Fundraising Cookbooks

It is the season when various service groups and church are holding fall/harvest suppers to raise funds.  There have been advertisements for various dinners around my local areas.  There is the usual Turkey and Roast Beef dinners, but one place was serving beef stew and another lasagna.

In the days before Pinterest or a quick google search for a recipe, many of these organizations also published Cookbooks.  Community members contributed their "best" recipes to the endeavour,  someone would type them up or maybe they would have the Cookbook professionally designed.  Either way they were usually a good fundraising initiative as it often include popular recipes from community gatherings that the owner hadn't shared before the book was published.

I have a few of those types of cookbooks in my collection and I selected one of them this week.  Country Cooking - A Canadian Collection of Favourite Home Tested Recipe it came out in 1996, but it does not say what group created the book.  I received it as a gift I don't know where it came from.

Looking at these types of cookbooks is always fun.  You can see what was popular at the time and the ingredients that were readily available.  Many of the recipes in this book rely on convenience foods like canned cream soup, cake mixes, or canned meats to create the dishes.  Many are based on trying to feed a lot of people quickly with little fuss.  The recipes also assume a certain amount of cooking skills.  The cookie recipe I made, had very simple instructions "cream sugar into butter, add the rest of the ingredients and bake at 350 F for 10 minutes".  That is why new cooks find these types of cookbooks frustrating.

Cookbook historians use these books as research on the evolution of a recipe, but also community evolution.  As I write this I am trying to recall a quote I heard about exchanging recipes at a funeral receptions being like trading gold - they were hot commodities.    If anyone knows the quote please share!

I usually try to pick a recipe that has an ingredient I have not tried before, or try a new technique.  This time I just randomly picked recipes that looked interesting.  The book opened to a page with various spreads and cheese balls - so I felt it was a hint that I should make one as my appetizer; but  I couldn't resist making a soup - cool weather and warm soup you can never go wrong, so we have two appetizers.

I started with Ham & Cheese Ball with Fresh Tomato Soup.  There is a little quote at the bottom of the soup recipe from the author saying it was the best fresh tomato soup she has ever tasted and she made it frequently.    I picked it because it included potatoes in the recipe which I thought was unusual for tomato soup. I found the taste too the soup to be a little lacking.   I think it is a case that the quality of the tomatoes make a big difference.  Grocery store tomatoes just don't have the same flavour as fresh from the garden!  Maybe I will try again when I have access to garden fresh tomatoes.    On the other hand the Ham & Cheese Ball would be worth a repeat performance as a party appetizer.

From there I moved onto Neopolitan Pot Roast served with Perogi Pie.  The Perogi pie was very rich and really meant to be eaten alone but it did work with the pot roast.  Baked in tomatoes, onions and seasoning it made for a very tender roast with a nice sauce.

With so many dessert options it was hard to narrow it down to one item.  In the end I decided to keep it simple with Orange Cookies.  If you like orange flavour this is a cookie for you.  Good orange flavour without being overwhelming.    Nice way to end the meal.

Though I am still debating about trying the 7-up Cake!  Yes it does have 7-up as an ingredient!