Goodrich encourages readers to be very open-minded....

The third in what may be a new series of community fund-raising cookbooks that maybe could have used a bit more effort is Goodrich's Favorite Recipes (Lotus Class of the Methodist Church, Goodrich, Michigan, 1950). This one is a little more ambitious than Our Favorite Recipes from Trotwood, Ohio, in that it has all of 35 pages of recipes (rather than Trotwood's 25). 

At least the good people of Goodrich are interesting because they're a bit eccentric. I mean, I'm used to running into Heavenly Hash recipes, but they tend to be sweet-- usually either marshmallowy fruit salads or marshmallow-and-chocolate treats. Not so in Goodrich.

Their Heavenly Hash is a mix of pickled cucumbers and peppers.

When they want a Citrus Mint Salad, Goodrichians don't just cop out and toss a few mint leaves into their orange and grapefruit segments.

Nope! They throw a couple dozen after dinner mints into lemon Jell-O before adding the orange and grapefruit segments. The jiggly glob gets served on a lettuce leaf (a true salad!) and drowned in a sour-cream-and-vinegar sauce. (This might be my only recipe that calls for both after dinner mints and cayenne pepper.)

The Goodrichites are more utilitarian when it comes to main dishes, though. 

Yes, good old Main Dish! Roast pork covered in a can of mushroom soup (Golden or cream of? Dealer's choice, apparently.) sounds fine in terms of midwestern cuisine, but I'm really questioning the decision to mix the soup with canned spaghetti.

My favorite part of this sad little book, though, is the last chapter with recipes. (Yes, I know you can see there's a "Weight Control" chapter after this one, but it's mostly very sad menus based primarily around grapefruit consumption. There are no recipes.) This is the last recipe chapter, in its entirety (aside from the title page):

Yes, the chapter "Beverages and Miscellaneous" has precisely ONE recipe. It can't even live up to the promise of the two types of recipes in the chapter title. I guess this means if home cooks want the section to live up to its name, they have to write their own beverage recipes under the recipe for Nippy Cheese Sandwich Filling, or they will have to try drinking the heated spread so it can be both beverage and miscellaneous. I don't know.... The Goodrichanians might be eccentric enough to try it! That thought alone is enough to make me glad I picked up this sad little book.