“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 