Cross Creek Kitchens: Seasonal Recipes and Reflections

by Sally Morrison

For many years, Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings’s home in Cross Creek—the place where she wrote many of her most beloved works—has been open to the public under the aegis of the Florida State Park system. Sally Morrison, one of the home’s first tour guides, spent years living on the grounds, maintaining the garden, cooking the food that Rawlings loved, and interpreting the home for visitors. Nearly thirty years ago, she and her Cross Creek neighbor Kate Barnes created Cross Creek Kitchens to highlight the southern fare and local favorites enjoyed by Rawlings and her guests over the years. Ahead of its time in emphasizing slow cooking and local produce, the cookbook enjoyed a steady popularity for decades, with first editions now selling as collector’s items. nterlaced with stories of life in Cross Creek, this new edition remains amazingly relevant to today’s food trends. More than 150 recipes reflects the seasons’ bounties and focus on natural ingredients; the Sweet ’Tater Pie, for example, calls for cane syrup or honey as a healthier alternative to refined sugar. Other tasty recipes found in Cross Creek Kitchens include Southern Pea Soup, Kate’s Hogwild Macaroni and Cheese, Beach Grouper, Gingerbread Waffles, South Moon Persimmon Bread, Orange Blossom Carrot Cake, and a variety of cornbread variations.

Genres: Nonfiction

224 pages, Hardcover

First published September 1, 1983

Reviews

[Brooke · Rating 5 out of 5]

I could not adore this book more. If you're from Florida, especially North Central Florida where Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings lived, you'll understand. Sally Morrison truly uses NCF ingredients and shows off Old Florida cooking. It's Southern cooking but it has it's own twist. I love the slices of life she adds between the recipes, recounting her time living in MKR's house at Cross Creek. It makes me so homesick. I found the recipes to be completely approachable and she offers substitutes for ingredients that might not be available to folks living in other parts of the country.

[Ann Redmond · Rating 5 out of 5]

As a cook in the deep Gulf coastal south, I pull this book out when seasons change and I'm looking for recipes and inspiration for the fresh ingredients at the market. Love it!

[Helena · Rating 4 out of 5]

I admit that I have a tendency to romanticize Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings's home in Cross Creek. I've visited several times--a couple as a kid, when I thought it was boring, and the rest as an adult, when I fell in love with it. That said, this author not only worked as a park ranger at the Rawlings home, she actually got to live there for a while. Interspersed with delicious-sounding recipes are her recollections of the MKR house when she first arrived, and her work to restore the old grove and place the garden where Rawlings had hers--she even got to know people who knew Rawlings when she lived there. How could I not find this book fascinating? Next time I find myself up in Cross Creek I'm going to have to ask if Ms. Morrison still works there--it would be so great to meet her and maybe find out more about what it's been like there. In the meantime, I'll content myself with trying out some of these recipes, and probably finding a copy of my own, since the library will make me give this one back eventually.

[Mike · Rating 3 out of 5]

An enchanting tale of a park ranger's (Sally Morrison) experience living on site at the Marjorie K Rawlings homestead in Cross Creek, Florida and also a cookbook. The stories Morrison shares are very informative and a lot of fun, but her recipes are mostly a rather dated collection of odd, nature-inspired, hippie-fantastic ones she and her friends created in the early 1980s when the book was written. Which is fine, but don't expect to find authentic recipes of old Florida here, though there are a few. The smoothie recipes turned out well and the recipes for various jams, pickles, and the like may be useful for people into home canning, but I wish there had been more in the way of the old Floridian traditions that inspired Rawlings' own cookbook. Kate Barnes' illustrations are also quite nice though.

[Karen · Rating 4 out of 5]

I enjoyed the "flashbacks" to Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings' stay at Cross Creek--and this modern-day Park Service ranger and ecologist aptly reproduces some of Rawlings' recipes as well as adding some of her own, and some of her friends'. Since Rawlings also commented on the environment, both flora and fauna, of the area, the comments of "how it is today" were very relevant. Between Rawlings' cookbook and this one, there is a down-home recipe for any occasion!

[Annie Talley · Rating 5 out of 5]

I loved reading this...and then I realized I knew the author when I was a teenager! Her parents were friends of my parents and I'd met her several times on camping trips. That was such a surprise.