If you sat near Eleanor at any reunion, you’ve probably eaten something she brought. After decades of being asked “when are you finally going to write this down,” she’s done it. From Eleanor’s Kitchen: 40 Years of Family Recipes is now in print, and copies are available through her website.
“I kept telling people the recipes were all in my head,” Eleanor said when we spoke by phone last month. “Then my granddaughter asked me to teach her to make my mother’s apple cake, and I realized — if I don’t write these down, they’re gone.”
What’s Inside
The book gathers 140 recipes that span everything from her mother’s Sunday-dinner staples to dishes she picked up during the years she and her husband lived in Italy. Each recipe is paired with a short story — where it came from, who it reminds her of, why it matters.
Several classmates are featured by name — including one chapter dedicated to “The Lasagna Wars of 1962,” which any of us who were in Mrs. Patterson’s home economics class will remember vividly.
Congratulations, Eleanor. We always knew you had a book in you — we just didn’t know it would be this delicious.
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