The Child Health Association of Sewickley was looking for a money-making project that would put Pittsburgh on the map. "All we had then was the pickle pin from Heinz," recalled Norma Sproull.
So members tried something a lot of groups attempt -- a community cookbook.
Krista Schinagl, Post-Gazette photosFrom left, Hanley Cox, Pat Cavalier, Missy Zimmerman, and Mary Anne Riley are among those who worked on the original "Three Rivers Cookbook." They got together at the Allegheny Country Club in Sewickley to celebrate the 30th anniversary of the cookbook.
Click photo for larger image.
How'd they do? Well, 30 years later, sales of the "Three Rivers Cookbook" and its three successors continue strong. Most important, mostly because of those cookbook sales, $2.75 million has been donated to children's programs in Western Pennsylvania.
That's a lot of cookbooks.
The first book had its 23rd printing in 2002, and the group is also selling "Three Rivers II," "Three Rivers III" and "Three Rivers Renaissance."
"We sold 297 books last month," said president Bonnie Megan, who greeted 96 guests recently at a tea celebrating the 30th anniversary of the first book, which arrived in October 1973. Still the most popular of the quartet, it has sold 450,000 copies.
"At the time, when Norma proposed the project, I thought, 'The last thing I need is another cookbook,' " said Pat Cavalier, the organization's president at the time.
In the words of the trade, this community cookbook has legs. Not that it sold itself. When one of the women traveled, she invariably slid a cookbook into her luggage to show to stores. One of the joys for today's members is being in a kitchen store in, say, Florida, Texas or Colorado or even a foreign country and finding the familiar black and white cover with the splash of red drawn by Susan Gaca. Only a few Pittsburgh natives might notice from the cover that the book didn't come out this year -- the Incline is moving down Mount Washington toward the Lawrence Paint Co., which was razed in 2001.
At the recent anniversary tea at Allegheny Country Club (the organization itself began in 1923), the reminiscences flew fast and furious. Stories piled on top of one another, like the hundreds of recipes collected for that first book. The women were all in their 30s, busy with children and community activities, and time was in short supply. With these busy cooks in mind, Sproull decreed that no recipe would run over onto the next page.
In an example of how the group has innovated through the years, Sproull's words and image emanated onscreen from a DVD shown at the tea. She was on a cruise. In fact, the traveling she does with her husband has added her personal touch to book sales all over the country. The women agreed she was the spark plug that made the project ignite.
"I was at the Home Show, and I couldn't figure why I wasn't selling many books," recalled Ann Garrett, who was new to Child Health at the time. "Finally, I asked a woman if she was interested, and she said, 'Oh, I just bought one from a lady in the elevator.' "
The lady was Norma Sproull. "Norma has tremendous executive ability," said Cavalier. "If she was CEO of US Airways, it wouldn't be leaving Pittsburgh."
The four books in the "Three Rivers Cookbook" series have raised nearly $2.75 million.Click photo for larger image.
Where to buy
All four "Three Rivers" cookbooks are in print. Call Child Health Association of Sewickley at 412-741-3221. Prices range from $14.95 for the first three to $19.95 for the hardcover "Renaissance." They are also available in many stores. On the video, the tenacious Sproull recalled traveling to New York 30 years ago and making time to visit the Ladies' Home Journal, which was having a community cookbook contest. She was left in a room with 50 boxes of cookbooks, one from each state. She dug around in the Pennsylvania box, found the "Three Rivers" book and laid it on top of the stack. The cookbook went on to be featured in Ladies' Home Journal and was named to the Southern Living Cookbook Hall of Fame. And the cookbooks are still winning awards, most recently being named to the Walter S. McIlhenny Hall of Fame. McIlhenny, the makers of Tabasco, must believe the books are hot stuff.
A community cookbook succeeds because of hard work, not luck. All Three Rivers books have recipes that were prepared blind with no names attached, tested, tasted and rated from 1 to 5, then retested by friends and family before they ever made it into the book. (It's a big honor in my life to have my Feather Yeast Rolls recipe in the "Renaissance" book.)
Not every family favorite made the cut. One particular recipe stood out, partly because it contained good ingredients like oysters and Smithfield ham that never quite coalesced into anything good to eat.
"It tasted awful," recalled cookbook co-chairwoman Garrett. She set it out for the family's Old English sheepdogs. "They wouldn't eat it, either."
Putting together a community cookbook is a variation on the restaurant critics' theme: "We eat bad food so you don't have to."
There was no slush fund to pay for ingredients, and some were quite expensive, too. At the intersection of time and money, one tester remembered washing sauce off the shrimp so it wouldn't be wasted. Although few cookbooks have this kind of staying power, nobody could remember just how much the original cost.
"I think it was $3," said one.
"Maybe it was $3.95," said another.
"I know it was under $5," said a third.
You have to move a lot of books to make $2.75 million, and the women got to know the UPS man well. Within six months, the original was in 35 states. The committee put it together in eight months, and the women sigh in contentment as they recall all the luncheons and dinners where the recipes were tasted -- one at a time, in courses, with the next dish not presented until the previous one had been graded.
And the group was working on its benefit house tour at the same time, said Missy Zimmerman, testing co-chair with Mary Anne Riley, testing chair. They typed it with no computer, no going back. (And, though there were sometimes three recipes to a page, none spills over to a second.)
Just listen to the stories.
Cookbook co-chair Garrett: "We worked on it at least six hours a day. In those days, women didn't work outside the home. I eventually had to get a cleaning lady -- I was too busy doing charity work to clean the house myself."
Cavalier: "Twenty years later, we were at a business meeting in Ireland, and we got to talking with the taxi driver about his mother's brown bread. He said he would send me the recipe. Then he said, 'I've got an American cookbook -- it's from Pittsburgh,' and went on to describe the cover of "Three Rivers I." It turned out he had driven around one family for two weeks, and when they discovered he loved to cook, they sent him the book. Cavalier never found out who they were.
Riley's story of why the book happens to be in a Borders Bookshop in Glasgow, Scotland, is easier to trace. Her daughter, the Rev. Emily Riley Campbell was pastoring a church in Edinburgh. The minister prepared a lot of recipes from the cookbook and people liked them, so the bookstore started selling it.
What about the good recipes that didn't make it? "We had 1,400 recipes," Zimmerman recalled, "but there was only room for 420. Mary Anne and I really like 'The Tributary,' the good recipes that were left over, which we printed on the Xerox machine."
The book subtitled "The Good Taste of Pittsburgh" brought the city to life in timeless line drawings of city scenes, including the Kaufmann's clock and the Christmas trees at the Carnegie Museum. H.J. Heinz contributed the money for the splash of red on the cover, and an anonymous donor subsidized the initial printing costs. She remains anonymous, but Cavalier recalled with a smile, "I baked her orange cakes for the next 12 years."
You don't find many recipes with canned mushroom soup in the more recent "Three Rivers" books, but that was the modern thing to do then. What you do find is delicious recipes that work.
Take the Down-Under Apple Pie. No, you can't. My husband, Ace, and I loved the Cheddar-topped pie so much it was gone within 24 hours.
The McIntosh apples we bought were so large that the pie boiled over in our just-cleaned oven.
"When something boils over, you couldn't have a better smell than apple pie," Ace said and even offered to clean the oven.
Now that's a testimonial. Bring on the tributaries.
PG tested
Down-Under Apple Pie
- 6 tart cooking apples
- 1 cup sugar
- 2 tablespoons flour
- 1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
- 1 teaspoon grated lemon peel
- 1/8 teaspoon ground cloves
- 1/8 teaspoon salt
- Your favorite piecrust in a 9-inch pie plate, the edges fluted
Topping:
- 1/2 cup flour
- 1/4 cup sugar
- 1/8 teaspoon salt
- 1/2 cup grated Cheddar cheese
- 1/4 cup melted butter
- Sour cream
Preparation time: 30 minutes.
Baking time: 40 minutes.
Peel, quarter and core the apples, then slice thinly. Mix the sugar, flour, cinnamon, lemon peel, cloves and salt. Toss the apple slices lightly in this mixture. Arrange the apples, overlapping the slices, in the pastry-lined pie plate.
Topping: Combine the flour, sugar, salt and cheese. Mix in the melted butter. Sprinkle the cheese crumbs over the apples. Bake at 400 degrees for 40 minutes, or until the topping and crust are golden brown. Let the pie cool on a wire rack and serve it warm, topping each slice with a generous spoonful of sour cream.
Serves 6 to 8.
Tester's note: Today's apples are often much larger than those of 30 years ago. Although we used five apples, the pie still boiled over. Next time, we'll use a deep-dish pie pan.
Mrs. Thomas M. (Ann) Garrett in "Three Rivers Cookbook 1"
First Published: May 16, 2004, 4:00 a.m.
