Cookbook a collection of treasures, tradition

BY SARA KEDDY

Kings County Register



Adventure, beauty, fun and just plain great taste are food memories Kyla Pierek hopes she’s captured in her first cookbook, Treasured Recipes.

“I’m not professing to be a chef, but it’s just a love of time-honoured and treasured recipes,� she says.

She started as a teenager collecting recipes in cloth-covered notebooks, and thinks looking back at them now - well-worn and stained - she must have started years before that.

“Look at the handwriting - it’s all the same, like I put in one after the other catching up.�

She had a a lot to do.

“I think I was probably walking when I started to cook,� she jokes. “It was definitely early on a family farm.�

Her grandmother, Hazel Woodworth, was known in her day as “quite a cook and adventuress� with food, Pierek says. Her own mother, Ronalda Woodworth, is “known for her apple pie, and makes a dinner for a crowd like no one else.� Her dad, Allison, was “always on the phone, and he’d try to do things that would amuse me - baked Alaska, fudge.�

Pierek herself took over many cooking duties on the family’s Windermere farm at a young age, getting off the bus and starting supper - “then going out and driving the tractor after supper.�

The farm upbringing, and her family’s farm market business today, influences much of her own interest in food. Ingredients - beef, apples, rhubarb, root veggies - were commonly grown, and “I can just grab them from the farm market on my way home,� she says. “Really, it doesn’t take any longer to cook a traditional meal than something else.�

Last year, she sat down to focus on the traditional, gathering material for her cookbook.

“I didn’t have to scramble to find recipes,� she says.

From her mom’s apple pie - featured on the front cover from a still-life Ronalda herself painted to hang in Kyla’s kitchen years ago; to her best friend’s nacho dip - “there’s a little picture in there of us when we were young, skating at the pond; to her grandmother’s tea biscuits, this book “is not just a book.

“There’s a story behind every one of the recipes - they’re all treasured to me. Recipe books are like photo albums, and they’re passed from generation to generation. It’s like you’re honouring people a bit at a time with their recipe.�

Pierek started with the cover for a traditional feel, incorporating a design from the cover of an old cookbook her grandmother had used years ago. Inside, she’s scanned handwritten recipe cards, placed photos and described appropriate times to serve beef stew and dumplings, chili, blueberry cake and brown sugar sauce and salads and casseroles that travel to any potluck.

“They’re not really hard recipes - I’m a busy woman, and other people are, too.�

The first chapter follows most people’s interests: “Dessert first.� She runs to brunches, starters, supper dishes, extras such as vegetable dishes and salads; and wraps up with more sweets: the cookies, squares and Christmas recipes - 160 in all, with 60 colour photographs.

“I’m really excited to have all these in one book, even just for me. It’s been personally satisfying, so exciting and quite nostalgic.�



Taste Treasured Recipes



• Official launch of Pierek’s book November 4, 2 p.m. at the family farm market, Apple Berry Farm Market, Bridgewater

• At-home casual launch November 4, 6 p.m. to 9 p.m. at 2033 Hall Road, Windermere, Kings County

• Order on-line at www.treasuredrecipes.ca">www.treasuredrecipes.ca">www.treasuredrecipes.ca