“And you think the Lord gives attention to such little details as how long a potato should cook?” asked Ruth earnestly.
“Why, yes, dear,” answered the mother, “if you put a matter, even a little matter, into the Lord’s hands to guide you, and trust that He will, of course, He will.”
—Chapter 7, The Substitute Guest
Oh, those wonderful meals! The ones that make you want to put down the book and head straight for the kitchen! In Grace Livingston Hill’s novels, the magnificent aroma of home cooking fills the air in boarding house and humble home, alike. Quite often, they have a mission all their own.
Grace Livingston Hill did more writing than cooking, but she knew her way around a kitchen and you can tell. Her heroines could put together a full meal at a moment’s notice, pull a hearty lunch out of thin air with the aid of a jar of beef-extract, a can of baked beans, and another of tomatoes or they could single-handedly extinguish flaming pork chops in the midst of buying a tiny house!
If they couldn’t manage it themselves, they could always depend on someone like Aunt Hannah or Molly Poppleton to create a feast that was unforgettable. Then afterward, the dishes were marshaled into the kitchen sink, carefully washed and left to dry (scientifically, of course!) and the buckwheat cakes were set for tomorrow’s breakfast.
As an avid reader of all things Grace Livingston Hill and Pansy, I was fascinated by their detailed descriptions of home life. I could just imagine myself snowed in with my family and welcoming The Substitute Guest into our home and hearth. Just one catch—our home was an apartment and our hearth was an electric stove! Nevertheless, I was determined to somehow recreate that wholesome fare for my own family!
I chanced upon my very first vintage cookbook, a 1931 copy of The Settlement Cookbook, at a quaint roadside stand and began looking for recipes that would have been served on the tables of Grace’s characters. Many more would follow! I wanted to learn how to really cook, instead of relying on cans and boxes and take out.
Apple pie, gingerbread and sugary doughnuts seemed to be simple enough, to be served with a great pitcher of milk or amber coffee. But buckwheat cakes always fascinated me. They appear on nearly a dozen different GLH tables, often paired with sausage and real maple syrup. I had questions.
What exactly is a buckwheat and where do you get one? And what about hubbard squash? I love the name, but no one around here has even heard of it! Flannel cakes? Raspberry vinegar? Caraway Seed Cookies? I wanted to try them all!
Sometimes I had a hard time deciphering the vintage instructions in that little gem of a cookbook. Sometimes there weren’t any—just a list of ingredients! Sometimes I got them very wrong—like the first night I “set my buckwheats” and woke up to an explosion of batter everywhere in the kitchen! Or finally finding someone who knew what a hubbard squash was and actually had one for sale, but not telling us how to open the ugly, gray thing. We had to use a miter saw!!
That’s a photo of my first hubbard squash! I included the recipe on page 50 of the GLH cookbook, or you can download it by clicking here.
I was suddenly adventuring into the books in a way I’d never done before and I loved it!.
“But, wouldn’t it be nice to have all of those recipes in one cookbook?”
I definitely wasn’t alone. Flash back to the early days of the internet. The GLHill Yahoo Group had lots of great email discussions about the more mysterious foods that Grace’s characters enjoyed. Things like Junket (hurried up with a second tablet) or aspic (made to match the dining room) or the dreaded…tongue and peaches! What were these strange things? And could we make those, too?
A few dozen of us set out to catalog the food in all of the GLH books. I was sure this would be a quick project and a cookbook would soon appear. It certainly seemed like a lot of of those favorite foods were repeated. Except they weren’t. There were hundreds of foods, many of them appearing in only one book. This wasn’t looking good. Putting together a single cookbook on my own suddenly seemed like a herculean task.
Smaller seemed like a better approach, so I eventually decided to focus on just the holiday books and asked for help from the online family again. From Thanksgiving with the Lorrimers in The Christmas Bride to that snowed-in Christmas with The Substitute Guest, we tried to cover the festive meals from all of our favorites, right down to the maple-sugar hearts tucked into the stockings in Star of Wonder!
A lot of time went into pairing up menus and recipes. It was truly a labor of love. Members of our original group and many more we met along the way on social media served as “test chefs” or did proofreading. There were even a few “family secret” recipes shared for the cookbook. It was a delight to put together and it was meant solely for our GLH groups to enjoy. Much to my surprise, it’s been discovered by hundreds more kindred readers around the world!
Have you always wanted to taste those memories from yesterday? You can join in on the holiday fun, too. The Grace Livingston Hill Cookbook, Volume 1: Vintage Recipes from the Holiday Books is available at Amazon in paperback or Kindle versions, or you can purchase a personalized, signed copy by reaching out by email at stories@gracelivingstonhill.com. And by the way, there’s a GLH Christmas story tucked into the back of the cookbook that you’ve probably never read. It’s called The Half of a Christmas and it’s my gift to everyone with a copy of the cookbook.
The Giveaway:
We’re giving away three paperback copies of The Grace Livingston Hill Cookbook, Volume 1 by Daena Creel.
In addition to recipes, this charming book is filled with vintage ads, menus from Grace’s different novels, and delightful illustrations.
To enter the drawing, just leave a comment below or on Isabella’s Facebook page no later than midnight (EDT) on Thursday, September 21.
The three winners will be announced on Friday, September 22. Good luck!
If you’d like to purchase your own copy of Daena’s book, click on the link below to go to Amazon.com:
You can learn more about Grace Livingston Hill’s life and books by visiting Daena’s website at GraceLivingstonHill.com.
Would you like to share your own Grace Livingston Hill story? Email Daena at stories@gracelivingstonhill.com.
You can also find Daena on Facebook:
Visit her Grace Livingston Hill Author Facebook page by clicking here.
And you can chat with Daena and other fans of Grace’s books in the Grace Livingston Hill Facebook Group. Click here to join.
This post is part of our 10-Year Blogiversary Celebration! Join us every weekday in September for a fun drawing, giveaway or Free REad!
Isabella Alden 
This sounds like such a special cookbook! I appreciate all of the effort that it took to putting it together.
I always did wonder what those buckwheat cakes were… 😅
What a lovely post and generous giveaway! Thank you, Daena and Jenny.
Grace Livingston Hill was a huge part of my growing up after eighth grade, when I discovered her! I would comb flea markets, and second hand stores for her books, since I cannot buy them new! my husband would read a lot of them too because I left them laying around and I finally had the whole collection and now many many years later I cannot really get rid of them. I have a lot of them on my Kindle, but my husband will not let me sell them. He liked the strong emphasis on living a Christian life that was displayed in the books.
I was surprised that it was not mentioned about her characters, always having chicken breast if they had a picnic! I agree that her food was absolutely wonderful!
That cookbook page looks so much like the front of my mother’s cookbook where she wrote in her mother’s recipes for cake and cornbread!
Some of my favorite meals are those that sound so delicious but are only milk and soda crackers! LOL
This cookbook sounds so lovely! I love vintage recipes and I enjoyed reading Grace Livingston Hill novels with their wholesome stories. Would love to be entered into the giveaway for the cookbook. Thank you!
This is an amazing giveaway I would love to win! I too have been fascinated by the kitchen and food descriptions in GLH’s books. ❤️
What a fun article! It spurs me on for some very basic cooking I was already slated to do today—-stewing a large chicken for the broth and to have the meat for several meals this week! My favorite of these plans is chicken and dumplings! Mmm! I adore the GLH Cookbook and would love to have a copy to give to someone dear to me.
What a fun idea! I love old recipes!
I thoroughly enjoyed this article!
What a fun cookbook! The food always does sound so good.
Wow!! How inspiring! The cookbook sounds like it would be a lot of fun, especially with my Grand daughters who have a love for cooking and history. Great article sweet lady.
I love reading about the cooking in Mrs. Hill’s books, especially during the hard times, wondering just how I could’ve coped in the depression years with so little money.
I particularly love how Margaret’s grandparents in the Christmas Bride suffered with so little on the table, patiently waiting for the money order, yet always generous to share their food, and when the bounty came? Oh, they ate more than boiled egg and applesauce and toast from the open flame. And, the first time the little woman saw broccoli? She had an instinct just how to cook it. I still laugh over that. Yet, the Lorrimers never had a doubt that God would provide or else He would take them to Heaven where there was no hunger. Also, I think Grace’s best cooking books were Substitute Guest, the Challengers, and April Gold. I’m forgetting many.
Not to forget, but off the topic: the Bible teaching from when her heroines went to Bible Study class during the dark times in their lives, was superb and clear. Did Isabella and Grace ever hold Bible Study in their homes? Did Rev. Alden ever teach in their home?
Great question, Susan! The Aldens had family prayer and Bible readings every day in their home. During the times when the Aldens and Livingstons shared a home (in Winter Park, Florida or at Chautauqua) the combined families met together daily. I haven’t come across any references that hint Rev. Alden or Rev. Livingston included people outside the family in their home Bible studies, but it’s a topic worth researching. I’ll let you know what I find out. —Jenny
I love the cover, great job on that! Looking forward to checking out this cookbook.
Those old recipes, albeit wonderful food, were hard to decipher. I’m excited to see a modern rendition of those treasured recipes.
I love this cook book. Daena is such a treasure!
I remember being a part of the GLHill Yahoo group! What fun it was, and how we loved it when Daena shared something she had discovered with us!
This sounds absolutely delicious! I’m so excited to see this cookbook one of these days and would love to have a copy. What is a scalloped oyster, anyway? The Substitute Guest is my favorite Grace book and there is so much good food in it!
My grandmother introduced me to GLH books over 50 years ago. Much later as an adult I discovered Pansy as well, and love them both.
Oh my! Daena, what a cool project you’ve done! Will share this with friends who love vintage homespun books. GLH stories are the BEST!
Thank you for the opportunity to leave a comment to try to win a prize!
I own and love several GLH and Pansy books. So glad I found this site!♡
I’m glad you found us, too! —Jenny
I purchased the kindle copy, but it would be nice to have a ‘hard’ copy.
I give credit to Grace Livingston Hill for my homemaking skills and my spiritual growth in many ways. She was a godly example in all her books. They fed me nourishing meals.
I would love to win this vintage cookbook! I love G.L. Hill’s ability to describe foods in her stories; that’s a writing component I myself have by no means mastered.
CutePolarBear
This sounds like such a wonderful collection. Thank you Daena for taking the time to put it together! Thank you too for the encouraging article to remember that even in the daily activities and tasks like cooking, we can glorify the Lord. Loved the quote chosen at the beginning. Such a good reminder!