a recent purchase

 Even though I didn't find much of interest at the antique store last weekend, I did find an older cookbook for $5. "All Maine Cooking" from Down East Books in Camden, Maine.

It's a 1990s reprint (so: it even has an ISBN number, which is odd to see given how "old" the inside contents are. The book was originally published in 1967, and I am SURE the recipes, many of them, are older. Like "War Bread":

It has oats and cornmeal, as well as "Graham" (which I guess is kind of like, but not exactly like, whole wheat)

I am wondering if this one actually dates to the FIRST World War; wheat was a concern then (and also after the war: so many of the young men of Britain and France were just slaughtered - I don't think a lot of modern Americans are aware, but many small rural towns lost a large proportion of their 20-something men- and farming was hard). I actually talk about this a bit in one of my classes because one of the contributing factors to the Dust Bowl (not exactly the *causative* factor, though the profit motive, just like today, led people to "move fast and break things" that had bad consequences), but anyway, marginal land got plowed up and planted to wheat, and after a few good years, then the drought hit, and the Plains largely blew away.

Even after WWI there was some push for wheat rationing here; Wheatless Wednesdays were a thing. So I wonder if this bread was an attempt to stretch wheat with other grains (perhaps ones less popular in Europe?) including oatmeal. I have a book of history about governmental recipes/suggestions and they talk about how oatmeal was promoted as a replacement for wheat where people might use flour as a filler.

There are also traditional Maine recipes; baked beans and brown bread and the sort of things you associate with the New England region. And also, tons of lobster and other seafood recipes (some more appealing than others; I guess you make do with what you can get inexpensively and then figure out ways to make it "different")

And there are a few Scandinavian recipes, which are interesting to me; I didn't think of Maine as a place where a lot of Scandinavian people emigrated to (French-Canadian, yes: I have heard of people learning French in school there because it was so commonly spoken)

I've never even heard of this one, and I know a few Finnish recipes. It's a sweet bread, it may go by different names.

And there are others that seem to have been of their time. Can you imagine a small church doing THIS for a supper today?

Yeah, it's an inexpensive cut of meat, and they "barbecue" it (basically make a sweet and sour sauce that probably tenderizes/braises them). But that would still be a lot of work for 50. And a lot of expense, these days.

Also there's this. I was confused by the name at first:

"Piece-a-Pie," get it? Yes, we used to call pizza "Pizza pie," I remember even when I was a kid some people called it that. And it's also interesting to think that it's really in the past 40-50 years pizza became so much a food in our culture; I remember when I was a small kid we only ever had Chef Boyardee because there was no pizza parlor in my town. (Then Pizza Bazaar - which everyone called Bizarre Pizza, of course - opened, and after it Noble Roman's. Now every wide spot in the road has a pizza place, some better than others, and you can get it frozen at the grocery)

There are also some absolutely inexplicable recipes. There are a couple "Chinese" dishes that aren't very Chinese but they're basically chop suey and pepper steak type of things. 

And then this:

I can't even with "Chinese Egg Casserole." Cheese is, as far as I know, not a thing in traditional Cantonese or Mandarin cooking - in fact, a lot of places in China, if I understand correctly, milk wasn't really consumed; tofu took kind of the place cheese takes. And also - it's basically a cheese and egg custard with more eggs in it? I don't think I'd like this.

And like every good cookbook of its era, there are some nice dessert type recipes.

I have no idea what a Gillie Whooper is but I might have to try them some time. They sound like brownies with a layer of marshmallow and then a thick boiled-icing chocolate icing on top. 

And hermits. Hermits are an old, old type of cookie but I rather like them. You generally can't find them in stores - they're sort of a gingerbread with raisins and sometimes nuts. I've read that the name comes either from the fact that you age them sealed up in a tin (so they are "hermits" for a while, get it?) or that the color recalled the dark, coarse robes that hermit monks wore.

I have a few books like this. Once in a while I will make recipes from them but I admit I mostly buy them for the interest/history, and maybe a little bit for the "lulz" like the cool kids on the Internet say.