Description
“Over the River and Through the Woods: Recipes from Grandma’s House” brings together 70-plus years of recipes, cooking and baking tips, along with life lessons from a woman who learned early on to, “make the most of what you have.” Patricia Mae Vey Harris, born in 1929 in Seattle, watched her parents make ends meet during the Great Depression. She learned to cook and bake from necessity, but found she liked the challenge. With six children, a husband and many guests over the years at the family home in Plain, Washington, she had plenty of opportunity to hone her skills. She opened the Plain Bakery in the 1970s, offering homemade bread, pastries and cookies in the red cabin built by her husband’s grandparents. She published The Red Cabin Cookbook in 1981. During the decades that followed, she polished her culinary skills with stints as a chef at a summer camp, hospital, mountain-top resort and German restaurant, which created an entirely new collection of recipes. “Over the River and Through the Woods: Recipes from Grandma’s House” includes many of those along with the most-often requested family favorites and behind-the-scenes stories of life, laughter, lizards and liver loaf.

About the author
Pat Harris is the mother of six, wife of one, grandmother of seven and great grandmother of five. Born on a houseboat in Seattle in 1929, her dad claimed she started the Great Depression. She denies it. She did learn the lessons of the times, though, including from-scratch baking and cooking skills that she later put to use at the Plain Bakery. She authored “Red Cabin Cookbook,” which includes favorite bakery recipes, and then expanded her repertoire with stints as a professional chef until she retired. She continues to live in Plain, Washington, giving family and friends the opportunity to enjoy grandma’s cooking. Her daughter, Nevonne McDaniels, is a journalist who has enjoyed sharing the stories of others for the past 30 years. She remains a farm girl at heart, with an appreciation for history, tradition, ingenuity and creativity that comes from living in the country. She and her firefighting, snowplowing husband live in a former hay field across from her parent’s house, in the home built with the help of her little brother Neval.