Two Chicks tout their roots in the ‘sticks’ of Iowa

Cookies, bars, cakes and pies! Oh my!

You will find recipes for those, along with scones, popovers, crisps, cobblers and other goodies, in the book “Two Chicks from the Sticks — back home baking.”

Authors Jamie Greenland Gorey and Jill Schwalbe Means, who are originally from Grand River, have published a collection of recipes, sprinkled with anecdotes and pictures from their childhood.

“We grew up in a rural southern Iowa community where family, friends and farm meant everything,” they say in the first pages of the book. “Our families’ farms were a stone’s throw apart. Throughout those early years we did absolutely everything together: performed our daily chores, attended grade school and high school, and baked in each other’s kitchens. We even had the same first jobs in high school, as waitresses and cooks at the local truck stop called The Feed Bunk.”

Book signing

Gorey and Means will sign books and give a cooking demonstration 9 to 11 a.m. Saturday at Upper Crust Culinary Creations, 201 W. Adams St.

“I can’t wait,” said Gorey in a Creston News Advertiser interview. “I miss southern Iowa so much.”

Gorey will arrive Friday from her home in Atlanta, Ga. She will be featured on KSIB’s “Everyday Living” show with Jeanie Jones and Kathy Rieck. That program starts at 9:05 a.m.

“We are the two chicks from the sticks,” said Gorey. “I call them the hothouse hens.”

Tradition

The women were part of the farm tradition, learning from their parents what they learned from their own parents — how to grow, harvest and prepare food for their own tables.

They both were members of the Grand River Rancherettes 4-H club and Means talks about that experience in the preface of the cookies section.

In the same vain, Gorey discusses social gatherings at Diamond Country School as the lead to the section on pies.

Each section of the book includes tales of life in rural Iowa and quips, quotes and photos are found scattered among the recipes.

Their book is a compilation of those basic favorites drawn from their mothers, grandmothers, mothers-in-law, other relatives, friends, neighbors and some of their own.

Some of the recipes found in the book include, chocolate oatmeal bars; orange rolls; peanut butter bars, fudge and pie; pear crisp; state fair sugar cookies and old standbys such as, apple pie and dumplings; chocolate chip cookies; custard and gooseberry pie and red velvet cake, totaling more than 80 recipes.

The cookbooks will be available at Upper Crust Saturday morning.