While new, fancy cookbooks with shiny pages and full-color photography remain ensconced on the living room shelves, those old wire- or plastic-combed collections remain closer at hand, at the edge of the counter or in a handy hutch. Their covers are often plainly decorated by someone associated with the book, or a duplicate of other covers offered by one of several fundraising printer companies that served the middle United States over the course of the middle and later 20th century.

Church and community cookbooks have become part of our local culture. Every small town has a sampling, usually from whatever congregations were nearby. They were put together to raise money for functions or buildings and they were bestsellers, in that everyone in town ended up with one. When it wasn’t a church, it was a school or a club or a gathering of friends who put together these tomes that were quick and easy to get printed and which were all but eternal.

Stories in the Recipes

You can tell by some of the entries in these books who the movers and the shakers were. Some cookbooks had a single entry from each person who contributed, but more often there would be one or two superstars that would stand out, proud of their cooking and happy to share. Or, like when my own mom put together Cornerstone Cookery, published by the St. Vincent’s Infirmary Employee Council in 1984, about a third of the recipes ended up coming from my own family when submissions were scarce.

What each and every one of these books did, though, was capture a moment in space and time in a way few other objects could. In an age before the internet, these volumes catalogued the food we all ate from day to day. The more extravagant recipes, usually for desserts or highly regarded holiday entrees, showed what we ate when we were celebrating. The more humble recipes, with their creative instructions on how to assemble a peanut butter and jelly sandwich or what to do while you’re waiting for something to cook, show us humor and the good nature of the people sharing the recipes they know.

Flavors from the Past

In-between, you get a capsule of history particular to the congregation or area in question, the dishes that are most likely to have been served at the table, the things that one generation didn’t want the next generation to forget. Some of those dishes, like the regional Arkansas dish known as Tallerine (usually pronounced TA-lur-EE-nee), all but evaporated by the end of the 20th century. The ground beef and noodles entree usually contained black olives and cheese, along with some sort of additional ingredient, which included everything from small green peas to green bell pepper, diced onions or even sliced tomatoes. It appeared to be a precursor to the commercial Hamburger Helper, and while prevalent under a host of different spellings in mid-century Arkansas cookbooks, all but disappeared by the mid- to late-1980s. 

There were also concoctions, usually salads or side dishes, that were popular back then but would be undesired today, like congealed salads with a base of Jell-O or any variety of pea-and-mayo mixes. Items utilizing SPAM can still be found in cookbooks today, but canned brothers Vienna Sausages and potted meat are frowned upon and excluded in 21st century collections. For young homemakers looking for ways to change up meals in an age when canned foods were on the shelves at their local grocery while convenience foods like TV dinners and frozen pizzas were not, combining what was easily available to create something that stood out was paramount.

A Taste of Arkansas History

Over the past several years, I have been collecting a variety of Arkansas cookbooks, finding them at thrift stores and in the bins at Goodwill, receiving them from families who are rehoming them when loved ones pass, and taking in duplicates from libraries with multiple copies. In my spare time and on days when the weather is too angry to travel, I sit down and read through them, noting common elements to time and regions.

In 2021, I published a cookbook based on these Arkansas community collections, Arkansas Cookery: Retro Recipes from The Natural State. In its 103 recipes gathered from cookbooks from between 1935 and 1985, I hoped to offer a picture of cooking in mid-century Arkansas, what people were eating at home. These were most of the 107 recipes I’d culled from some of those many cookbooks, showcasing recipes that I found through the era. I took them with me to the Writers’ Colony at Dairy Hollow in Eureka Springs, and over the course of 12 days recreated them, redacting recipes with modern equivalents (for instance, noting that the tabs of cream cheese available in the 1950s was three ounces, compared to the 8 ounce block offered today) and photographing them for posterity.

Some items, such as Green Rice, are very popular even today with home cooks in the Arkansas Delta. Others, like Salmon Croquettes and Tomato Aspic, are very rarely seen today. And then there are things like Guacamole Salad, Hush Puppies, and Fried Zucchini that are known worldwide today.

When I research these recipes, I tend to stop at the year 2000. It’s a nice, even point to cut from, and a moment in time when the internet was just really becoming ubiquitous in homes around the world. The combination of the World Wide Web, retailers like Amazon and Walmart, and the sudden availability to anyone, anywhere foodstuffs that had previously been hard to find – like ube sweet potatoes from Japan or besan flour from India – changed our food culture irreversibly, almost overnight. I plan to continue the research and create more compilations as I learn more and open up these veritable time capsules of Arkansas food.

Date Nut Bread

Folks here in Arkansas, particularly in rural communities, would have access to certain foods certain times of the year. When it came to nuts, what you had stored back was usually reliant on what was available close by. The nuts in this recipe could be pecans, walnuts, or hickory nuts. Dates would come dried, like raisins and prunes (dried plums), and could be stored for a long time. Everything in this recipe from Mrs. Jewell Teater, originally printed in a 1954 cookbook by the Women’s Society of Christian Service at Asbury Methodist Church in Little Rock, could conceivably be in the pantry or fridge, ready to whip up – and let me tell you what, it was certainly a wonderful thing to enjoy, with an almost chocolatey consistency and a soft mouthfeel. I love this best the next day, sliced and toasted with butter – and yes, I substitute butter for the margarine.

Green Pea Salad

While it’s not much to look at, this green pea salad was common at gatherings in rural Arkansas when I was a kid in the 1970s. This version appears in Favorite Recipes from Clay County Kitchens (second printing, 1955) and is attributed to Mrs. Otto Elsass, who was part of the Glaub Lone Holly chapter of the Clay County Council of Homemaker Demonstration Clubs.

Kat Robinson is Arkansas’s original culinary traveler, with three PBS programs, thousands of articles, and 13 books on food in The Natural State to her credit. The Emmy-nominated documentary host and food historian is currently working on a history of Arkansas barbecue.

Follow Kat: Facebook | Instagram | www.TieDyeTravels.com

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“My name is Hallie Shoffner. I’m a sixth generation farmer from Newport, Arkansas. I grew up farming alongside my parents, and for the last ten years I’ve been primary operator of 2,000 acres of soybeans, corn, rice, and wheat.

I should say that I used to be a sixth generation farmer. In February, we made the decision to close our farm. We joined many other farm families making the heartbreaking choice to avoid significant financial hardship before it was too late. 

Many more families will face similar hard choices this month. 

You see, the ag economy is the worst it’s been since the farm crisis of the 1980s when the U.S. lost 300,000 family farms. The price we are paid for our crop is so low and the cost to produce our crop is so high that no commodity crop in the state will be profitable this year. 

Because agriculture is a big economic driver and food production is a national security issue, the government steps in to help farmers in tough times like these. They do this with a piece of legislation called the Farm Bill. It’s updated and re-passed every five years. We are now in the second year of an extension of the previous Farm Bill which is, itself, based on benchmark numbers from 2012. 

It is useless to us. Our own Senator Boozman is head of the Agriculture Committee in the Senate. Before that, he was the ranking member. He has been promising a new farm bill for years, and it hasn’t come. We understand it will not come this year. Adding insult to injury, critical funding for soil health programs, land management, and infrastructure development for farmers has been frozen. Sights have been set on key employees of the USDA, the NRCS, and FSA.

You can tell the ag economy is bad by the number of liquidation auctions posted. 

When a farm goes out of business, an auction company lines up the equipment, takes photos, and sells it online to the highest bidder. There have been so many more this spring than in previous years.

Our’s was last week. Yesterday, I watched as strangers hauled away my tillage equipment, drove away my tractors and combines, loaded my power units and fuel tanks on trailers, and carried away the tools in my shop. Today, as I stand here, people are picking up the last pieces of six generations of farming while the people we elected to protect us eat in a ballroom at $7,000 a plate. 

I don’t care whether you have an ‘R’ or a ‘D’ next to your name. I have no use for politicians who play dress up in cowboy boots, claim to care about farmers, and do nothing in our darkest hour.”

Left to Right: Hallie’s mom and dad, John and Wendy Shoffner in their early farm days. A young Hallie in a cotton field on her family’s farm. In 2017, the Shoffner family farm was honored by the Arkansas Department of Agriculture as an “Arkansas Century Farm,” a recognition reserved for families who have owned and farmed the same land for at least 100 years.

Hallie Shoffner is a farmer, advocate, and champion for rural communities. Raised on a family farm, she’s worked with NGOs in India, Peru, and the Amazon, led nonprofits, and regenerative farming efforts, and serves on the Arkansas Foodbank board. As founder of Delta Harvest, she fights for stronger rural economies, family farms, and local food systems. After graduating from Newport High School, Hallie earned a liberal arts degree from Vanderbilt University on a full-tuition Robert Harvest Scholarship and later obtained a Master of Public Service from the University of Arkansas Little Rock Clinton School of Public Service. She also studied at the Universidad de Complutense in Madrid, Spain, furthering her global perspective on public service and rural development.

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In the early 2000s, while she worked, my grandparents would pop in whatever VHS tape was handy. My grandparents are extremely proud of their two daughters, so more often than not, the VHS tape they would choose was a recording of either my mom dancing or my aunt singing. My favorite, the one I begged them to play almost every time, was a recording of my mom competing in Miss Arkansas 1992. I vividly remember her walking down a big set of stairs in white beaded gown and twirling her cape to thunderous applause when she tap danced to “William Tell Overture.” 

To my four-year-old self, she was Miss America. 

I may not have seen her perform on stage in real time, but I saw the way people looked at her in the grocery store when she flashed her Julia Roberts smile. I saw the way people naturally turned to her for answers, her confidence filling a room. She wasn’t just reacting to the world—she was shaping it.

When I started to grow up, I was always frustrated that I didn’t have those qualities. I never felt like I had any of the right answers, and I was too shy to even give them if I did have them! I didn’t glide into a room. I looked at the floor when I walked. 

I told her one day, “Mom, I want to be like you. I’m not exactly sure what you do or how you do it, but you’re magic.” She laughed (which, to be honest, miffed me a little). Stroking my hair, she said, “I learned it, honey. And so can you.”

When I started learning about the Miss America Organization, I realized a couple of key things:

1. My mom was not actually Miss America in the ’90s, despite what I had confidently told my elementary school friends (oops).
2. However, competing in the Miss America Organization allowed her to earn over $44,000 in scholarships, covering both her bachelor’s and master’s degrees in education and making her the most educated person in my family. 
3. That kind of “magic” takes a whole lot of hard work.

Miss America is the nation’s largest provider of scholarships for young women—a mission that dates back to the 1940s, when Lenora Slaughter became the first woman to direct the pageant. She saw Miss America as more than just a crown; it was a launching pad for women’s education, a way to open doors that had been closed to them for generations.

Today, competitors are judged in five categories:

• Private Interview – a deep dive into our personal service initiatives, current events, and future ambitions.
• Talent – a chance to showcase a skill we’ve honed for years.
• Evening Gown – not just about the dress, but about grace and presence.
• Health & Fitness – previously swimsuit, now an activewear segment in partnership with the American Heart Association.
• On-Stage Question – answering tough questions under pressure in front of a live audience.

It was one thing to watch my mom on a VHS tape. It was another to step onto the stage myself.

Chasing Dreams (and Scholarships)

It sounds nerdy, but I always knew I wanted to be in school forever. My first dream was to be a librarian—not because of a deep love for cataloging books, but because I thought it meant I could read Percy Jackson all day without getting in trouble like I did in math class.

In high school, my focus shifted. I became interested in policy—how it shaped people’s lives, especially in rural Arkansas. My grandparents had to drive two hours just to see a doctor. I saw classmates struggle with financial insecurity. I started asking questions about the world around me, and the answers often frustrated me.

College was my chance to learn more, to figure out how I could help fix these problems. But when I started looking at tuition costs, I realized something: without scholarships, this dream wasn’t feasible for my family. Like so many others, the 2008 recession had changed our financial reality.

Miss America became my path forward—the key to unlocking both of my biggest goals:

1. A debt-free education.
2. A little bit of that magic I had admired in my mom.

Becoming Someone New

Competing in Miss Arkansas wasn’t just about winning life-changing scholarships–it transformed me.

Over the past eight years, I’ve grown into someone my younger self wouldn’t even recognize. I went from avoiding eye contact in a room to running a nonprofit.

Through the Miss America Organization, I founded Unite to Fight Poverty, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit tackling poverty in eight states across the country. The skills I needed to lead it—fundraising, relationship-building, public speaking—were all sharpened through my years in competition. When I stand on stage for an interview or an on-stage question, I draw from thousands of hours of practice, speeches, and appearances.

It’s funny—when I first stepped on stage, I thought I was learning how to compete. In reality, I was learning how to lead.

I don’t know if my four-year-old self would recognize me today. I don’t know if I glide into a room, but I definitely don’t stare at the floor anymore. I don’t always have the right answers, but I have the confidence to communicate and the experience to back it up.

More than anything, I think my younger self would be proud.

When I was nine, I wrote a list of my hopes and dreams and framed it. At the top, in my loopy kid handwriting, I wrote: “Get a college degree and the degree that comes after that for free like Mommy.”

That dream came true. I graduated debt-free, and I’m now pursuing a career that not only gives me financial freedom but allows me to create real change in the world.

That kind of economic security—access to education, to opportunity—is something I never thought I’d have. It’s something thousands of young women still don’t have. But thanks to Miss America, it’s something I can now help others find.

And that? That’s real magic.

Ciara founded the nonprofit Unite to Fight Poverty in 2021 after experiencing financial insecurity and seeing it reflected in her community. She is a Masters of Business Administration Candidate at Arkansas State University, and graduated summa cum laude from the University of Alabama with a degree in Political Science and International Studies. Ciara is also an aspiring writer. She’s published essays about identity, power, fashion, guaranteed income, and the wage gap in publications like Her Campus Media, The Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, and Unpublished Magazine. Follow Ciara on Facebook and Instagram. Keep up with Unite to Fight Poverty on Instagram.

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