Why did I write A Traveling Man’s Cookery Book (PDF File, 10.0 MB) (also available in print on Amazon^• and on Lulu)? This is not why: a few years ago, a friend told me after a particularly great vintage dish I’d made for game night, that:

“You should write a cookbook.”

“Would you really want a cookbook filled with other people’s recipes?”

“Yes.”

This was, of course, a clamor of one, and did not result in my writing a cookbook. It only provided the working title—Other People’s Recipes—and that only after I’d come up with a focus for the book.

It may not be obvious browsing through the recipes, but this is a very focused and specific book.

Despite the fact that I enjoy finding obscure cooking pamphlets and making them public again, I have never had any desire to write my own cookbook. My focus was in scanning these old cookbooks so that they’re available for anyone to download and enjoy.

But I did have one habit that allowed me to share my favorite recipes for making while traveling. When I found a recipe that I particularly wanted to remember while visiting friends and family, I would photograph the recipe and keep the photograph on my phone and tablet. This meant not only that I’d be able to make it while traveling, but that when a particularly popular dish elicited requests for the recipe, I was able to easily share it.

Sandwiches are an easy thing to bring and an easy thing to eat.

Turmeric Egg Salad

Buttered Rum Cookies

Byrd Cornmeal Hermits

Lemon Mead

Over time, however, this collection became unwieldy. Finding the recipe I wanted meant browsing through a few hundred photos. I thought about converting it into a PDF—an indexed, alphabetical, and searchable PDF—and so this cookbook was born.

I’m not special enough to write a cookbook. I don’t have what the publishing industry calls “a platform”. But I didn’t write A Traveling Man’s Cookery Book for publication. I wrote it for myself. This is somewhat the opposite of G. K. Chesterton’s quip in Orthodoxy that “I have written the book, and nothing on earth would induce me to read it.” Having written it, and having stored it on my phone, I read it regularly. I can much more easily find that one recipe I’ve been saving for just this special occasion. I can much more easily find any other saved recipe, say, one for using up the egg whites or egg yolks that were left over from making the previous special recipe.

Thanksgiving always requires special recipes, and vintage recipes work especially well for a holiday that celebrates our shared heritage.

Banana Rum Cream Pie

Cabbage and Noodles

Cranberry Ice Box Pudding

Irish Garlic Potatoes

And while I may not qualify as a cook to be remembered, these recipes very much qualify as food to remember. The preservation of food culture would be better if everyone did this or something like it. I wouldn’t buy everyone’s paperback, but I would download a lot of PDFs. A few of my friends make their Word documents and text documents of family recipes available on request, and that’s great. But making them available without requesting it would make them more widespread and less likely to be lost.

I feel the same way about sharing scripts.

You cannot go wrong with pies. Not only are they the most-eaten dessert, they’re the most requested of recipes.

Mashed Potato Pie

Eggnog Pie

Mashed Potato Pie

Eggnog Pie

Collecting my recipes in a Nisus document also allowed me to more easily analyze where they came from. I’m not at all surprised by where most of them came from: the Southern Living Cookies and Candy Cookbook. It’s the first book I bought when I started early retirement, and one of the earliest I would have photographed from. That means that besides being a great cookbook it’s also the one I’ve been using longest since starting my collection of traveling recipes.

It’s also specifically a very good cookbook for the kinds of snacks and easily transported foods I enjoy making for friends. It’s very easy to make cookies, nut mixes, and popcorn ahead of time and bring them with you, and many of those are easy enough to make at the destination, too.

Popcorn and nuts always go over well—if you can manage not to eat them on the way.

Log Cabin Caramel Corn

Popcorn Confection

Sugar-Frosted Cashews

Toasted Rosemary Pecans

I’ve made A Traveling Man’s Cookery Book available as a free download; you can get it as a PDF (PDF File, 10.0 MB) or as an ePub (ePub ebook file, 6.3 MB) depending on which you prefer. I’ve also uploaded it to Lulu.com and to Amazon^• for purchasing printed copies. Use whichever is easiest. If you buy via Lulu, take a look at my other projects, such as my Eddie Doucette recipe collection or the Franklin Golden Syrup reprint I’ve made available.

I’m especially proud of the index in this book. There are three: a topical index that includes both recipe titles and topics such as rice dishes or cookies, or recipes that use egg yolks or egg whites. The second index lists all of the books where I originally found a recipe. If you especially like one recipe, you might see what other recipes came from that book.

You might even consider downloading that book if it’s available online.

And finally there’s an index by year of publication, so that you can see all of the recipes that came from books in 1976, for example, or make sugar-frosted cashews and mashed potato pie to party like it’s 1899!

The latter two indexes aren’t likely to be as useful as the main index, but I personally find them fun. And since I wrote this book for myself first, that’s what counts.

And I’m also a fan of corn and cornmeal.

Carrot Cornbread

Mexican Cornbread with Chilis and Cheese

Corn Salsa

Cornmeal Cheese Crackers

All of the dishes in the photographs on this page have recipes in the book. The name of the recipe is under the photograph. Most of the photos were taken while traveling. Most of the rest were taken while prepping for travel. There were two qualifications for a recipe going into this book: they have to be one of my favorite recipes. And they have to be recipes I’d enjoy making or taking on the road.

I hope you enjoy them, too! Here’s a variation on the Cranberry Squares, made with peanut butter and honey instead. The butter-crumb crust is in the book.

Peanut Butter Honey Squares

Servings: 9
Preparation Time: 1 hour, 40 minutes
Jerry Stratton

Ingredients

• 1-½ cup water
• 4 oz honey
• 1 unflavored gelatin packet
• 2 tbsp sugar
• ½ cup peanut butter
• 1 recipe butter-crumb pie crust with additional 1 tbsp orange zest
• 1 cup whipping cream

Steps

1. Whisk sugar and gelatin together.
2. Bring water and honey to boil and remove from heat.
3. Whisk gelatin mix into liquid.
4. Stir in the peanut butter until thoroughly blended.
5. Chill in refrigerator until slightly thickened, about 60-90 minutes
6. Mix the butter-crumb pie crust (with the orange zest), reserving ⅓ for sprinkling over the top of the squares.
7. Whip the cream to soft peaks.
8. Fold cream into cooled gelatin mixture.
9. Pour into crust.
10. Top with reserved pie crust mix.
11. Chill at least four hours or overnight.