Unusual Cookbooks

If you cannot go another day without a taste of “Barney’s Hot Plate Chili,” (Aunt Bea’s Mayberry Cookbook), or “Nixon’s Perfectly Clear Consomme,” (The Watergate Cookbook), you need not go further. The MSU Cookery Collection features a large number of cookbooks which defy standard categorization. There is White Trash Cooking, a cookbook filled with “bad for you” recipes, and one to let you know just what the Ewings were eating when they were not buying another oil field. All contain recipes, but more importantly suggest the ways food is reflective of our culture - the good, the bad, and mostly the humorous.