Cookbooks

Climb down off your tractor and dig into some old-fashioned, farm-fresh comfort food! Cranberry stew is simmering on the old wood cook stove along with sweet corn freshly pulled from the stalks. Try a dab of this farm-churned golden butter on the orange rye bread warm from the oven. Whether you’re a born farmer or a country-minded city person, you’ll enjoy these creative rural American recipes from a time when the food was wholesome and life was full of fresh air and sunshine. Recipes, stories, jokes, advice, farm lore and illustrations were collected from a wide variety of agricultural sources from the 1880s-1950s. Author: Barbara Swell; Native Ground Books; softcover 5-1/2" x 8-1/2"; 72 pages.

Make a darn good pie in a jiffy! You’ll feel like you’re back in your grandma’s kitchen as she shows you how to roll out her flaky, tender pie crust. Recipes date from 1831, many from 19th century handwritten cooking journals. Includes old time pie lore, pie insults, why men love pie, pie contest tips, vintage photos, historic recipes, and more. Additional materials include overcoming pie crust fear, 12 pies husbands love best, and advice from 1930s pie aunts. Author: Barbara Swell; Native Ground Books; softcover 5-1/2" x 8-1/2"; 72 pages.

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• In 1917, Anna "Cookie" Covington set out to record all of her favorite cookie recipes as a gift to her daughter because no published cookie recipe books existed at the time. Strangely, her 76 page handwritten personal cooking diary was never delivered to her daughter as planned. Then 88 years later, the unused diary fell into the hands of food historian Barbara Swell, who recognized it as perhaps the earliest collection of American cookie recipes, dating from the mid-1880s through World War I. There are 221 recipes recorded from 1917-1920, with adaptations for modern kitchen,s vintage graphics and photos. Also food shortage recipes, and curiosities of cookie baking history. Author: Barbara Swell; Native Ground Books; softcover 6" x 9"; 152 pages.

Yesterday’s Bread for Today’s Kitchen. Follow the recipes in this book and you’ll be baking up your great grandmother’s wholesome, tasty, hearth-baked breads in your own kitchen today! You’ll be amazed by the stunning loaves and rolls you pluck from new or vintage cast ironware, baking stones, or everyday gizmos that produce yesterday’s radiant cooking environments for your modern oven, wood fireplace, or campfire. Recipes from 1820 through 1920 include harvest apple bread, whole-grain little gem bread, oat sandwich loaf buttermilk rolls and more. Period photographs, history of 19th Century American Bread and baking with local flour are included. Author: Barbara Swell; Native Ground Books; softcover 5-1/2" x 8-1/2"; 72 pages.

Eat your way back in time and enter the world of American children as they lived 150 years ago. Sample foods, folklore and games found in the parlors of the wealthy, the boarding houses of the working class, and the cabins on the western frontier. Includes over 60 vintage photos plus historic recipes like cathead biscuits, sugar plums and hobo mulligan stew. Learn to make snow candles and snow taffy, tell Appalachian ghost stories and play roley hole and jack straws.  Author: Barbara Swell; Native Ground Books; softcover 5-1/2" x 8-1/2"; 72 pages.

Peppered with authentic 19th century photographs, Log Cabin Cooking is smothered with old-time recipes, kitchen proverbs, even a pinch of proper pioneer etiquette! Make-do recipes include Leather Britches, Ash Cake and Portable Soup, using the ingredients available to settlers 150 years ago! Other goodies: hand-dipped candle making, soup warnings, molasses taffy, faux foods, zucchini clarinet and ginger beer! Author: Barbara Swell; Native Ground Books; softcover 5-1/2" x 8-1/2"; 64 pages.

Let’s have a picnic! First, we’ll craft a picnic basket from vintage treasures and fill it with classic and creative picnic fare. Then we’re off to backyard, forest, roadside or campfire to enjoy festive sandwiches, garden slaws, fire roasted spreads, homemade raspberry marshmallows and more. Make a tin-can hobo stove, learn about roasting hot dogs on a nifty 1924 Model-T Ford exhaust manifold cooker and discover helpful hints to make your picnic special and easy. Author: Barbara Swell; Native Ground Books; softcover 5-1/2" x 8-1/2"; 80 pages; softcover.

Step into our log cabin village and sample authentic pioneer cooking. From New England to Texas, the Appalachians to Pike’s Peak, pioneer cooks had to be tough and self-sufficient--able to whip up hearty meals with little more than an iron pot and a sharp knife. Recipes range from Chisholm Trail Chili to Appalachian Stack Cake and Grandma Cody’s Applesauce Cookies. If pioneer life has left you bruised and battered, we’ve included some curious remedies and questionable cure-alls. This book is loaded with captivating snippets of information, recipes, vintage art and photographs. Author: Ann Chandonnet; Native Ground Books; softcover 5-1/2" x 8-1/2"; 168 pages.

This book is packed with heirloom recipes and kitchen wisdom. You’ll cook your heart out with generations of hand-me-down recipes and food lore! Author Barbara Swell has whisked up weather and cooking folklore, food insults, old-time home remedies, vintage photographs, romance superstitions, hearth crafts and 19th century chores. Recipes include Brunswick Stew, Holiday Saffron Bread, Chicken Pie, Fried Green Tomatoes, Apricot Strudel and Lemon Pie Cake. Author: Barbara Swell; Native Ground Books; softcover 5-1/2" x 8-1/2"; 72 pages.

Reminisce about simpler times as four 20th Century mountain pioneer women share their cooking secrets. These old-time cooks stir in their own wisdom and tales of growing up on rural farms, where they prepared delicious meals by lantern light on wood cook stoves. Included are heirloom recipes, proverbs, folk remedies, 80 vintage photos, 19th century rhymes and stories. Author: Barbara Swell; Native Ground Books; softcover 5-1/2" x 8-1/2"; 72 pages.

Weird and Wonderful Home Cooking 1900-1950. Here are the stories and recipes of mothers and grandmothers as they cooked their way through two world wars, food shortages, and the Great Depression. This cookbook chronicles how household gadgets dramatically changed the lives of women forever. It takes you into the kitchens of young housewives who whipped up cherry chiffon pies and other goodies. Lured by glossy product advertisements, these women were seduced into thinking that a green wiggly dessert would add glamour and romance to their lives. The book takes both a serious and humorous look at women in a changing world. Author: Barbara Swell; Native Ground Books; softcover 5-1/2" x 8-1/2"; 72 pages.

Here's a practical solution for all the garden harvest we've acquired. Have a seat on the old front porch glider while we string a mess of pole beans for a garden feast tonight. We’ll have the same in-season supper our great grandmothers fixed back in 1895 when food was food, raised close to home and made from scratch for family and friends every day. Garden Supper Tonight contains vintage economical seasonal recipes, food curiosities, and timeless advice on all things home and gardening. Author: Barbara Swell; Native Ground Books; softcover 6" x 9"; 152 pages.

This amazing piece of folk history was originally published in 1896 amidst a colonial revival frenzy that swept America’s eastern seaboard in the 1890s. Determined to preserve American colonial cooking, Margaret Hooker collected quaint and curious recipes and remedies that appear to have come from old and reliable sources ranging form the mid-1700s to mid-1800s. Her 266 original illustrations of cooking utensils give us a glimpse of colonial America as seen through the eyes of a young artist and teacher of 1896. Recipes, beauty secrets, etiquette, candle making and household hints are included. Written in 18th century long S style print. Author: Margaret Huntington Hooker; Native Ground Books; softcover 5-1/2" x 8-1/2"; 248 pages.

You’re sure to fall in love with these recipes which are meant to recall the same recipes that "mom" made. Deserts, snacks, breads, salads, and casseroles are included among the commonsense motherly advice (or grandmotherly!) you’d expect from a quality cookbook such as this!