Food is synonymous with the home bridge game.

A great deal of home bridge stories I’ve been fortunate enough to hear have been about the food. There was always someone cooking, and memories of great bridge games are often tied to memories of someone cooking and excellent food.

But what about the worst possible cookbooks for bridge?

If something great exists in the world, then it must have a total, polar opposite. I haven’t heard many stories of horrible bridge snacks and game meals just yet, but I’m hoping this post might inspire players to reveal a few. (Did you ever know someone who was a great bridge player, but a terrible cook? I’d like to know about it!)

So, I went and took a closer look at cookbooks. There are great ones (think: Julia Child), but also horrible ones (think: Appliance-themed cookbooks).

Here are some of the worst cookbooks for bridge games which – just in case – should never be used to prepare for a game at home.

A Man, A Can, A Plan

I’m not saying that one shouldn’t cook from canned food. I’m simply saying, well, don’t do it from this book.

It advertises itself as “50 great guy meals” – and from there, you somehow know exactly what kind of meals you’re going to get from it. Not fine cuisine, not food that gets you by nutritionally, not even great food, not food that has professional aspirations, but what they’re calling guy meals.

I immediately picture a bachelor in his underwear who sticks a dirty spoon into the pot twice. (That’s twice.)

While the recipes might be just fine, the way they tried to market this book isn’t.

Elvis’ Favorite Recipes

Even people who don’t know a great deal about Elvis Presley will know this single fact: Elvis died young.

Now, isn’t that something great to base a cookbook on?

Someone must have thought this and then came up with the book called Elvis’ Favorite Recipes. (Just in case you’d like to eat like someone with several chart-topping hits released after his own death.)

Just a quick internet look-see at what Elvis liked to eat most returned the ever-questionable peanut butter and banana sandwich most fans already know about – plus something called fried bologna.

Also, something called fried pickles, and then coconut cake. (Possibly, also fried.)

Let’s just not. You’d like a higher score, not a higher blood pressure measurement.

Mary Ann’s Gilligan’s Island Cookbook

Gilligan’s Island was a great show – and if you don’t know it, check out some of the reruns available on the internet. But was it a “let’s write an entire cookbook around the show” kind of great?

Themed cookbooks are often disastrous when it comes to shows that had nothing (and nothing at all) to do with the food that’s being presented in the book.

This is a great example of this.

Merchandising can be pushed a little too far.

It’s like releasing a book called “Here’s 50 Things Only Bridge Players Eat (And How to Cook Them Slowly)”

Why would anyone?

Campbell’s Cooking with Soup

Again, I’m not discouraging the use of cans in cooking. (But I am discouraging the use of cooking with recipes that originate from this wonderful little vintage cookbook number…)

Canned soup can be a great base for many dishes, but well, this cookbook isn’t a great illustration of how you should be doing it.

Instead, recipes are forced, odd and feel merchandised to make sure you’re using as much of their product at a time while you’re doing it.

It’s a “man-with-plan” kind of situation, but a few decades back.

Nope. Just no.