foods men like (1)

One of the highlights of going to the Elora Festival's book sale every spring is surfing through the tables of formerly-loved (or never-used-despite-all-good-intentions) cookbooks. For as little as a quarter, dedicated browsers will find flip past every Better Homes & Gardens cooking guide ever published to find recipe books ranging from local women's institutes to collections of Len Deighton's swingin' Sixties cookstrips.

It was at one Elora sale that I discovered Betty Crocker's vision of the diet a North American male should enjoy, complete with the cutesy illustration style beloved of book designers and board game makers circa 1970.



It's interesting to contrast the cartoony style used by artist Murray Tinkelman in this book and the work he has done for clients like the New York Times.

We'll keep the table of contents under wraps, so that every dish comes as a surprise (this series needs an element of suspense to keep readers coming back for more...). If you're ready, let's dive into the secrets of male eating known only to Ms. Crocker.

The recipes start with a scene inspired by the recent mission to the moon:



In space, no one can hear you eat pie.

In space, no one, other than mission control, can hear you complain when you discover that the chef back in Houston decided to pay you back for playfully tossing them into the low-gravity simulated and made you blueberry pie—deep dish style and apple cobbler. When you return to Earth, you'll fix his wagon but good...if the hallucinations of rainbows trailing shooting stars ever wear off.

To be continued...