Freedom Township Cookbook, 1934

The favorite pie of my brothers and I came from this cookbook which my mom inherited from her mom who belonged to the women’s group that created it. After my mom passed away about 15 years ago, the cookbook was lost in a family tragedy – it went to my oldest brother.

I decided to see what I could turn up. Using the internet to search for a community cookbook produced in a rural area in far North Central Iowa in the early 1930’s was not as much of a long shot as it might sound. In those pre-World War II days, the name of this particular women’s club was The Swastika Club.

Before the ancient symbol of the swastika was co-opted by the Nazis – which right-wing hate groups continue to do with all sorts of imagery today – the symbol was fairly generically used to mean good luck. Ladies Home Journal established Swastika clubs for young ladies in the early 1900’s to earn money by selling magazine subscriptions. The club my grandmother belonged to, in a rural area east of Emmetsburg, Iowa, was created in 1923 in order to disseminate practical home management information from The Farm Bureau and The County Extension Service.

The club changed their name in 1942 and continued to function until 1989 when the members decided to disband and give all their club records to the Iowa Women’s Archives in the Special Collections Department of the University of Iowa’s Main Library. Today, I made a trip to Iowa City to reclaim a piece of my past with the generous help of a librarian named Anna.

The lady at the bottom of the page, Florence Kerber, was my grandmother and this raisin cream pie was my favorite one growing up. I’ll just have to add a meringue topping and whatever pie crust I choose.

It’s a wonderful cookbook and I took as many photos as possible. I found club records listing my mom and uncles as children participating in the programs and a poem that mentioned my grandmother’s distinctive laugh.

I’m looking forward to making this pie and other recipes from the book like “Keokuk Pie” and “Dumb Dumplings.” I wonder if the flavor will match my memory? More to come…