This is A Personal Touch, a chance to check in with ordinary people making an extraordinary difference in the world. Today our guest is Deanna Buxton. Now she has written and advised cooks and families on how to save time in the kitchen by careful and creative planning, but she has also brought the whole world in our kitchens now with the Worldwide Ward Cookbook. And I have got to tell you, Deanna, I’m so excited to have you with us on the show. How are you?
A: Thank you, Rebecca; I love to be here with you.
Q: Well, it’s exciting to think about what you have done because the world is – we’re so much more connected than we used to be, right? I mean, you trade recipes with your neighbors and then we start trading recipes with the groups of women that we are in organizations with, or churches, and now you have brought the best recipes from around the world. Where did you get this idea?
A: Well the thing is every ward, every community, anywhere you go you can find their cookbook. Every ward has one – well, almost every ward. When you travel you can go into the gift shops and you can find that region, or that city, or that town, or that community, whatever, you can find those cookbooks. And those are cookbooks and recipes from people in that area. And I thought, “Wouldn’t it be fun to collect a ward cookbook only instead of one ward in one geographic area, what if we got a recipe from a ward in Connecticut, and somebody in a ward in New Mexico, and maybe we can find one in a ward in Canada, and wow! Wouldn’t it be cool if we could find a ward in Japan, and let’s see what we have in common? Let’s see if we can make a cookbook with members of the church all around the world.
Q: Now as you mention that, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is spread out all around the world and there are thousands of wards. How did you narrow it down? Because you did find there are desserts and there are main entrées and there are some rare dishes that some of us have probably never heard of before. So how did you go about getting and collecting these?
A: I did every single bit of it online. The internet makes things possible that a few years ago would not be possible at all. Well it would be possible, but it would have taken years and years and years to do what I have been able to do. I spent hours and hours and hours online talking to people. And the thing is, Rebecca, every single time I meet someone, I meet them online, every time I meet them and I get to know them and talk to them a little bit and find out a recipe and get the story behind it, the stories behind the recipes are just so interesting and just so fun. But then when I’m through with them, I’ll ask them, “Who do you know that lives somewhere else?” And everybody, everybody knows someone that lives somewhere else. They say there are six degrees of separation. I just think in so many cases it’s fewer. It’s just so many fewer than six.
Q: And it’s interesting because you were saying that the stories behind the recipes and who has its own – we have certain food groups we call comfort food. We have certain dishes that feel good to eat at certain times of the year. And it really has to do with our expectations of what that food represents: what time of the year, what holiday. And so each of your recipes did kind of tie into that, right—that culture celebration or why this dish is so special?
A: In the Christmas one, it is focused on what people serve at Christmastime. And you know what I discovered? I discovered ‘normal’ – it’s only normal at your house. And you might serve – you know how at Thanksgiving for so many people, normal is to serve turkey. For some people at Christmastime, it’s normal to serve ham or it’s normal to serve, I don’t know, prime rib. But for so many people, it’s something completely different. Maybe they serve enchiladas or maybe they serve tamales or they have a special Christmas bread that they serve. And all around the world you might read these recipes and you think, “Oh gosh, I would serve those recipes anytime of the year.” I’ve learned that what makes a recipe a Christmas recipe is the actual serving it at Christmastime, and doing it every year, and it becomes a tradition to serve that thing at Christmastime. So for you, that becomes Christmas. And so when you have that it’s special.
Q: I’m glad you mentioned that because as I was looking at the traditional holiday meals that you did have, some that you included from Mexico, having tamales or guacamole served, that’s how I grew up. Every Thanksgiving meal had guacamole and tamales and Spanish rice in addition to the turkey and the stuffing, but that was our tradition. And so you were open to that, in honoring everybody’s own unique expectations for a holiday meal.
A: Absolutely. And it’s so – I don’t know, there’s just something wonderful and touching, warm and fuzzy about reading what somebody does in Portugal and saying, “Well, gosh, I have those ingredients in my kitchen. I’m going to make that this year for Christmas. And you know what, maybe we’ll do that every year for Christmas. Or maybe next year, we’ll do something that somebody in Japan does.” And they’re not so far away – in distance they are far away, but the ingredients and the food are not so far away from what we eat. It’s not weird. I mean, it’s just a wonderful little difference. And something else is when you look at bread; bread is made with the same basic ingredients no matter where you go. It is how it’s served. It’s how it is presented that makes it Christmas in a different region, whether it’s New Jersey or New Mexico or Washington or Canada or Japan. I mean, they all have, we all have our breads that we like to serve. And we all have our main dishes we like to serve. It just depends on who you are, what your perspective is, and what you’ve grown up with.
Q: Well when you say perspective, it’s interesting because as you – whether you open up the Worldwide Ward Cookbook or the Worldwide Ward Christmas Cookbook and you start preparing recipes from different places around the world, it really does, you are talking about six degrees of separation. It does start to bring out and make us feel closer to people who may be living tens of thousands of miles away from us. And so you really did kind of…
A: It’s true.
Q: You did kind of welcome another part of the world into our kitchen.
A: It’s true. It makes the world feel like such a smaller, warmer, friendlier place to open up a recipe and to look at a recipe and see that you have every single one of those ingredients in your kitchen. It’s a recipe that you would like to make, and it came from somebody’s kitchen in the Netherlands. I mean, it just makes the world smaller and friendlier. I know I met a woman who lives in Louisiana who works in Baghdad. I live in Utah and we discovered through our conversations, through email, we discovered a mutual friend we have in Oregon.
Q: Wow! There you go. Is that two degrees of separation or is that three? I’m not sure.
A: Two to three. Two to three. Me and a woman in Baghdad. Hello? That’s just crazy.
Q: Well, I thought I would ask you this. I was really curious because I met your children before. I had the pleasure of meeting at least two of your children. And I wonder, did you try out every one of these recipes to narrow it down? What’s wonderful about the book is that you are seeing photos of people who are living in that land and so that also adds that personal touch to this cookbook. So it doesn’t just seem like recipes that are provided or tried out. It really does feel like there’s a little bit of a story, a history, personal life behind it. So did you – in your kitchen, did you take all these personal recipes and suggestions from people around the world and then try them all out?
A: I did not. I have tried very many of them, but not before the book went into publication. Here’s how I look at it, Rebecca. I feel like I have, in the first book, I have 440 different recipes and I had 440 testers. They each tested their recipe and sent it in to me. In the Christmas book, there are 310 testers. And the beauty of these recipes and maybe the charm of these recipes is each person sent their favorite, tried and true recipe. Something that they have made dozens of times in their own home and they say, “This is what I want to present to the world.” So when you bring it home into your own kitchen and you make it, you can be pretty sure that it’s going to be really good because somebody else has made it so many times. This book is not a food editor’s opinion of good recipes. It’s not one person’s opinion. It’s 440 or 310 different people’s opinion of a great recipe. And I’m telling you, I haven’t found one yet, not one have I found that I haven’t liked.
Q: Well, I’m going to go ahead and say this, “Either have I!”
A: Yeah!
Q: I love it and it’s a wonderful journey. You know, we all in our own way have dreams about traveling around the world and this allows…
A: Even across the nation.
Q: Yes, across the nation and just trying things that are new and then being able to tell the story and the reason why that meal is so special. That adds that extra meaning to the meal when you are serving it to yourself, your friends, and your family. Deanna Buxton, thank you for your passion to bring us all together and eliminate that six degrees down to five, four, three, two, and more. Thank you so much for joining us on A Personal Touch.
A: Thank you, Rebecca. You are beautiful.
Q: Wow! And back at you. And we want to invite you to also join us next week to find out who else is making a difference in our world with A Personal Touch like Deanna Buxton. I’m Rebecca Cressman and thank you for joining us.
End of interview.
