Somebody Always Asks Who Made This

Somebody always asks. You're at a potluck, or somebody's back porch after a funeral, or the church basement after a wedding, and there's a dish on the table that stops people mid-conversation. A casserole, a pot roast that fell apart just right, somebody's aunt's cobbler that shows up at every single family gathering without fail. And the question that comes next isn't about anything else going on in the world. It's just: who made this, and how.

Submit Your Favorite Dish: Join the Scioto County Community Cookbook Project by Sharing Your Family Recipes and Stories.

That question is basically a large part of the reason "Gather 'Round, Let's Cook" is a project we're curating. We've been collecting recipes from folks around Scioto County for a few months now whether it be Mamaw's Sunday casserole, a cousin's famous chili, or whatever your family makes that everybody fights over at Thanksgiving (that's edible and not part of the never-ending 24-hour news cycle) and putting them into an actual printed cookbook people can keep on their counter.

Part of what's nice about a recipe is that it usually comes with a story attached whether you you know it or not. One woman sent in a Mississippi Mud Cake and mentioned, almost as an aside, that her grandparents were members of the Alben Barkley Democratic Club, and that this cake showed up without fail at every potluck dinner the club ever held. Someone else sent in homemade egg noodles with a note about how these recipes were never written down in her family; they were remembered in the feel of the dough and the sound of the rolling pin, passed hand to hand instead of page to page. Nobody needs those stories to make the recipes taste good, but it's exactly why we wanted to do this as a real book and not just a folder of recipes online, or a recipe-swap event.

If you haven't submitted yet, we'd love to have something from you — a main dish, a dessert, a side, a soup, whatever's sitting in your recipe box that means something to your family (or friends, or is just special to you). We've gotten a good range so far, including a vegan sofritas recipe good enough to fool a Chipotle regular, a pot of tomato and dumplings that tastes like an Appalachian kitchen in the 1950s, and a hearty vegan chili, alongside plenty of pies and cakes. Whatever you've got, we want it.

You can also just go look at what's been submitted so far, even if you're not ready to send anything in yourself. It's worth a scroll.

Submit your recipe and story for "Gather 'Round, Let's Cook" here: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSenFvAo8kLAfKV9PVjRqJsVUBcCNIXM6lRgHlxObZLLkE7FuQ/viewform

See what's already been submitted: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1vJhgsO_Tz1svHPi-wHFoohZ8g44SXXEvAICv6877W9U/edit?gid=0#gid=0

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One more thing, it is worth nothing this is not this isn't purely a labor of love or a historical preservation project. This cookbook is also how we're raising money for the Scioto County Democratic Party. We're working with local in-house talent for design and layout to keep cost down, and we'll have them at our annual banquet and other events, available in exchange for a donation; It will be the perfect gift for the holidays this year. Every dollar goes toward supporting local candidates and party activities. If you send in a recipe, you'll get a better deal on a copy — seemed only fair, since you're the one who made the book worth having.