Vashon Island Favorites (proceeds to benefit the Residents) Vashon Community Care Center 1996
Vashon Island is a tiny rural island in Puget Sound that is only accessible by ferry. I couldn’t resist buying a very affordable lot of 8 community cookbooks and a music book(!) from Vashon when I saw them on eBay. I had heard of the island when I was in Seattle for a food blogger event and always found it so intriguing! I think they only have one supermarket and a little main street so I thought they might have some interesting and maybe thrifty or regional recipes.
This book brought to light some of the questions I had about life on a small island. The note in the beginning from Diana Spalding outlines a time when they thought the nursing home on the island was going to close ( my note–the population of Vashon is quite a bit older than the national average with many retirees making a home on the island in addition to the lifelong residents) until an alert went out and they got twenty-nine guarantors to pledge money to keep the doors open. They wrote the cookbook not only to get funds for the Vashon Community Care Center but to inspire other small towns to try to do the same and keep their community nursing homes open.
There is also a history of the group and how it started as a Depression Era home for homeless men who worked at a farm in exchange for a place to stay. Then in the 1950s, it became a licensed nursing home.
The recipes for the book came from residents, staff, and the Vashon Island community at large.
The contributors are named but not their connection to the group or nursing home. There are some canning recipes (that may not be up to health standards! Do not make these!), a larger than average amount of bean dishes, drinks, and marinades.
It has an unusual index that lets you find a recipe by contributor rather than just the ingredients or recipe type.
