North Fork food, families celebrated

From Oliver Meister’s greenhouse kimchee to Flannery Coats’ cookies and soup, a new cookbook celebrates the best recipes of the North Fork community.

Co-author Lois Walker has been working on The “North Fork Country Kitchens Cookbook” of more than 200 recipes for more than a year and a half.

The book is a unique celebration of not just the food and recipes of the North Fork but the people behind them as well. Several recipes are accompanied by a photo and short biography of the family that crafted them, Walker explained.

The idea for the book originated from longtime North Forker Gary Haverlandt, Walker said. Haverlandt’s grandparents, Frank and Ellen Wurtz, were early homesteaders in the valley.

Walker worked as a civilian historian for the Air Force for 25 years and has been coming to the family home in the North Fork for more than 30 years. After she retired about three years ago, Walker and her husband Bill moved permanently to the North Fork.

The cookbook is 216 pages long and provides two indexes to easily find the recipes. Walker said she tried nearly all the recipes in preparing and proofreading the book.

“It was a very fun project,” she said.

Walker admits that some of the recipes aren’t entirely healthy, and one even calls for grinding your own flour. Bettie Jacobsen’s Putney Polebridge bread recipe calls for whole wheat flour the family used to grind by hand.

The book was published with financial support from Glacier Bank and the Whitefish Credit Union as well as advertising.

Two editions will be released. The centennial keepsake edition will be printed in color with a limited run of 400 copies. A second edition in black and white will be available as well.

Walker said both editions will be for sale at the Fourth of July Parade in Polebridge next week. Copies can also be purchased online at www.nvdi.com/cookbook.pdf.