Delve into the pages of this cookbook, and you'll learn a sure-fire way to coddle your spouse: the "Sunday Night Quickie." No, no—not what you're thinking. It's a recipe for tuna noodle casserole.

Put together by the Faculty Wives Club, Northeastern University Faculty Wives' Favorite Recipes is very much a product of the pre-Julia Child American kitchen. When club members were called upon to contribute their best recipes, they responded with molded Jell-O salads and entrees seasoned with canned soups.

More than five hundred cookbooks were published and made available at the NU Bookstore for $1.00 a copy. The 132-page volume turned out to be as much a business lesson as a culinary one: Two years passed before the project broke even.

But the book had a kosher goal: fundraising. Starting in 1941, the Faculty Wives Club met monthly to socialize and plan events. And club activities went well beyond afternoon teas and coffee klatches. The ladies who lunched sponsored bridge parties and auctions to raise considerable dough.

In 1951, for instance, the club donated $1,000 to the Library Building Fund, which helped Northeastern construct a permanent library. Beginning in fall 1953, the Northeastern Faculty Wives Scholarship annually awarded $200 to a needy freshman woman.

When the club disbanded in 1970, it handed over to the Office of Financial Aid its scholarship fund, which stood at $2,912.12.

More than a trifle, however you slice it.

— Magdalena Hernandez, MBA'02