REIDLAND, KY - Geraldine Ann Marshall, local writer/storyteller, has recently been published again. This time it's her creatively writen "The Homeplace History and Receipt Book: History, Folklore, and Recipes from Life on an Upper Southern Farm a Decade before The Civil War".   

Follow the family of The Homeplace in the 1850s, learn how the work and food changed with each season. Learn the cooking secrets of The Homeplace. Explore the folklore and customs of The Homeplace. Celebrate the holidays. Hear the stories.

The Homeplace is a living history museum with sixteen original buildings, set in the 1850s, located in the Land Between The Lakes National Recreation Area in Kentucky and Tennessee. Original log houses, barns, and cribs, heirloom crops and vegetables, heritage farm animals and historical interpreters create the sense of going back in time. Follow the family of The Homeplace in the 1850s, learn how the work and food changed with each season. Learn the cooking secrets of The Homeplace. Let's get ready to send those delightful dishes warm to table. Join us in exploring the folklore and customs of The Homeplace, celebrating the holidays, and even hearing stories.

Marshall has published a number of books, as well as over 100 articles, stories, and poems (also published under Geraldine Marshall Gutfreund) for both children and adults. She is also a storyteller and tells stories at The Homeplace. She has a degree in zoology from the University of Kentucky. She has two grown daughters, Audrey and Rachel; and lives in Reidland, in a house in the woods with her boxer dog, Stuart Little, who likes to watch the wildlife with her. Stuart Little also likes to eat and sleep while the author researches and writes.

Jim Taylor, Murray, KY wrote:
This book is a wonderful history of life on the farm in the 1800's in rural America. This book reveals life on an 1800's farm in each season along with the dishes which were prepared at that time of the year. It makes me want to visit The Homeplace in Land Between The Lakes to experience these things today.

Mona Proctor, Frankfort, KY wrote:
Congrats to the author and the amazing team at The Land Between The Lakes on publication of a new kitchen treasure. Combining over 200 historical recipes/receipts, instructions, traditions and tales, this book features gorgeous full-color photographs and hand-drawn illustrations of the period settings, buildings, supplies and costumed workers at "The Homeplace." It contains an abundance of recipes and instructions for feeding a family before "fast food" was an option, reflecting traditions passed on through many American families from pioneer times to the present day.

Here is how our mothers and grandmothers made sauerkraut, creamed corn, squash fritters, poke sallat, spring greens, "leather britches" or "shucky" beans, corn bread and hoecakes, Christmas fudge, cream candy, sweet potato pie, dried apple "hand pies," pound cakes, applesauce spice cake... how they prepared meats as varied as squirrel, rabbits, venison, catfish, turkey, chicken, hams, pork roast and bacon... and how they celebrated occasions from Andrew Jackson Day to weddings, quilting bees and frolics, Snap Apple Night, Christmas... with step-by-step instructions on making pie "paste" (pastry, or crust) and dumplings, boiling potatoes, hand-churning ice cream... and much more.

Fun and fascinating to read, the book is sprinkled with diary entries from ladies of the time and quotes from period authors, including conversions, substitutions and tips that are practical and useful for today's cooks. The author's treatments of highlighting certain selections with poetic flow and arranging the book by seasons work well to convey the rhythm of life and celebrations on the farm, as well as an understanding of the amount of work involved in producing, preserving and preparing and presenting a varied, nutritious diet. Definitely inspires the desire for a "field trip" to The Homeplace to see how our heritage is being preserved there today. A book well worth adding to your home collection -- and a fabulous resource for libraries and historical groups to share with their patrons.

On the Net:

The Homeplace Receipt Book
Read more about Geraldine Ann Marshall