Touchdown Cooking: Winning Recipes from Saskatchewan Roughriders Past and Present

T. Arleigh Crawford was a graduate student living in Potsdam, New York.

This cookbook, published for the 75th anniversary of the Saskatchewan Roughriders football club, would serve admirably as a source for a study of down-home cooking in Canada and the United States, but it is too much fun to be taken that seriously. What more appropriate authority on North American cuisine is there than a professional sports franchise? A menu from Touchdown Cooking might feature Sully Glaser’s 7-Up Salad (marshmallows are whisked into hot 7-Up to make a molded salad that also contains Jell-O, cream cheese, Dream Whip, and Cool Whip). O.H. Rennebohm’s creative use of frozen french fries as an au gratin of sorts crowning his casserole of one pound of hamburger and two kinds of canned soup could follow as an entrée. But these classics of the still unappreciated cuisine of the 1950s come from but one of the diverse styles that make up this collection. Also included are bachelor recipes (such as Bisquik made with a bottle of warm beer), a brace of recipes for wild game and fish, plenty of barbecue recipes, and ethnic cooking from Mexican Spoon Bread to German Sauerbraten.

Though Touchdown Cooking does little to improve football’s macho image, Mel Douglas appends this fiat to his hair of the dog recipe: “Give your wife 2 drinks or breakfast may be at lunchtime. Husbands may be able to handle 4 drinks.” Football fans of either sex will enjoy trying recipes by Schenley Award-winning lineman Ed McQuarters and three-time Western Conference leading rusher George Reed. It is beautifully illustrated with five full-page photographs, and the editors have wisely chosen to leave the recipes in their original forms, creating a warm, funny book full of the love of food one would expect from 89 200-plus-pound football players.