Food for thought
Just about everyone in the Yoshida family has a favorite dish from Grandma Jean's collection of Rainy Day Recipes. "When the grandchildren come, I fix a lot of hamburger goulash," says Irma Jean McPherren, the "Grandma Jean" of the book's title. McPherren's daughter, Linda Yoshida, director of Yoshida's Fine Art Gallery in Troutdale, likes to prepare her mother's pineapple cream cheese pie for special occasions, but she says her own daughter, Kristina Yoshida McMorris, who took the responsibility for compiling her grandmother's recipes into book form, likes the sweet potato casserole best of all.

Cooking among the Yoshidas has long been a family affair—many Eastwinds' readers will recognize the Yoshida name from Mr. Yoshida's Fine Sauces introduced 18 years ago by McPherren's son-in-law Junki Yoshida (of The Yoshida Group) and now distributed internationally by H.J. Heinz.

Like Mr. Yoshida's Fine Sauces, which originated when Junki bottled his special teriyaki-flavored "Black Sauce" to give as gifts to friends and family, Grandma Jean's Rainy Day Recipes cookbook had humble beginnings. "I had started to write my recipes in long hand for the grandchildren, but I was taking so long, the family would get on me, so when Kristina visited, I'd give her my recipe cards and tell her 'you could do it a lot faster on your computer'. Then I'd have to call her up and ask for amounts of ingredients when I couldn't remember them."

Much to McPherren's surprise, just before Christmas 2000, Kristina presented the printed and bound cookbook to her grandmother, but it wasn't the bare-bones record of recipes she had expected. Grandma Jean's Rainy Day Recipes is crammed with 400 professionally printed recipes organized in 18 sections that range from snacks and seasonings, to casseroles, red meats, seafood, candies, cakes, cobblers and cookies. Grandma Jean is pictured on the cover replete with yellow rain slicker, black umbrella and her faithful poodle "Petie."

Particularly endearing, not only for the family but for unrelated cooks as well, is an introductory chapter that reveals a bit of McPherren's personal life. Here we read that she learned at age ten to cook from a housekeeper after her own mother had died of appendicitis. As the acting head of an Iowa farm household, McPherren helped care for her younger brother and sister and still kept up her schooling, walking a mile and a half to a one-room grade school. At age 19, she married a young navy man named Merle. One of his early letters is included in the chapter. Now widowed and living in Hoodsport, where she volunteers to work at the Food Bank, McPherren says that throughout her 76 years, "I collected gobs of recipes. I still love to cook."

But she admits, it was a shock to find out granddaughter Kristina had had 1500 copies of Rainy Day Recipes printed. Since that first printing, a second run has rolled off the presses and the books continue to be sold at Borders Book Store in Gresham, Troutdale General Store, Yoshida's Fine Art Gallery, and on the web at www.grandmajean.net. At first, McPherren admits, she was a little self-conscious about having her story read by so many, but she says, "It doesn't bother me anymore" - especially since Kristina arranged for the sales of the book to benefit McPherren's other passion in life, the Food Bank.

Kristina says, "Creating an opportunity to contribute to the Food Bank while sharing my grandmother's recipes, personality and stories with others has been so rewarding." Interestingly, even this generous giving back is a family tradition, as a percentage of the proceeds from Yoshida's Fine Art Gallery are consistently contributed to Doernbecher Children's Hospital. Linda Yoshida tells the reason: "When Kristina was little she had severe yellow jaundice. Her liver and kidneys were shutting down. The doctors at Doernbecher saved her life. We were young, and when we went to pay the bill, we explained we had little money, but the people at Doernbecher told us if we could donate $200, it would be fine. Since then, we always want to give back."

The "giving back" from Grandma Jean's Rainy Day Recipes amounts to 100 percent of the $14.95 purchase price, less only publishing expenses, to the Food Banks in Hoods Canal and Portland. Thus, Grandma Jean's delicious recipes—spare ribs Hawaiian (made with 2 cups of Yoshida's Sweet and Sour Sauce), moussaka, hot chicken salad, or poppy seed cake— become more than just foods to enjoy, they also furnish food for thought, food for the soul.


East WInds #1 - July/August 2002; by Betty Fullart-Leo