James Lileks’s hilarious  The Gallery of Regrettable Food poked satirical fun at the horrifying ("How did we ever survive?") recipes from promotional booklets and mainstream American cookbooks of the 1940s-1970s. His follow-up, Gastroanomalies, covers the era’s further crimes against good taste (in every way), and in the words of a current celebrity chef, "kicks it up a notch."

"It was a time of innocence, nuclear families, traditional values... and BAD FOOD."  The dishes, primarily tasting of fat, salt, and the newfound magic of convenience foods were bad enough, but what were really nightmare-inducing were the accompanying illustrations. Those were full of strange highlights, strange arrangements of strange-looking ingredients, all of it photographed with a strange fuzziness that feels almost intentional to protect the innocent. Lileks’s books are made up of page after page of these illustrations with just a line or two of acerbically funny commentary from the author.

Typical entries include a mottled black, brown and white cake of something topped with red / yellow moist ovals—"“some of them things we got off a bush, and some of them we got off the sheep." A brass casserole topped with six perfectly triangular-slice areas of minced bacon, olives, carrots, etc. warns that, "In retrospect, it was obvious that three straight nights of making pie charts for the sales presentation had affected Mommy more than anyone suspected." An Australian cookbook provides sandwiches involving triangular slices of baguette-like bread with a somewhat phallic-looking banana piece apparently shot through the middle. "The inventor of this particular treat insisted for years that the bread had asked for it." A pan of rolls of something alternating pale and green is labeled, "Unexpected guests will not daunt a hostess who knows how to make a fish roll," clearly taken from the original cookbook, but is followed by, "And if she can make it sit up and beg, all the better," on the next, more frightening illustration. A personal favorite is referred to as Boiled Eggs a la Firing Squad, where hard-boiled egg slices are propped on end, backs against a "grass aspic / grasspic" wall, with neat little round red dots in their heart, with some of the red dripping down a bit.  Someone actually once thought this was enticing.

This isn’t the great American novel nor is it a book to change your life (unless you still cook by those old recipes), but it is a great way to get a bunch of laughs on even the gloomiest day. After all, at least you don’t have to face THAT on the dinner table tonight. Recommended.