Many 4-H members remember making snickerdoodles, wheat bread, funny cake, and brownies when learning food skills as part of their 4-H project work. Over the years, the memories remained, but the recipes were lost. A new cookbook, Favorite Recipes of Illinois 4-H Through the Years, includes all of the most requested recipes from the past 60 years and is available from the Illinois 4-H Foundation. “Fairly often I hear from a former 4-H’er who is looking for a lost recipe,” said Jananne Finck, University of Illinois Extension educator for nutrition and wellness in Springfield and a member of the fundraising committee for the cookbook. “Anyone who took a foods project in 4-H will enjoy this book. It is a delight to see them organized and contained in one publication.”
More than 150 recipes from 4-H foods project books such as You Learn to Bake, ABC’s of Food, Adventures in Cooking, It’s Fun to Cook, Milk and Eggs, Meat in Your Meals, Pastry in Your Meals, and Yeast Breads in Your Meals are included in this 8/12 x 11’ spiral bound cookbook. Recipes are listed by book, alphabetically, and by food category for easy reference.
The cookbook costs $15.00 plus shipping. It can be ordered online at www.4hfoundation.illinois.edu or by completing an order form available at the Woodford County Extension office. Bundles of 10 cookbooks are also available for a small discount.
The cookbook allows you to walk down memory lane and can also help teach youth. Illustrations from the Pastry in Your Meals book are included to show the different steps to make a pie crust. Also included are illustrations from the Yeast Breads in Your Meals book, which show how to knead bread and form different kinds of rolls.
Proceeds from the cookbook will be used to support current 4-H foods project resources and training for 4-H volunteers. “We think the cookbook is a wonderful way to reconnect with 4-H alumni. As part of this project we’re collecting stories from former 4-H members to become part of the Illinois 4-H history,” states Illinois 4-H Foundation Director Angie Barnard.
Favorite Recipes of Illinois 4-H Through the Years would make a perfect Mother’s Day, Graduation, birthday, or other special occasion gift for mothers, daughters, sons, grandmothers, 4-H leaders, or 4-H alums.
For additional information, contact your local Extension office or Sheri Seibold at the State 4-H Office in Champaign, at sseibold@illinois.edu .
4-H is the largest out-of-school educational program for youth in the United States. 4-H seeks to assist youth in acquiring knowledge, forming attitudes, and developing life skills that will enable them to become caring, competent, and contributing members of society. In Illinois 292,888 youth participate in 4-H and other youth programs of University of Illinois Extension. More than 24,721 youth and adult volunteers assist in the programming. For more information about 4-H in Illinois, visit http://www.4-h.illinois.edu .