I don't want the Golden Rule Class to treat me the way they want to be treated

 Ready for another creatively-titled community cookbook?

Yes, it's Cook Book (Golden Rule Class, Methodist Church, South Solon, Ohio, 1951). If you think the bare-bones title indicates that the recipes inside might be pretty basic too, well, that's fair.

Marzetti= hamburger, tomatoes, onion, milk, and noodles. Not even any seasoning. My favorite part is the instruction that the package of noodles needs to be "mashed fine." So, they're really overcooked and then mashed up? This sounds lovely (if "lovely" means "mushy and flavorless").

Maybe we should try for an alternative main dish.

While Spaghetti and Sausage en Casserole might sound kind of fancy from the "en" to emphasize the French origins of the casserole, this one is unlikely to be any more flavorful. In fact, the sausage doesn't even get the advantage of being browned! It's just boiled, added to the cooked spaghetti (or macaroni if you want to be a little different!), and flavored with a can of tomato soup. Oh boy.

Maybe we need some bread to go with the casserole. (I love some carb-on-carb action!) Both  of our casserole options suffer from lack of cheese (I mean, come on! Tomatoes love cheese, and it's not like they're getting flavor from anything else.), so let's go with a cheese bread.

I did not see that one coming. (Okay, that's technically not true since I wrote this post, but it was true when I originally looked at the cookbook.) Cheese Bread sounds like it's closer to bread pudding than bread, consisting of bread crumbs and cheese bound with milk and eggs, then sprinkled with cinnamon (for some reason) before being baked. So, well, hmmm. Maybe I'll just finish this off with some salad and call it a day.

I thought that Lime Jello Salad sounded like a perfectly respectable desserty salad-- lime Jell-O, cream cheese, pineapple juice. The touch of mayo is not optimal if you ask me, but there's probably too little of it to make much difference. But then, well... Things get interesting once you look past the ingredient list at the top of the page and read the instructions. Pineapple. Yum! Celery. Meh. I guess, but why? Nuts. Fine, if you don't mind soggy nuts. (Ha!) Jar of stuffed olives. What? Who adds olives to dessert? Probably someone who is desperate to convince people that this is a bona fide salad and not dessert, but trust me, people in the midwest are prepared to accept this as a salad without the olives.

But maybe the people in this town just really like fruity gelatin with the relish tray dumped in. This Holiday Salad gets its festive colors from maraschino cherries mingling with tiny sweet pickles.

In short, South Solon may seem very bland with its basic casseroles, but that might be better than when the townsfolk decide to get creative with garnishes, canned fruit, and Jell-O.