Are you way too American? Has your family become bored with casseroles and cheeseburgers? Looking to inject some culture into your cooking? Don't worry, Better Homes and Gardens has your back with this cookbook dedicated to providing your meals with FOREIGN FLAIR! boasting 100 recipes from 18 countries, this cookbook promises to make your kitchen more international than the UN, albeit with a slight American bias.

As is usual for cookbooks from the fifties and sixties, some of recipe images feature questionable table displays, such as the precursor to Edible Bouquets on page 13 (Vive la cuisine francaise!) that appears to be strawberries on sticks poking out of a potted head of lettuce, and why does the spread shown for In the Italian Manner feature a straw chicken centerpiece? It get's borderline racist when they start hanging pinatas for guacamole and propping up an abacus next to a bowl of sweet-sour pork.

Cultural awareness was a foreign idea (see what I did there?) back in the sixties, which probably explains why the chapter called Down Mexico Way features a parrot pinata above the recipes for a Pinata Party - "After a Mexican meal - break a pinata!" This precedes the Spanish Fiesta, of course. The Italian section doesn't include meatballs, which could be considered a good thing if the reason wasn't that meatballs had been adopted into American cuisine already. Swedish recipes include Swedish meatballs, however, so they aren't out of the woods yet. Stout German Fare seems the most stereotypical with beer steins and Bratwurst as far as the eye can see, until you stumble upon Honorable Chinese Dinner... "Chinese cookery is as much an art as the caving of delicate jade."

To be fair, this Better Homes and Gardens doesn't promise a higher appreciation for foreign cultures, just a way to cook like them. And for 1963, making a herring salad for bridge night guests was probably the most progressive mealtimes got. ( )

100 recipes from 18 countries! Main dishes, desserts, breads, salads -- prize souvenirs from around the world!