When I picked up a copy of “What’s Cooking at Moody’s Diner,” a newly revised edition of the famed Waldoboro restaurant’s 1989 cookbook, I rolled my eyes at the large dose of nostalgia I was sure I would find within its pages. Nostalgia, that is, for a time in food history that I assumed we all wanted to forget.

Those days of Jell-O, cream of mushroom soup, Cool Whip and Catalina salad dressing.

You can’t blame me for that reaction. After all, the color scheme on the book jacket is Howard Johnson’s orange and blue, and depicts a cartoon version of the diner with big cars that have tail fins parked under the time-warp neon sign. In one corner, a 1950s housewife, complete with blue-black hair and apron, beckons the reader to join in the celebration of 75 years of recipes and reminiscences.

Ugh. I wanted to make a mad dash for the nearest bunch of organic arugula.

In these days of fussy diets and health concerns, the Moody’s experience seemed so fat to me, thick like one of those mile-high cakes or poofy lemon meringue pies so popular with the restaurant’s clientele.

Turns out, I was right about the book offering recipes with Jell-O, cream of mushroom soup, Cool Whip and Catalina salad dressing. But I was wrong about how I would feel as I stepped back into the memories of family and food.

“What’s Cooking” opens with numerous reminiscences about Bertha and Percy Moody, the couple that began the Moody phenomenon in 1927 with three small rental cabins and eventually a cart for selling food. The pieces are written by the countless Moody offspring and are accompanied by photos, newspaper clippings, a Moody genealogy dating from 1495 in Suffolk, England, (who knew?) and an old menu offering bread and butter for five cents and a fried egg for 10. With great pride, these heirs write about the Moody boom, how it started as a hot-dog stand and then grew to be a Maine institution.

The Moodys’ daughter, Nancy Moody Genthner, is chief writer, with the help of editor Kerry Leichtman, but this is a group effort, right down to an early photo – nearly a daguerreotype – of Percy’s way-antiquated clan from North Nobleboro. Even though the photo isn’t dated, you know it’s old because the people in it have names like Hannah, Joshua and Asa, and their necklines practically come up to their cheeks, which is probably why they all look so dour.

But the generations clearly got happier, and even though Percy, known to all as PB, is depicted as a father of “firm” standards – any other family would elevate the drama to “child abuse” and write a controversial tell-all memoir – this story is clearly a cheerful Maine version of the American dream. Humble beginnings, outrageous fortunes. Even if you measure it in muffins alone.

Truth be told, the book reads like a family reunion – and, luckily, the recipes that follow in the considerable center section are exactly the food you would expect to find at such an event. Some, such as fish chowder that calls for 25 pounds of haddock fillets and meatloaf with 10 pounds of ground beef, are meant to feed the masses. My favorite recipes in the diner-portion segment were bread pudding with 14 eggs and 40 slices of bread, and Grape Nut pudding with a gallon of milk. Bring on the whole family!

More importantly, however, much of the book is devoted to down-home recipes, ones my own mother might have made on a school night or for a church supper, ones made for families the size of yours and mine. And frankly, it’s all rather touching.

Reading through the recipes, even I became susceptible to nostalgia. More than 20 years ago, I used to bring my daughter from Washington, D.C. to Waldoboro to visit her grandparents. We would stop at Moody’s for a grilled cheese and, while the gravy and bread carbohydrate overload never quite worked for me, I came to appreciate the spirit of the place. Smoke and all, back in the good old smoking section days. (Commendably, Moody’s became the first restaurant to ban smoking all together.)

After reading “What’s Cooking at Moody’s Diner,” I realized that I liked stopping at Moody’s to be with my daughter’s grandmother, who went there as a child after the movies in town, because it was a place where the grandmother was the ruling, unmitigated center of love and comfort, even way up here in Yankee territory. The only place more filling in every way than Moody’s was Grandma’s own house.

On a first read, it had skipped my notice that the newest Moody book is dedicated to the late Bertha Moody, the grand matriarch of the family. But there’s no way to page through this sweetly (and sugary) American saga without being stopped by the bigness of her presence. Yes, PB was the originator of Moody’s as a business, but Bertha clearly was the binder that held this family and the diner together. “Her children shall rise up and bless her,” reads a quotation from the Bible – and indeed this historical perspective is a testament to that Proverb. And in a world of micro-farms and preciously designing eateries, the recipes are pure comfort. You may not want to eat this way, but it’s likely your mind will wander back to dinner around your childhood’s flecked Formica table.

The final sections of the book are devoted to more Moody memories about the old days and about the developments in the newer branches of the family tree. It’s all interesting in a family-newsletter sort of way, but the real entree in this book is the original story and the easy-make food such as Wowie Chocolate Cake, Tuna Wiggle, Grammie Buck’s Mashed Potato Salad, and Mom’s Spaghetti Casserole – names artisan cooks wouldn’t dare use in their food boutiques these days.

Despite my resistance to the diner-style food that fills these pages – and, mea culpa, I confess to ear-marking more than a few recipes – I can recommend this book for standard American fare and as a slice of Maine life, as full and filling as a big ol’ scoop of Moody’s Homemade Ice Cream – with all 27 egg yolks.