peach recipes. There are a lot of desserts that sound yummy if you're into cooked peaches, like Fresh Peach Sour Cream Pie and Old Fashioned Peach Shortcake. Of course, you know I'm not going to show you the crowd pleasers. Nope. From me, you get things like Peach Pickle Salad.

Which honestly, probably sounds fine if you're into pickled peaches (though I'm not!). In any case, pickled peaches in lemon Jell-O with white cherries and pecans is going to have a more limited audience than Fried Peach Pies. (Especially with the added packets of plain gelatin to make sure this salad is congealed as firmly as possible.)

And unlike me, the sweets-and-meats crowd might be at least a little tempted by Spiced Chicken with Peaches.

The "spiced" crowd is unlikely to think the description is justified by the nutmeg, basil, and black pepper seasoning, though.

I like the solidly '70s vibe from Peach Frost Salad.

I'm not sure there's a huge call for peaches and pecans frozen into a glob of cream cheese/ whipping cream/ mayo now, though. (Or even in the '70s, if I'm being honest. Does anyone really want a mayo-based popsicle?)

At least the Peach Daiquiri looks pretty good.

I mostly just included it to contrast with the very sad Jim Hall's Strawberry Daiquiri found in the non-peach-centric white-paged portion of the book.

Why a can of diet Shasta strawberry instead of real strawberries? I do not understand. I guess the rum was supposed to be enough to keep people from noticing the distinct lack of strawberries.

If peaches aren't your thing, there's also a little section on Vidalia onions, as this book loves to try to move that Georgia produce. There's a Vidalia Onion Casserole for those who want a gratin-style side dish.

(Not even any canned soup, believe it or not!)

I was kind of sad that the Vidalia Onion Pie isn't a dessert. It's really just a variation of a quiche Lorraine.

You know I would have been sending this for the Pieathalon if it were a Vidalia chiffon with peaches, pecans, and celery!

The recipes in this one are pretty fun to look through, but I saved up the best ones for June! If you think about that for a few minutes, I'll bet you can figure out what kinds of recipes will be popping up for one of my favorite annual features....