Treasure Hunting at Harris House!

Ready for a treasure from 1978 1991? (I thought it was from 1978 when I bought it because the divider pages with chapter names on one side and kitchen tips on the other had that copyright written on them, but then a closer inspection showed the book itself is from 1991.) In any case, these are Treasured Recipes from Harris House (in Westerville, Ohio). 

This one has all kinds of familiar-sounding recipes with their own little spin, so today's post is a menu of mayhem! First up, an appetizer:

I fully expected seasoned cream cheese to be rolled up in the middle of the salami slices, so I was surprised (okay, more like alarmed) that these are loaded up with tuna-and-egg salad and a slice of mozzarella. I can see mozzarella and salami going together just fine, but I can't understand what tuna-and-egg salad would bring to that party (other than a smell I'd prefer to avoid).

Let's just move on to the vegetable: Carrot Salad. I kind of assumed it would be either the carrots-raisins-mayonnaise salad OR the carrots-citrus-Jell-O-pineapple salad, so you know it won't be either of those.

It's kind of both, with the mayonnaise and raisins of the former AND the pineapple of the latter, plus marshmallows, coconut, celery, and whipped cream for good measure. (I'm sure marshmallows and celery are awesome together.)

Good news: I'm giving some relief from the questionable-at-best sounding dishes and ending with a main dish and dessert that sound relatively appetizing. They're just... different. I imagine that the Best-Ever Macaroni and Cheese is actually pretty darn good.

I am just kind of floored that a recipe with a serving size of four uses a full cup of butter and a pound of cheese! That's a quarter cup of butter and a quarter pound of cheese PER PERSON. Also, there's only a half-pound of macaroni in this whole thing, when I've seen recipes that use twice as much pasta for the same amount (or less) of butter and cheese. So this recipe is clearly just cover to eat as much dairy fat as you can get away with while claiming it's a main dish... I guess we know what makes it "best ever!"

In case the main dish doesn't fully sate your cravings for fat and carbs, there's a dessert: Double Upside-Down Cake.

I always thought the point of an upside-down cake was to flip the cake out of the pan to show off the carefully-arranged layer of fruit on the part that was initially the bottom, but this recipe suggests I've got it all wrong. Even though this version goes to the extra length of creating two different fruit layers-- one with pineapple and one with peaches-- it turns one into a bottom layer so its topping will be invisible on the finished cake, and then covers up the top layer with additional whipped cream. It will just look like a regular layer cake. (But at least it will work a little more dairy fat into the meal!) Or maybe the cake recipe is just trying to bury the treasures, to go along with the "treasure" title? 

Who knows? But if you consider tuna-and-egg salad "buried" in salami and cheese or marshmallows and celery buried in shredded carrots and mayonnaise to be buried treasure, then I'm curious how your mind works...