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.