Food & Beverage

Home Page Image: Original watercolor by Dottie Greco; Above: Yvonne Finne and molasses cake

Still Sizzlin’
The Joy of Cookbooks

By Gail Greco

“Oh gosh,” my sister-in-law thought, looking over her wedding-gift cookbooks. “Beautiful, but this means making all the recipes.” Conversely, my own sister’s cookbooks open only when the cooking mood strikes; some with drool-worthy photography decorate her coffee table! My cookbooks are bookmarked for recipes I’m salivating over; for my food-writing research; and for reveling in another author’s passionate foodie spirit. 

Reasons vary why cookbooks endure in our kitchens and our hearts. Industry trackers reflect cookbook sales being up following the pandemic and holding: up 35 percent overall as of last year, reports The Washington Post, and up 80 percent for baking cookbooks alone, announces Publishers Weekly, with young adults comprising 28 percent of the cookbook-buying market. So, with cooking blogs, websites, e-readers, foodie videos, what’s still cooking the books? 

Bookseller Patrick Strickland (FireLight Book & Candle shop, Blowing Rock) observes, “Digital screens inundate us with constant popups, distracting our cooking focus. Using a cookbook is calming, instilling confidence and self-expression,” he grins, pointing to Samin Nosrat’s award-wining Salt Fat Acid Heat, “a credible cookbook that’s as appetizing as soul-nourishing.” 

Mindy Oakley of Boone stores such restorative books bedside, dreaming of weekly menus: “Cookbooks are warm, cozy, overflowing with possibilities. Cooking’s a lifelong practice,” one she’s been at since age 18, with The Joy of Cooking among 45 books now in her collection. (‘Joy…’ is the second best-selling cookbook after Betty Crocker’s Picture Cook Book; other classics include: Essentials of Classic Italian Cooking, Half-Baked Harvest, and the Moosewood Cookbook, revolutionary 50 years ago with its plant-based cuisine, still relevant today. 

Deep Gap collector Yvonne Finne (see Crocker cookbook open in her photo) cherishes her family keepsake cookbooks that come “with loving hand-written messages. Cookbooks are trustworthy unlike many online recipes that are untested, inaccurate. My kids know when getting me a gift, it’s a cookbook,” she smiles. Maybe a local one: Lee Rankin’s Cookin’ Up a Storm chronicles the cultural foods of Annie Johnson, who helped raise Rankin (owner of Apple Hill Farm, Banner Elk), or Dawn’s Early Light: Wise and Wickedly Fun Family Recipes (Dawn Sullivan, Boone). 

By satisfying our longing for connection and desire to support our hometowns, community fund-raising cookbooks are steady sellers, such as Our Blue Ridge Kitchens Recipe Book by Blue Ridge Women in Agriculture. The 2025 edition includes Finne’s recipe for Aunt Belle’s Molasses Cake. “I’ve baked it 100 times and not changed a thing,” she proclaims. The Blowing Rock Museum of Art & History is currently considering producing its own community cookbook celebrating its 15th anniversary. 

Some cookbooks read like novels, such as Deep Run Roots, by TV celebrity chef Vivian Howard (Kinston, NC). A frequent High Country visitor, she recently spoke about her southern-cooking memoir at an Appalachian State University luncheon. Recipes from the World of Tolkien, another story-based how-to (about the Hobbit) is FireLight’s “most popular cookbook.” At Watauga County Public Library, a Cook the Books group discusses mystery books containing accompanying recipes they then cook and share. 

Adult Services Manager Ingrid Hayes tells CML, “Watauga Library has 376 cookbooks, 10 checked out weekly, new ones always arriving.” For a taste of local culinary history, App State’s Special Collections Center has nearly 2,000 Appalachia cookbooks. Sorghum apple stack cake anyone? 

Imagining aromas, tastes, textures sends us on a sensory journey for certain cookbooks, many available at area gift/specialty shops (see list). Oakley bought a camping book from Mast General Store. “But, I’m not going camping,” she laughs. “I browse it, fantasizing cooking over fire someday.” 

Natural-food activist and author Michael Pollan writes, “Trying something new helps us find ourselves; reason for coming into the kitchen.” Recipes can offer kind challenges, be eye-opening. In an Ina Garten cookbook, I discovered a less laborious risotto method, hands-free in the oven! 

Ironically, websites contribute to cookbook sales. Eat Your Books (eatyourbooks.com) records indexes from all your cookbooks (wow!) to search recipes quickly, making cookbooks even more appealing! Some sites sell accompanying eponymous cookbooks: Love & Lemons was hailed by Bon Appétit Magazine as “The most beautiful we’ve ever seen.” Oakley has The Smitten Kitchen and my favorite is Sally’s Baking Addiction. 

Online apps address technical shortcomings such as recipe screens timing out. Oakley agrees digital has its place, but she’s unswerving, affirming what many cookbook devotees espouse, “They can never replace my cookbooks.” 

Ever-evolving food trends spawn new cookbooks. Currently: sourdough breads, charcuterie boards, sheet-pan meals; small appliance gadgets, such as air fryers, instapots, and—just catching on—countertop grain mills, already with a cookbook, The Essential Home-Ground Flour Book, available at BE Natural Market in Boone. 

The world’s second largest book publisher, HarperCollins, asked me to develop a cookbook responding to the trend among the career-minded seeking healthier after-work happy hours with tea and savories. Watauga Library carries this book, and encourages borrowing all their cookbooks, despite some returning à la food smudges; we cookbook lovers don’t mind at all.  

We eat, so long live the cookbook!   

Frequent CML contributor Gail Greco is a former adjunct professor of magazine writing at the State University of New York, and author of 16 cookbooks, her latest: Afternoon Tea is the New Happy Hour (2023). 

You’ll find an assortment of cookbooks at our local booksellers, shops, libraries and book exchanges, including: 

Apple Hill Farm Outpost | 414 Shawneehaw Ave S, Banner Elk NC, applehillfarmnc.com/apple-hill-farm-outpost/ 

Banner Elk Book Exchange | 185 Azalea Circle, Banner Elk, NC, bannerelkbookexchange.com  

BE Natural Market | 273 Boone Heights Drive, Boone, NC, benaturalmarket.com 

Blue Ridge Women in Agriculture | Winter Farmers’ Market at Watauga County Agricultural Conference Center, 252 Poplar Grove Rd, Boone, NC, highcountryfoodhub.org,  

Cornerstone Books | 1894 Blowing Rock Rd, Boone, NC, cornerstoneboone.com 

Dancing Moon Earthway Bookstore | 553 W King Street, Boone, NC, thedancingmoon.com 

FireLight Book & Candle | 110 Sunset Dr., Suite 1, Blowing Rock, NC, firelightcandle.com 

Huzzah Books | 114 Clement Street, Boone NC, huzzahbooks.com 

Mast General Store | Original Mast General Store (Valle Crucis) at 3565 Hwy 194 S.  Sugar Grove, NC, and Mast General Store (Boone) at 630 W. King Street, Boone, NC, mastgeneralstore.com 

Neaco | 1053 Main Street, Blowing Rock, NC, neaco.com 

Tatum Galleries | 5320 NC-105, Banner Elk, NC, tatumgalleries.com 

The Bee & the Boxwood | 215 Boone Heights Dr., Suite 300, Boone, and 960 Main St., Unit 1, Blowing Rock, NC, thebeeandtheboxwood.com 

Timber and Twine Company | 163 Shawneehaw Ave S, Banner Elk, NC
timberandtwineco.com

Watauga County Public Library | 140 Queen St., Boone, NC, arlibrary.org/watauga 

And don’t forget our local thrift stores! Many have a great selection of used cookbooks. 

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From the CML Kitchen…

By Meagan Goheen

Chai spiced oatmeal maple cream pies 

INGREDIENTS

  • 1 cup unsalted butter (room temperature) 
  • 1 cup brown sugar 
  • ½ cup sugar 
  • 2 eggs 
  • 1 tsp vanilla  
  • 1 TBSP molasses 
  • 1 ¾ cups all-purpose flour 
  • 1 tsp baking soda 
  • ½ tsp kosher salt 
  • 3 cups old fashioned oats 
  • 2 tsp cinnamon 
  • 1 tsp ginger 
  • 1 tsp cardamom 
  • ½ tsp allspice 
  • ½ tsp cloves 
  • ½ tsp nutmeg  
  • ½ tsp black pepper 
  • *Make it a “dirty” chai oatmeal cookie by adding 3 TBSP of espresso powder 

Maple cream 

  • ½ cup unsalted butter (room temperature) 
  • 2 cups confectioners’ sugar 
  • 2 TBSP whole milk 
  • 2 TBSP maple syrup  
  • 2 tsp vanilla  
  • ¼ tsp salt 

DIRECTIONS

COOKIE DOUGH 

  1. Whip butter until smooth, add brown and white sugar and mix until light and fluffy, about 2-3 minutes.  
  1. Add eggs, vanilla and molasses and mix to combine. 
  1. In a separate bowl stir together the flour, baking soda, salt, all the spices and oats until well combined. 
  1. Add the dry mixture to the wet mixture, stirring until combined. Cover and refrigerate for 20-30 minutes. 
  1. Pre-heat oven to 350 degrees. 
  1. Prepare baking sheets by lining with parchment paper. 
  1. Scoop chilled dough using a 1/5 TBSP (medium scoop) or shape by hand into 1.5 inch balls. Place dough balls 2 inches apart on a prepared baking sheet. 
  1. Bake for 10-11 minutes.  
  1. Allow to cool on baking sheet for 5 minutes, then transfer to a wire rack to cool completely. 

MAPLE CREAM 

  1. Mix butter with an electric mixer until smooth 
  1. Add confectioners’ sugar, milk, maple syrup, vanilla and salt and mix for 2 minutes until light and creamy; add more milk if it is too thick. 

ASSEMBLE  

  1. Be sure the cookies are completely cooled before assembling. 
  2. Scoop a small dollop of frosting onto the bottom of one cookie, press a second cookie on top and sandwich it together. Enjoy!

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