Quilter's Christmas Cookbook [Paperback]

Louise Stoltzfus (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: November 25, 1996

Enhance your Christmas celebration with any of the thousand delectable recipes gathered together in this cookbook treasure. Quilters from across North America offer recipes--both comforting and exotic--from their smorgasbord of food traditions.

Editorial Reviews

From the Back Cover

Enhance your Christmas celebrations with any of the thousand delectable recipes gathered together in this cookbook treasure. Quilters from across North America offer recipes-both comforting and exotic-from their smorgasbord of food traditions. Here, too, are some of their favorite Christmas memories and stories. Renew your holidays with this treat for body and soul!

About the Author

Louise Stoltzfus learned the arts of quilting and cooking from her mother, Miriam Stoltzfus. While she puts occasional stitches in one of the many quilts her mother always has in frame, Stoltzfus regrettably seldom finds time for quilting.

Stoltzfus authored the first quilters’ cookbook, Favorite Recipes from Quilters. She also co-authored The Central Market Cookbook, The Best of Mennonite Fellowship Meals,and Lancaster County Cookbook.

Stoltzfus is an editor for Good Books and director of The People’s Place Gallery in Intercourse, Pennsylvania.

Dawn Ranck helped to make her first quilt—a doll quilt—at age seven, with the help of her Grandma Engel. She is currently handpiecing a Grandmother's Flower Garden quilt.

Ranck also enjoys cooking and gardening and combines the two by growing herbs and using them in her cooking.

Ranck is Designer and Production Manager for Good Books.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 348 pages
• Publisher: Good Books (November 25, 1996)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1561482099
• ISBN-13: 978-1561482092
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6.9 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.3 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (8 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #674,814 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

15 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars And it's not just for Christmas!!, October 17, 2000

By 

Ellen A. Hopps "Ellen" (North Babylon, NY USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Quilter's Christmas Cookbook (Paperback)

My favorite holiday cookbook, but also fabulous for good company recipes, potluck dinners or when you just want something a little special for those you love at home. Recipes from appetizers to desserts. Comfort food and ethnic specialities! A to Z!!

I also love reading the notes in the corners with memories of Christmas' past and enjoy seeing the regional specialties from different parts of the country. It is also interesting to see what kind of quilts patterns are being made throughout the states and that this wonderful artform is being kept alive.

A must have for anyone who loves Louise Stoltzfus' compilation cookbooks! Or anyone who loves good old fashioned good food!

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Treasure Chest of Traditional, Easy Recipes., September 30, 2006

By 

B. Marold "Bruce W. Marold" (Bethlehem, PA United States) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Quilter's Christmas Cookbook (Plastic Comb)

`A Quilter's Christmas Cookbook' by `Good Books' (in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania) editors Louise Stoltzfus and Dawn J. Ranck is a genuine bargain for traditional recipe collectors who keep their magazine cutouts in little `tin' filing cans designed for holding 3" by 5" index cards. I know this because this is exactly how my mother keeps her recipes, and so many of the recipes in this book are the very same she has in her little gray can.

For a list price of a mere $13.95, we get 330 pages of recipes, stuffed to almost always three to a page, giving us close to 900 very traditional holiday recipes. A quick look at the title, publisher, and the names of the editors may lead one to think that this book is all about Pennsylvania Dutch recipes, but it is not. The book is a collection of recipes from quilting hobbyists from all over the country. And, the traditional Amish and Mennonite centers in Pennsylvania, Ohio, and New York State are in the distinct minority, While there are a fairly large number of contributions from small towns in southeastern Pennsylvania (Punxsutawney, PA seems to have an inordinately large number of contributors), my hunch is that there is at least one recipe here from every state in the Union, and some from Canada.

In spite of the geographical diversity, there is a great commonality in the style of recipes. Not only do most of them hint of hundreds of little gray boxes from around the country, there is also a strong spirit of pre-Julia Child 1950s style of cooking epitomized by Poppy Cannon, of `Can Opener Gourmet' and other books in that spirit. Two of the symptoms of this style are the use of margarine in place of butter and the heavy use of packaged gelatins (`Jell-O'). The fact that these recipes come from all over the country makes this uniformity even more dramatic. The third symptom is a heavy use of canned goods, especially canned soups, vegetables, and fruits.

As simple as almost all these recipes appear to the casual browser, many are simply too simple. For example, there is virtually never any statement of what size of egg to use in the recipe (The editors could not make such a statement, as there was no way they could know if our 900 contributors all used the same size egg.) Similarly, few recipes specify salted or unsalted butter, in the few cases where butter is used. There are also very few baking recipes that give instructions on how to determine that the baked goods are `done'. I see one recipe with such an instruction, but most recipes on either side of this example have none. So, these are distinctly NOT the kind of recipes you will find in `Gourmet', `Bon Appetit', or even `Martha Stewart Living'. I suspect that you will also not find recipes of this type in `Good Housekeeping', as all our major culinary media have been thoroughly steeped in the `fresh, fresh, fresh' and `local ingredients' mantras of Alice Waters and Deborah Madison.

All this suggests that the editors, like the editors of church and social group cookbooks all tend to assume that their readers already know how to cook well, and are much more interested in the variety in dish than they are about honing their already quite satisfactory cooking skills.

In a brief lapse of focus, I noticed that there seemed to be a rather large number of recipes using cranberries. When I came to my senses, I realized that this is, after all, a book of Christmas recipes, and the cranberry comes into season late in the year, just in time for Thanksgiving and Christmas. But this doesn't explain the four-(4) rhubarb recipes, when rhubarb is a traditional spring and early summer speciality.

I don't want to leave this book without stating that for a very large cookbook audience, this book is exactly what they are looking for. An enormous collection of relatively easy recipes providing excellent ideas for what to make in the weeks surrounding Christmas. So what if there is no `bouche de Noel' recipe which requires a day to make and the patience of a saint, not to mention the skills of a journeyman pastry chef. And, this book is inexpensive enough and small enough so that it will sit alongside the household's copy of `The Joy of Cooking' without taking too many family resources.

I confess there is just a bit of the insider's interest in the book, as each recipe's headnote includes the name of the quilting pattern the contributor is making when they submitted their recipe. I look at these names and draw a complete blank, although I suspect that among the quilting community, they are as well known as `Extra Virgin', `Colcannon', and `Ratatouille' are to us foodies. If I were to offer any suggestion to the editors, it would be to include a picture of each quilt, or at least some distinctive part of each quilt in the headnote, but then, this would probably double the price of the book.

Neither `Gourmet' nor `Pennsylvania Dutch', but an immense collection for Christmas cooking.The huge chapter on Christmas cookies and the Christmas breakfast dishes alone make this book worth getting.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars one of my top 5 favorite cookbooks, March 12, 2009

By 

J. Bardos "hungry heart" (Winn MI) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Quilter's Christmas Cookbook (Plastic Comb)

I collect cookbooks but some are just my go-to books where I know I'll find what I'm looking for. This is one. Full of tried and true, down home recipes with common ingredients. My all time favorite from the book is Crockpot Sage Stuffing. The book falls open to it. Tastes just like the stuffing mom used to put in the bird but the convenience and safety of the crockpot.