by Kate Evans
If you’re looking for a cookbook filled with healthy, delicious and easy-to-make recipes, check out local author and registered dietitian Stacy Schultz’s second cookbook West Virginia It’s Stacy’s Great Grandma Zona’s Wisdom and Recipes.
Schultz, a Berkeley Springs resident, had her new cookbook released this month on Amazon.com. It offers Schultz’s favorite recipes, comfort food and stories about her great-grandmother Arizona Henry who raised her. She includes some of her Grandma’s wisdom and advice along with health tips.
Experience
Schultz has more than 38 years of experience in health care at War Memorial Hospital including as a cook, manager, dietitian and a certified diabetes care educator. She served as a Morgan County Commissioner for a six-year term beginning January, 2009. West Virginia Governors Earl Tomblin and Jim Justice have both praised Schultz as being one of the best cooks in the state.
West Virginia It’s Stacy’s Great Grandma Zona’s Wisdom and Recipes has a collection of new recipes along with some family recipes from her first cookbook It’s Stacy’s Grandma ‘Zona’s recipes.
Schultz said she wanted to leave her kids favorite recipes and stories from her great-grandmother Arizona Henry to keep her grandma’s memory alive. “When everyone talks about Grandma and her recipes, it’s like she’s still here with me,” Schultz said.
Schultz said she also wants to help people cook better and eat better.
Grandma Zona attended Trinity Methodist Church and raised Schultz and her sister Lisa. She took them to every Bible school and summer school program around, Schultz said. Henry was pretty well known in the community.
Recipe categories
Schultz’s new cookbook has a luscious array of recipes including main dishes, vegetables, soups, venison, breads and rolls, salads, desserts and a few guest recipes. Schultz shares a spinach squares recipe that the late Jeanne Mozier would always bring to parties, courtesy of Jeanne’s sister Barb Wolfe. Mozier played a big part in Schultz’s first cookbook.
Schultz loves all of her Grandma’s recipes, but especially enjoys the filled cookies that remind her of Grandma Zona baking them a couple of times a year. The stuffed deer tenderloin recipe is really good. So is the tomato pie — it’s a good way of using up food, she noted.
Grandma Zona always made zucchini bread and rice pudding. Her ham and vegetable soup was exceptional. Schultz loves any of her recipes, which always bring back wonderful memories of her Grandma.
Foraged for food, berries
Schultz said they lived in Jimstown and went foraging for food and berries on the U.S. Silica property and along the railroad tracks. Schultz’s Pap Pap would go hunting down there and bring home squirrel for squirrel pot pie. Everyone had their own gardens and fruit trees-cherries, peaches, apple and more. They were happy to get a piece of fruit with a bruise or a hole on it.
Grandma Zona was very frugal-their clothes got hemmed and sewn. They never bought things and used what they grew and foraged for meals, she said. They also reused their bags for storage.
Schultz inherited Zona’s frugality. She gives people plants that she grows herself as gifts and makes food from her own garden. Schultz encouraged people to take produce that folks give away from their gardens this time of year and find something delicious
to make with those tomatoes, squash, cucumbers and other vegetables.
Schultz said she loves hearing people’s stories of how they’ve tried her Grandma’s recipes and really enjoyed them when she runs into them at the Food Lion.
“People associate me with food — it’s very rewarding,” she said.
Schultz hopes that a lot of people really enjoy her cookbook and will try some new recipes from it and make some good things to eat. Her cookbook promotes the simplicity of cooking healthy meals, holds her health advice as a dietitian and has a little bit of Zona’s wisdom.
If you’re interested in getting a copy of Schultz’ cookbook(s), call her at 304-676-7144 or email her at sadugan@gmail.com.
Cindy Hovermale at Roy’s Service Center will also be carrying copies of West Virginia It’s Stacy’s Great Grandma Zona’s Wisdom and Recipes for sale. Both of Schulz’s cookbooks are also available on Amazon.com. Schultz plans future book signings.
