Vittles and Vignettes is a collection of over 250 family recipes and a sampling of original short stories, magazine articles, essays, and poems, some fantasy, some factual. Several vignettes spotlight actual people but portions may have been fictionalized for their privacy. Other vignettes are autobiographical, or pure fiction, but denote a time and place that's fading, like farm families in rural America. Hard-working farmers and brave pioneers are captured - those people who set the standards for wholesomeness in our nation. Watch any national news program and see how our country tends to look to "The Heartland" for close-knit family ties and values. Vittles is a term used in early days for food. The recipes (once referred to as "receipts") presented in this book are a compilation of tried-and-true family favorites, some old, others more recent. Find easy-to-prepare dishes for beginning cooks and some more challenging for those who have kitchen experience. A recipe is a blueprint, or pattern, to guide you when you first attempt a dish. After you've mastered a recipe, experiment by adding or deleting ingredients for a new taste that pleases you and your dinner guests. Make it your own - that's how great recipes are born. Pore over recipes for an appetizer, a bread, and a beverage. Leaf through the salad section. Main dishes whet your appetite while you scan recipes for vegetables and sides to complement an entree and wonder how you'll address compliments coming your way. Drool through recipes for cakes, pies, and other desserts. For lighter fare, try cookies. Once your decisions are made, start cooking. Don't miss Shepherd's famous recipe for pralines, nestled in with fudges and assorted candies. After donating all kinds of recipes to be published in national magazines, community and charity cookbooks, and local newspapers, this is the first time she's designed her own cookbook, publishing, as a special treat, her guarded recipe for the creamy pralines she has made and sold for years. Read. Cook. Sit down at the dinner table to visit and enjoy mealtime. Pass recipes down to the younger members of your family. Happy cooking to you "