How I Cook It

Note: This edition of How I Cook It has been updated to include Metric equivalents.

Dullness is lifted right out of the routine of recipe reading when you open Virginia McDonald’s “How I Cook It.”
“This recipe won me my husband,” she says with refreshing candor of one of the puddings in the book. Such original remarks as this are expressed throughout the book, and their spontaneity and originality are one of the book’s special charms.
Virginia McDonald’s raisin pie isn’t just a pie, but is a pie “very rich, ‘oozy’ and luscious to see and eat.” Her popovers are not merely popovers, they are “light and airy as a bubble.”
The pastry described in “How I Cook It,” she warns you to “handle as little and as lightly as you would a new born babe.” Her fruit cake, luscious with fruits and nuts, she explains will be better and easier to slice if you “bake it in an old- fashioned corset box.”
“Eat and smack your lips—you never ate such waffles,” she invites; and she remarks off-hand that her noodles go along with stewed chicken like a twin brother.”

Virginia McDonald's story is one of the most unusual success stories in America. It is as truly American as the delicious foods which she cooks. It is the inspiring story of using what she had where she had it and making the most of it. It is the story of courage, hard work and a love of the beautiful triumphing over illness, debt and an unfavorable location and conditions.
Virginia McDonald, young and fun-loving, came to Gallatin, Missouri from Texas, the Southern bride of a Missouri traveling man. Years of subsequent illness during which her husband had given up his job to take care of her had depleted their small fortune and plunged them into debt. The returns from a small hardware store her husband had started in his father’s old blacksmith shop were meager, and she had installed a counter along one side for serving sandwiches to school children. But there were very few school children in this small town of 1600 who could patronize her for this venture was started in 1932.
Gallatin, Missouri is a small county-seat town in Northwest Missouri situated eight miles from any main highway and eighty miles from any metropolitan city, yet from this humble beginning has developed one of the most famous eating places in America.
Most every national magazine as well as metropolitan newspapers and radio stations have given recognition to the achievement of Virginia McDonald as well as thousands of visitors to her Tea Room.
The recipes for her delectable and unusual food and the dainty touches that have made Mrs. McDonald’s Tea Room famous are all included in this book HOW I COOK IT.