ROCKINGHAM — As a way to celebrate Richmond County Hospice’s 30th anniversary, employees and volunteers began selling a special cookbook at last year’s Seaboard Festival in Hamlet. CEO Kristina Leyden said she wanted to get the word out to the community about this year’s edition of edibles.
“In 2015 we celebrated our 30-year anniversary, and we really are a grassroots agency that all the towns together 30 years ago came together with representatives to try to build this county hospice for everyone,” said Leyden. “It’s nonprofit so we wanted to celebrate our 30-year anniversary. So we did a big gala to celebrate it, we did a big newsletter, and another way we wanted to do it was this cookbook.”
With recipes from volunteers, staff members, current and past patients as well as family members, the book was born. Some of the pages feature quotes about the care Hospice provides.
The cookbook can be had for a $20 donation and all proceeds will go toward the agency’s Benevolent Care Fund. In 2015, the fund provided $67,000 of free care to county residents who didn’t have insurance, said Leyden.
The artistic cover for the book was drawn by teen volunteer Nic Wilkes, who drew his inspiration from a building on the Hospice campus.
“This building is on our walking path,” said Leyden. “We have a walking path back behind our Hospice Haven patient unit, and this was a façade of an old front porch that family members can go and sit and rock kinda like they’re in the country. He took that picture, that vision of our old country porch there on our walking path and drew the picture out.”
As for inside the cover, Hospice social worker Mary Martha Warnock said the cookbook contains 300 recipes ranging from an appetizer and beverage section, soups and salads, vegetables and main dishes to breads and rolls, desserts and an international section.
“We have a few of us that work here that may be from different countries or like to cook some international foods, so we thought that would be fun,” said Leyden.
The most popular dish included seems to be the CEO’s tortilla Española recipe, but that’s because no one initially knew what it was.
“My mom’s from Spain, and when everybody saw this recipe they thought of the flat, Mexican tortillas,” said Leyden. “Well, tortillas Española is actually like a quiche. It’s a potato. It’s really thick, and I was making it and bringing it here for everybody to sample.”
Warnock added that when Leyden turned in the recipe, as she was typing it into the database for the book, she had to send it back to Leyden.
“I sent it back to her and said, ‘I think you’ve left something out. Where’s the tortilla?’” said Warnock. “I think this is the one that everyone has talked about the most because we didn’t understand what it was. Then she made it for us and brought it in, and we know now.”
With so many recipes stuffed into one book, Warnock said the project took roughly six months to complete. The process began by sending out letters to everyone in Hospice’s database who receives its newsletter — family members, current patients, past patients and family members and all employees. Included with the letter was a form to fill out in order to mail the recipe back.
“Once we got the recipes back in, then we had to go through them, divide them into categories, put them in alphabetical order,” said Warnock. “Then we had another team volunteer, Kayla Hernandez, who came in in the afternoons after school and helped type the recipes into the database. We also have a couple of almost short stories in here and then a letter from Kristina so it probably took about six months total from the actual start of the project until we got the cookbooks in-house.”
Now that the cookbooks are available, Warnock said anyone wanting to purchase one can come to the Richmond County Hospice office, 1119 N. U.S. 1, Rockingham, or they can call and a staff member will deliver to their home. Hospice also has a website with a link to PayPal for those who prefer to order a book online, she added, but an additional $6 charge for shipping and handling would be tacked on.
Medical Center Pharmacy on Long Drive in Rockingham, Family Pharmacy on U.S. 1 North in Rockingham and Mabry’s Drug and Home Care on Main Street in Hamlet also have copies of the cookbook for sale.
“This was just a way to commemorate our 30 years in business,” said Warnock. “We just want to make people in the community aware that we do have this cookbook, and it has a lot of wonderful recipes in it. For anybody who collects cookbooks or likes to cook, it would be a great addition to their cookbook collection.”
Reach reporter Matt Harrelson at 910-817-2674 and follow him on Twitter @mattyharrelson.