Crescent Craziness!

I love cookbooks that are created to shill a single product because the recipe writers try to work the product into everything they can possibly think of. I'm not sure the Crescent Idea Cookbook (Pillsbury, 1975) quite reaches that ideal. After, all there are no recipes for crescent rolls, say, suspended in lime gelatin.

Still, there's a pretty decent lineup, so I'm giving you an entire menu centered on crescent rolls. (And I will admit, as a lover of fresh-baked bread products, I can house a few crescent rolls. This menu would try even my love for them.)

We've got to start out with an appetizer, and since I cannot resist the title, that means some Great Caesar's Toast!

If you're wondering why a crescent roll looks more like a triangle of glued-together breadcrumbs, well, the recipe uses a Caesar dressing and egg wash to stick crushed-up stuffing mix to the exterior.

Yep! It's bread dipped in bread. (Side note: I did not realize that Pillsbury ever made Italian flavor or rye crescents, but apparently they did.)

Now, we'll need a main course. 

Crescent rolls with phlegm! 

Sorry! I mean Cheesy Chicken Crescent Supper.

That's chicken-filled crescent rolls baked on a slick of cream of chicken soup, then topped with more soup as the sauce if the rolls are insufficiently salty and/or soggy. (Serve with the pea-and-onion combo from the picture if you feel the need for actual veggies, but crescent roll dough is made of flour and flour is made from plants, so the rolls are practically veggies anyway, right?)

Of course, any good meal needs some bread as a side.

Don't give me that look. You know every meal used to come with bread.

So we've got Crescent Cheese 'n Onion Rolls. This time the crescents have a cream-cheese-and-onion-dressing filling. Then they get an egg wash so the crushed potato chip coating will stick. (More veggies!)

And to round this all out, there's dessert. How about a nice hot banana since baking them used to be so popular?

Yes-- There's real fruit! And peanuts! That might make this item the most nutritious in the collection, even with a powdered sugar filling and glaze. You might want those notes of freshness after an onslaught of packaged stuffing, canned soup, and potato chips. Of course, by this point you're more likely to be all crescent-rolled out. Too bad. At least Pillsbury offered some choices beyond the usual "Wrap a hot dog in the dough and bake it."