Rachel Church on The Women of Windy Hill (Artists’ Book on Community Cookbooks)

Sponsored by The Baxter Society

Rachel Church will speak about her artist’s book The Women of Windy Hill, which commemorates the creation of a self-published cookbook during the pandemic.

To register for this talk, contact: baxtersociety@gmail.com

From Rachel’s website:

In 2021, the Women’s Group of the North Vienna United Methodist Church, a church perched up on a windy ridge at the highest point in a small, rural town, created Cooped Up Cooking. The introduction reads:

It has been ten years since the Wednesday Morning Women’s Group published a cookbook. 2020-21 has been a challenging time for everyone. For a period, the group did not meet. Then we met on Zoom, better than not meeting at all, but not the same as being together! It was so good when we finally could be back together in-person, to share, laugh, and cry together. This new cookbook contains comfort food recipes that nourished us during the pandemic; new finds discovered during cooking adventures; as well as our thoughts, and prayers, and scripture that sustained us. Our hope is that you will find some old treasures, new finds, and comfort in this cookbook.

Community cookbooks are valuable because they document not only the foods eaten in a specific community in a given time, but also the values, history, and social networks of a community, and particularly (but not exclusively) communities of women. I was interested in this cookbook because it reflects as time in this community (and the world) of extreme challenges. For many of us, food and cooking gained even more appreciation as nourishment both for our bodies and our spirits. I wanted to make this project to highlight the women who created the cookbook and the stories within their recipes and, more personally, because these women were part of my own upbringing; I grew up in that small, rural community. I am grateful that they have been open with their stories, photos, and recipe boxes to create this collaborative artwork, which I hope brings attention and honor to the foods that sustain us, the memories they contain, and the people who make it.