Old Farm Country Cookbook

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Recipes, Menus, and Memories

Jerry Apps and Susan Apps-Bodilly

Seasoned with personal stories, recipes, and photos, this cookbook-memoir takes readers on a nostalgic journey to simpler days on the farm through food and cooking traditions.

320 pages, 7 x 9, 320 color and b&w photos
Paperback: $28.95 | ISBN: 978-0-87020-830-0
Ebook: $15.99 | ISBN: 978-0-87020-831-7
Publication Date: 8/28/2017

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Front cover of Old Farm Country Cookbook

Description

Come along with story master Jerry Apps and return to an era when all food was local and farming was a family-run affair. Jerry and his daughter, author Susan Apps-Bodilly, share the farm family food that only Jerry's mother knew how to make in this warm-hearted, memoir-style cookbook plucked right from Eleanor Apps's Depression Era recipe box. Inspired by her dishes, Jerry and Susan take us on a culinary tour of life on the farm during the Depression and World War II. Seasoned with personal stories, menus, and family photos, Old Farm Country Cookbook recalls a time when electricity had not yet found its way to the farm, when making sauerkraut was a family endeavor, and when homemade ice cream tasted better than anything you could buy at the store.

Updated for today’s kitchens, the nearly 200 recipes range from everyday fare to celebration feasts. Here you’ll find

delectable baked goods that take you back to your grandma’s kitchen: sorghum cookies, baking powder biscuits, sweet dough for cinnamon rolls, the perfect blueberry muffin
simple favorites from the farm garden: fresh peas in milk sauce, strawberry jam, rhubarb custard pie, refrigerator pickles
the kind of thrifty dishes rural folks are known for: leftover chicken hotdish, ring bologna with navy beans, canned applesauce, Victory spice cake
seasonal and special-occasion treats: Christmas stollen, roast duck with orange sauce, birthday banana chiffon cake
unforgettable vintage fare: whipped lime cottage cheese salad, roasted rutabagas, pickled fish, “Pork Cake from Doris”

In addition, the book shares complete menus that invite us to pull up a chair for Apps family traditions: Threshing Supper, Grandpa Witt’s Funeral Lunch, Dinner for Unexpected Visitors, the End of School Picnic, and more!

Author Bios

Celebrated storyteller and rural historian Jerry Apps was born and raised on a central Wisconsin farm. He was a former county extension agent and professor at the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. Apps authored more than fifty fiction, nonfiction, and children’s books, including Every Farm Tells a Story: A Tale of Farm Family Values, The Quiet Season: Remembering Country Winters, More Than Words: A Memoir of a Writing Life, and Barns of Wisconsin, all published by the Wisconsin Historical Society Press.

Susan Apps-Bodilly is a retired elementary and middle-school educator. She is the author of One Room Schools and coauthor with Jerry Apps of Timber! and Old Farm Country Christmas, all published by the Wisconsin Historical Society Press. She lives in Madison, Wisconsin.

Honey-glazed ham, pickled northern pike, and strawberry sandwiches—if you think farm foods of the past made for uninteresting fare, think again.

Terese Allen

Coauthor of "The Flavor of Wisconsin" and cofounder of the Culinary History Enthusiasts of Wisconsin (CHEW)

“A delightful trip down memory lane, Old Farm Country Cookbook transports readers to an era when the food was local and farming was a family-run affair. Filled with forgotten recipes and thoughtful anecdotes, it’s sure to leave readers with an appetite for headcheese and an appreciation for indoor plumbing.”

—Inga Witscher, fourth-generation dairy farmer and host of Around the Farm Table