The Belly Dancers Guide to Better Belly's has no publication date, introduction, or known connection to belly dancers -- or their "belly's." The recipes may well have inspired Sandra Lee, with their multiple cans of stuff mixed with a tub of other stuff, then topped with bread crumbs and baked. But for all of that, I really love this cookbook.

It could be the book's low production values. The only illustration appears to be a wooden spoon with a Farrah Fawcett '70s hairdo wearing a belly dancer's outfit next to an apple oddly superimposed over a bunch of grapes. This graces the title page of each section, with the title written in a creepy off-kilter handwriting which portends nothing good.

It could also be the unabashed trashiness of the recipes, like the Mini Pizza made by slathering catsup on an English muffin and sprinkling it with oregano and American cheese. Or the Easy Casserole, made with two cans of cream of mushroom soup, one can of chicken rice soup and one can of vegetable soup. Not surprisingly, the recipe cautions "DO NOT SEASON WITH SALT," probably because doing so will immediately cause the dish to seize up and turn into a bowl of pure sodium.

Of note are two recipes -- submitted by one Jean Stuckman of Marion, OH -- dubbed the No Name Recipes, most likely because one dare not utter the name of a concoction so foul. Upon closer inspection, both recipes turn out to be identical: No Name Eggs is a mixture of cottage cheese, bread crumbs, eggs, grated onion and cooking oil, just like No Name Salad. Both are mixed in a loaf pan and baked for 30 minutes. Neither is even vaguely edible.

Even the cocktails are scary. Cherry Coctail Slush sounds like the sort of thing you might put together using other people's leftover drinks: whiskey or bourbon or "etc." mixed with Real Lemon juice (note: a capitalized Real is never real), some "bar sugar" (I'm assuming that's the sugar the bartender has spilled on the bar throughout the night) and eight maraschino cherries. I was under the impression that consuming more than five maraschino cherries in one sitting led to immediate death, but apparently whiskey or bourbon or "etc." cancels out this effect.

Also, the Frozen Dacquari is made with frozen lemonade concentrate and something called Red Pop. The excess capital letters disturb me greatly.

Also, there are spelling errors in the names of all the cocktails. Drunk typing!

Mostly I just really like imagining the group of suburban women from Ohio who assembled this cookbook. Clearly they were friends and all had good senses of humor. Did they do any belly dancing in actuality? Were they all completely annoyed by Beverlyn Cain -- who had obviously taken a trip to Africa at some point -- and and her long, didactic recipes from various African countries? I like to think about them all coming up with their belly dancing names together, the way my friends and I came up with our 1950s girl gang names when I was in high school. I wouldn't be surprised to learn these belly dancers from suburban Ohio are still friends, that they still get together and mix up a big batch of two boxes of stuff mixed with a can of other stuff -- topped with bread crumbs and baked for 30 minutes.

This week's recipe kind of chose itself -- it was the only one that didn't make me gag while reading it. The Harvey Wallbanger cocktail, invented in the 1950s, is a mixture of orange juice, vodka and Galliano, an herbal liqueur. It reached its peak of popularity in the 1970s and even spawned a Harvey Wallbanger Cake, which is what I decided to make this week. The cake, being a product of the '70s, is always made with boxed cake mix and boxed pudding mix, the ingredients I originally intended to use in the name of authenticity. But standing in the fluorescent glow of the supermarket aisle, looking at the boxes of mix selling for 3 for $5, I got too depressed by the prospect of eating a cake made with artificial flavors and weird preservatives and decided to make the whole thing from scratch. Call me old-fashioned. Or new-fashioned, I don't know.

I decided to skip the whole pudding concept and just base the recipe on my favorite citrus cake, Dorie Greenspan's Extra-Virgin Olive Oil and Yogurt Loaf Cake. Usually I make it with Meyer lemon, but this time I used an orange, and covered the whole thing in an orange-Galliano-vodka glaze. YUM. The olive oil might sound weird, but it works well with the citrus and herbal Harvey Wallbanger-ness of the glaze. If I were going to make it again, I'd add some Galliano to the batter (maybe 1/4-1/2 cup) to make it even more Wallbangin'.

New-Fashioned Harvey Wallbanger Cake

Makes 8 servings

For the cake:
1/2 cups all-purpose flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
Pinch of salt
1 cup sugar
Finely grated zest of 1 orange
1/2 cup plain whole milk yogurt
3 large eggs
1/4 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
1/2 cup extra-virgin olive oil

For the glaze:
3/4 cup powdered sugar
2 tablespoons Galliano
1 tablespoon orange juice
1 teaspoon vodka

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F. Butter an 8 1/2 x 4 1/2-inch loaf pan and set aside. Whisk together the flour, baking powder and salt.

Put the sugar in a medium bowl and rub the zest into the sugar with your fingers until the sugar is light orange and fragrant. Whisk in the yogurt, eggs and vanilla and mix until well-blended. Add the dry ingredients and whisk until just blended. Using a wooden spoon or spatula, fold in the oil until the batter is thick and shiny, with no visible pools of oil. Pour into the pan.

Bake the cake for 45-50 minutes, or until golden and a knife inserted in the center comes out clean. Cool in the pan for 5 minutes.

While cake is cooling, prepare the glaze. In a small bowl, whisk together the glaze ingredients until smooth. Run a knife around the sides of the cake pan and turn cake right-side up onto cooling rack. Spoon the glaze over the cake, including the sides, and cool.

Last Sunday was the annual Crab Fest at The Hungry Cat, which I was lucky enough to be invited to by the lovely Meg (in the photo above, depicting the general feeling at the end: sleepy, swollen-footed satiation). There is something magical about eating two courses of crab followed by all-you-can-eat boiled blue crab dumped directly onto newspaper-covered tables, which you smash apart with a mallet while trying not to get crab gunk all over your cucumber martini. Magical, I say. And very messy. You can see all my pictures from the day here.

And this Sunday was my birthday. My sister Sonya is in town, so I got to wake up to the sound of two of my favorite people making me breakfast in the kitchen. And wondering how to make coffee. (Rob: "But this is in OUNCES!" Rest assured, the coffee tasted fine.) Earlier in the weekend, Sonya had the honor of being my first scooter passenger ever and we had a couple thankfully-uneventful rides around town, stopping by Intelligentsia for coffee, Taqueria El Charrito for tacos and Scoops for ice cream. There was also a crawfish boil party in there somewhere. I know how to feed my guests at least.

Rob and I rounded out my birthday with an afternoon screening of WALL-E (we both teared up) and a Sunday dinner at Lucques, where the pork stew over polenta was good enough to make up for any unfulfilled birthday wishes of years past.

(There's a Cookery Book Monday coming later today!)

Did you know Wyoming was the first state in the U.S. to grant suffrage to women? According to the introduction to Cooking in Wyoming, "it all started with a tea party in 1869 in South Pass City," which is why one hundred years later the Wyoming Recreation Commission released the Women's Suffrage Centennial Edition cookbook, to celebrate a century of Wyoming women who can both vote and roast an elk.

The cookbook opens with Wyoming's most exciting culinary offering: Pioneer Recipes! Thanks to a childhood spent obsessively reading and rereading the Little House on the Prairie series by Laura Ingalls Wilder, I have a deep fascination with all foods eaten by pioneers, homesteaders and people traveling in wagon trains. I probably spent way too many girlhood hours craving salt pork and johnny cakes, even though I've never eaten either. I'm fairly certain, in fact, that I'd find Mrs. Archie D. Cook's Pork Cake (made with one pound of ground salt pork) absolutely vile. But I'd still like a johnny cake in my pocket, for long trips on the wagon with Ma, Pa, and Mary, okay?

Pioneers -- and modern-day hunting Wyomingites (actual term) -- eat a lot of venison, ducks, wood chucks, bunnies and donuts. There are approximately fifteen donut recipes in this book, including one for Spudnuts, which until I read this cookbook I thought was just a funny name for a depressing donut franchise found near my university in South LA. But no, they are actually donuts made with potatoes and they sound surprisingly good. Not as good as Mother Miller's Fried Pies, though. Mmm...fried pies...

The book is notable for its large number of contributions from men, including a one-page treatise on preparing duck, which ends with "Note to You Duck Hunters: No wife likes to dress and fix ducks so why don't you try fixing the ducks? Then all wife has to do is shove them in the oven, plus prepare the balance of the meal." Wow, how nice of him to give his wife a night out of the kitchen make the duck. What, did you forget this is the Women's Suffrage Centennial Edition?

My second favorite bird-based recipe is not a recipe at all, but a grumpy rant about eating elderly geese, submitted by the obviously-crochety Mrs. Robert McNiel. The problem with cooking wild geese, she says, is that you can never tell how old they are, so you might get a tough 25-year-old or a tender 2-year-old. The same goes for mallard ducks. The end. Uh, Mrs. McNiel? Maybe you didn't hear me? I asked if you wanted to contribute something to our COOKbook. You know, like a recipe? ...What's that? I heard you. And as I said before, some Canadian geese live to be 70. Goodbye. Um. Thank you, Mrs. McNiel.

After the pioneer recipes, the book flirts with some late-'60s American food horrors, but for the most part stays true to its prairie grass roots with simple recipes and preparations. I do have to mention one terrifying dish though: Corn and Spaghetti Custard. I'll say that again. Corn (okay) and Spaghetti (kind of weird, that combination) Custard (oh good god). You mix cooked spaghetti with corn niblets (or creamed corn!), pour in an egg-milk mixture, and let the whole monstrosity steam in the oven until set. Then you put buttered carrots in the middle and drizzle it with tomato sauce. I hear all of Italy sobbing softly right now.

While looking for this week's recipe, I found myself drawn to the various instructions for sourdough starters. I have a fascination with friendly bacteria (hence my love of homemade yogurt) and wanted to try my hand at growing my own batch of happy bread bacteria. Making the starter was easy enough and it was fascinating to peek under the damp dishtowel in the morning and see the bubbling starter soup, twice the size of the night before. Mixed with some baking soda, sugar and an egg, it made picture-perfect sourdough pancakes, the ideal breakfast for a camping trip. Or a lazy Saturday brunch in your kitchen. Whichever you prefer.

Sourdough Hotcakes
Makes about 12 hotcakes

2 cups sourdough starter (recipe below)
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 egg
1 tablespoon sugar
1 can evaporated milk

Mix the first four ingredients in a large bowl and add 1/2 cup evaporated milk, or enough to make a medium-thin batter. Cook on a nonstick skillet, flipping each hotcake when the edges look dry and the center is bubbly. Keep warm in a 250-degree oven or serve immediately with butter and maple syrup.

Sourdough Starter

2 cups flour
1/2 package yeast
1 teaspoon salt
Lukewarm water

Mix the flour, yeast and salt, then add enough water to make a medium-thick batter. Cover with plastic wrap or a clean, damp kitchen towel and let stand overnight. To keep it going from day to day, add more flour and salt each night. When using the starter, be sure to set some aside and continue feeding it to keep your bacteria family going!