Enjoyed the short stories of the authors life and growing up. I am originally from Iowa and Minnesota myself before moving to the east coast so can relate to the stories of 4'H, fairs, and the life around the lakes. Going to try several of the recipes. Look like good down to home, cooking!

Really not what I was expecting, and not nearly as interesting as I hoped. It's a detailed but rather scattered (the same stories and facts told a couple times, in different chapters) memoir, with at least one recipe per chapter. I'm not really interested in the memoir - it sounds like the family stories we tell (The time my brother got hung in a tree. The time I was working as a cook for a rich lady), and is about as interesting to someone who wasn't involved. It might be better if I'd ever read anything by her before - if she was a person to me. Several of the recipes sound interesting, though it's going to be a pain to get to them - I have a PDF version of the book, which means scrolling through or at best searching to find the recipes I want. Actually, aside from the recipes, the part I found most interesting was the chapter about her cookbooks, how she started and continued with them - I admit it, I'm even more of a book nerd than a cooking nerd. I was a little frustrated, actually - in several chapters, she mentions four or five recipes and the one that is actually there is not the one (or ones) I wanted to make. I was amused that I have one of her recipes - from a Pillsbury Bake-off - and their version is quite different from the one in Homemade. I received a copy of the book from the publisher, through Netgalley, in return for a review.