Mennonite Country-Style Recipes & Kitchen Secrets

Esther H. Shank collected and perfected good recipes and useful food preparation tips for over 25 years. This is her prized collection of over 1‚100 recipes and a legacy of kitchen know-how for inexperienced young adults caught up in the whirl of fast foods and busy schedules. Even experienced cooks will find helpful the hundreds of tips for success while baking bread and making pie crusts‚ as well as the microwave and quick-fix sections‚ identification of low calorie dishes‚ and many useful charts‚ tables‚ and diagrams.

Winner of the 1988 Benjamin Franklin Award from Publishers Marketing Association.

Now available in a new layflat paper edition.

"The Mennonite Disaster Service volunteers who helped build our Katrina Cottage in Pass Christian, Mississippi, introduced us to Esther Shank, and when she sent us her cookbook, we were pleasantly surprised. Containing more than 1,000 recipes she collected and perfected over 25 years, it’s an everything-and-then-some volume on the level of The Joy of Cooking—with a country slant. Next to recipes for classic casseroles, salads, and cookies are instructions for pasteurizing milk, cleaning fish, and plucking chickens. A section at the end also gives 'non-food recipes,' such as how to make your own soap or houseplant fertilizer and tips for removing all kinds of stains. It’s a bible for old-fashioned self-sufficiency." — Jason Horn

Esther Heatwole Shank was born and raised on a dairy farm in the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia, near Bridgewater, not far from Harrisonburg. She was one of 12 children and she nad her four sisters helped with cooking, gardening, and canning. Esther and her husband Rawley J. Shank purchased their own dairy farm near Harrisonburg, where they raised their three daughters. Esther is a graduate of Eastern Mennonite High School, Harrisonburg, Virginia. She did secretarial work for Mennonite Broadcasts, Inc. She has been active in her church women's group, in teaching Sunday school, and in many service and community projects.