As long as the potlucks and picnics of May continue, the greatest hits of Junior League cookbooks past and present will roll out of my kitchen on colorful disposable plates. It’s the kind of food you’re somehow supposed to feel guilty about, because it’s full of short cuts and prepared or ready-to-use products. As if those were bad.

Vegetable Squares are defensible junk food masquerading as a side dish or appetizer. Almost everyone will eat them.

Puppy Chow (Dawg Food if you attended the University of Georgia) is light, sweet and crisp, and so good you’ll have to force yourself to move away from the bowl. And it can be thrown together in about 20 minutes.

The season goes on — what are you bringing?

Vegetable Squares

I use homemade Dijon garlic vinaigrette in place of the ranch dressing mix, and use just 1/3 to 1/2 cup of mayonnaise.

2 (8-count) packages refrigerated crescent rolls

2 (8-ounce) packages cream cheese, softened

1/2 cup mayonnaise

1 envelope ranch salad dressing mix

1 bunch broccoli, cut into tiny florets, lightly steamed if you like

2 colored bell peppers, minced

1 zucchini, shredded

4 carrots, shredded

Chopped fresh chives or parsley, if desired

• Press the crescent rolls into a 9 x 12-inch baking pan, pressing the dough to seal the seams. Press it slightly up the sides of the pan to form a lip. Bake at 375 as directed on the package. Let cool.
• Mix the cream cheese, mayonniase and salad dressing mix until smooth. Spread it over the cooled crust. Layer the vegetables over the cream cheese mixture.
• Sprinkle with chives or parsley, if you dare, or if the children are older. Cut into about 32 bars. Makes 12 kid-size “side dish” servings or about 16 adult appetizer servings.

Puppy Chow

Pretzels make a good substitute for about half of the Chex. When we run out of Chex, we’ve substituted Golden Grahams and Cap’n Crunch.

1 stick (8 tablespoons) butter

1/3 cup peanut butter

2 cups semisweet chocolate chips or chopped white almond bark

9 cups Crispix or Corn Chex

4 cups (1 pound) confectioners’ sugar

• Melt the butter, peanut butter and chocolate in a saucepan, mixing well. Measure the cereal into a large bowl or soup pot. Pour the chocolate mixture over it and stir gently but quickly to coat.
• Pour the confectioners’ sugar into a large paper grocery sack (or a plastic sack without holes). Add the chocolate-covered cereal and toss to coat with confectioners’ sugar.
• Serve right away or store in ziptop plastic bags.
• Bake sale time: This recipe makes enough to fill 15 snack-size plastic bags.

You know that bumper sticker that you see occasionally, “What if schools had all that money they needed and the Pentagon had to hold a bake sale”? The Pentagon would be would do well to put our local elementary school in charge of it.

It’s a bake sale in the same sense that Niagara Falls is a creek – over the top, wildly exceeding any expectations you might have. What you see here is a fraction of one table.

You’d never know that inside those SUVs, under those tennis hats beat the hearts of professional pastry chefs. Dozens of perfectly decorated cupcakes cradled in specially-designed boxes. Dozens of brownies wrapped in seasonal cellophane and decorated with seasonal trinkets like plastic spiders, as an incentive to buy. Carefully decorated cookies heaped in a basket and priced to sell for pocket money. “Dirt cake” in colorful paper cups packed with a spoon. Goodie bags of three snickerdoodles and a chocolate kiss.

Mama knows what kids like. And has a marketing degree, too.

And then there are the items designed to bring out the parents’ checkbooks. Coffeecakes, focaccia, honey-oat bread, dinner rolls, Moravian sugar cake, challah, baguettes, sourdough.

But the prize goes to the mom whose cake-baking is her therapy and who apparently owns the largest deep freezer in town.

The first year I encountered Super Baker Mom, I brought in 3 homemade cakes, which took all weekend to make, and was proud. Super Baker Mom’s offerings numbered in the double digits. It’s grown each year since, and this year, the bake sale committee had to set up risers to hold all her cakes.

Thirty one-of-a-kind, professionally decorated cakes, priced around $35 apiece. Peanut butter, chocolate, pumpkin, blueberry, more chocolate, spice. You can hear the checkbooks spreading their legs flexing. The only slow seller was banana cake. Same thing happened when I baked a banana spice cake with caramel icing and orange sparkling sugar.

I was going to document the fabulous parade of cakes, but my pathetic camera (and, let’s face it, the clueless operator) couldn’t get it all in, and then the memory card ran out of space. We raised more than $1000 — the committee doesn’t trouble my artsy head with figures.