All-New Blue Ribbon Cookbook
America's state fairs provide a venue for showing off the nation's best agriculture and animal husbandry. These fairs' baking and canning contests demonstrate the culinary uses of the farms' plant and animal products. Hanley has culled these tournaments' best recipes and compiled them into a volume that will appeal to those nostalgic for an era when most American families still lived on farms. Hanley's compendium emphasizes cakes, pies, cookies, and breads, since these are easily reproducible in contemporary urban environments. Who can resist such all-American creations as coconut supreme cake with its buttery icing or rich fudge-frosted chocolaty brownies? Finnish farmers' sourdough rye and similar breads offer more contemporary, health-conscious fare, but most of the recipes joyfully celebrate a period when people believed quite literally in living off the fat of the land.Mark Knoblauch