Almost every small Minnesota town holds a treasure trove of recipes, tested and perfected through generations of potlucks and church suppers.
If you weren't lucky enough to inherit a box of stained and dog-eared recipe cards, the 75 residents of Huntley are happy to share a few of their own. The Huntley Community Cookbook is warming hearts and ovens far beyond the borders of the south-central Minnesota village.
"I love food and I love to cook. There's something that happens when you feed people," said cookbook coordinator Nina Patten, who was born and raised in Huntley and who tested the Wednesday church suppers at Huntley's Community Covenant Church. Recently, she fed 60 parishioners at a gathering she dubbed "O Holy Hot Dish."
Every recipe in the book includes the name of the cook who came up with it, and many recipes come with a story. There's a recipe for "Beans by Sam," submitted by Sam Patten, Nina's husband. There's Marian Ziegler's "Apple Pie Enchiladas." There's a recipe for the brown bread that every student who ate in the Huntley school cafeteria — kindergarten through 12th grade, all under one roof — remembers from Wednesdays, when they served beans and brown bread.
A cookbook like this helps "keep that connection of a place you can always think fondly of. I think that's what this cookbook brings out," Nina Patten said.
The school is closed now, but her family's roofing business operates out of the building and her office is her old first-grade classroom.
But the Huntley cookbook seems to appeal to those without a hometown connection as well. Visitors drive in to the Huntley Café and snap up copies.
The Huntley Community Cookbook recently sold out its third printing, and more are being ordered. More than 1,000 copies have been sold so far — seven and a half copies for every current resident of Huntley.