This recipe for butter tarts is part of School Lunch Number Three. Each day there is a dessert included in the child’s lunch. I chose this recipe because butter tarts are a favourite of Canadians, as well as the fact that this dessert should be called “Margarine Tarts,” as there is actually no butter included in the recipe. As this cookbook is sponsored by Good Luck Margarine, the recipe substitutes butter for margarine. The recipe’s ingredients are not too complex, though vanilla may have been more expensive and more difficult to find at that time. Nuts are added as an optional ingredient; however, they do not specify which type of nut to include. The recipe also includes the use of pastry, however there is no recipe included for making the pastry. In this era, it may be assumed that all housewives knew how to make a basic pastry dough. The instructions were clear and concise, with little room for error. The inclusion of a butter tart in this recipe shows that Canadians love for these sugar-filled pastry dates back to at least the post-war era.

This recipe is for a Ham and Peanut Spread, for a sandwich in Husband’s Lunch Number One. I chose this recipe because of the ingredient choices being a unique combination for a sandwich. Aitken moves away from the traditional peanut butter and jelly sandwich, which she did include in the School Lunch Number One. The ingredients listed seem quite odd to pair together, from the boiled and ground ham, to the peanut butter and three tablespoons of mayonnaise along with the spicing of prepared mustard and Worcester Sauce. All of these ingredients are combined and spread on rye bread, which is of course covered with Good Luck Margarine. The inclusion of peanut butter is the one additional ingredient which makes this recipe bizarre, as without the peanut butter, it could be a nice ground ham sandwich. The instructions are simple and quite short, as the ingredients are easily measured and mixed all together. Including this recipe for the husband’s lunch may show that they had labour intensive jobs, and therefore needed a protein packed sandwich to get them through the day. We can learn that over the years peanut butter and jelly sandwiches have not gone out of style, while peanut butter and ham sandwiches, thankfully, have.