The only regional cookbook that told me the region's insurance rating

I love the little illustration of a small town on the cover of Mountain Cooking in Beaver Dam (Ladies Auxiliary of Beaver Dam Volunteer Fire Department in Watauga County, North Carolina, undated, but a history of the department at the beginning of the book puts the most recent development as getting a class 9-A insurance rating for the area near the department on January 1, 1979, so this is probably from 1979 or the very early 1980s).

There's a tiny horse in the foreground and some very round cows(?) further back. The tree-covered mountains partially conceal the sun as it rises-- and there are more mountains behind the sun! I guess the sun lives in Beaver Dam (Maybe it pops up from a hollow in the ground-- like toast out of a toaster-- in the morning?), so that might explain why the town needed to beef up its fire department. The sun is getting awfully close to all those trees!

The book has some local flavor, such as souse meat.

If you're wondering about the "cheese" in parentheses afterwards, it's because this is a type of headcheese (though, interestingly the link I've given says that "souse" is a different type of headcheese that involves pigs' feet, ears, and snouts along with vinegar).

There's also the evocatively-named Hoppin' Frog Stew.

You can tell the recipe is NOT from a midwestern community cookbook, as this calls for a full half-cup of Louisiana hot sauce. (It also calls for vanilla, which I would not have expected.)

I like that the recipes often sound like they're being relayed by an old friend, like this shrimp dip.

I love that the amount of ketchup depends on "how pink you want it." Not taste. Not consistency. Just pinkness.

The book offers recipes that I've seen plenty of times before, but here they have interesting community variations. I've seen so many party mixes with names like "Tidbits" or "Nuts and Bolts." They are generally variations on Chex mix, and admittedly, this version of "Party Tidbits" is too. 

I just don't generally see such rampant cereal mixing. The blends usually call for just one type-- most often Chex, sometimes Cheerios. This has Chex plus "Cherrios" AND Life cereal, which kind of makes me cringe. The Chex and Cheerios are on the savory end of the breakfast cereal spectrum, but the thought of Life (which isn't quite candy-sweet, but the sugar is definitely prominent enough) flavored with onion and garlic salts plus Worcestershire.... I think I'd just swap those out for something else!

The Mexican Dip that was popular-- usually just a block of Velveeta melted down with a can of diced tomatoes and some jalapenos (either as part of the tomatoes or from a separate can) also gets a makeover in Beaver Dam.

Yep-- this version is very creamy, swapping out the can of tomatoes for a can of cream of chicken soup.

The most interesting variation, though, might be the Cinnamon Apple Salad. I usually see this as red hots melted in applesauce and mixed into gelatin, but not in Beaver Dam.

This version cooks apples in a cinnamon candy syrup and then serves them on salad greens with a slathering of Miracle Whip/ mini marshmallow/ celery/ raisin/ pecan topping. 

From the the insistence that Miracle Whip, marshmallows, and celery belong together to the ability to get a 9-A insurance rating even though the sun emerges from the ground there, Beaver Dam is quite an interesting place. I'm happy to study it from a distance.