In 1961, in the midst of widespread panic over possible nuclear war with the Soviet Union, food editor Marie Adams published a timely recipe column in the Charlotte News. The column—originally titled “Can You Make an Appetizing Meal in Your Cellar?”—focused on meals you could make in a fallout shelter, using the emergency supply of nonperishable goods that families were expected to stockpile for an anticipated two weeks underground. Adams’s column was far from unique. Women’s magazines and government-sponsored preparedness guides for women of the period featured shelter-friendly menus of…
