Product Description

At the time the cookbook was conceived, Mr. Hollenbeck was working at Aero-Jet General Corp. at the Sacramento, California plant as a Quality Engineer for the Aerojet Stetegic Solid Rocket Motor Division. At the specific time, he was the QC engineer on the MARK 56 Aquatic Mine Program.

During this period, his wife had experienced severe emotional problems for the past five years. This meant long periods in the hospital and therapy and kids having to become the original "Mr. Mom". Mr. Hollenbeck, being totally male, found it a huge shock when he became the housekeeper for three children ages 16, 13 and 10, plus having an emotionally encumbered wife, when she was home.

After weeks of TV dinners, casseroles and pizza, he had a budding insurrection looming - he was only barely hanging on by the knot at the end of the rope. He groveled at the feet of his friends' wives and pleaded for help. His request was simple - he needed recipes that a non-cook could prepare that were simple, idiot proof, cheap, foolproof and ad-infinitem! The women must have died laughing, but all came through like the champs they were - God bless 'em! The results were magic and were so good, Mr. Hollenbeck decided to put together a pamphlet with enough recipes to get a man through about three weeks without having to repeat a recipe. He planned to make a handout for hospitals for other poor souls that found themselves in the same situation.

A friend saw the "Straw Man" of the handout and said too bad you don't have more recipes and you could develop a cookbook. Mr. Hollenbeck said he had a whole pile of other recipes, which were more than enough to make a cookbook. The only thing left was to develop a format for the recipes and give it a name. Since the cookbook was just for desperate men, it seemed appropriate that the recipes be presented in the format of a specification, with which most men would be comfortable. All that was left was a title. It was for men and it surely was for survival. It was during this time period that a now famous TV series was unfolding called M*A*S*H*, and Mr. Hollenbeck thought this would be a very appropriate logo for the cookbook. He titled the book A Male Emergency Survival System cookbook. Since Mr. Hollenbeck worked in an industry of acronyms, and during the period of M*A*S*H* being so popular, it seemed fitting to title it M*E*S*S which it was.