The Quilt House Cookbook

Recipes from my Grandparent's Colorado
Bed & Breakfast

My first cookbook is dedicated to my grandmother Miriam and includes my favorite recipes of hers that were served at the Quilt House Bed & Breakfast in Colorado for over 25 years.

Here you will find a bit of information about this book.

To buy the full cookbook click here

I’m not the first person to think of making a cookbook of a grandmother’s recipes. The influence of grandmas, omas and nonnas around the world on food, family and culture is without question.

My grandmother developed hundreds of recipes, scribbling them down on numbered, spiral-bound memo pads while raising four children and later running a Bed & Breakfast for over 25 years. During many harsh Colorado winters, when there were no guests to feed except occasional family, my grandmother would develop and recipe-test her new recipes. My grandparents lived at 7,522 feet (2,293 m) feet elevation in the Rocky Mountains. Consequently, most of Miriam’s recipes are crafted and tested at high-altitude. She took inspiration from her many travels around the world and her collection of over 4000 cookbooks which lined the walls of her dining room. Whenever she came home from the thrift store with another cookbook, my grandpa would get up and build her another shelf, no questions asked.

After my grandmother passed away, I sat with the question of how to memorialize her and keep her recipes & lessons alive. What followed was creating this cookbook - sifting through her memo pads and hand-written recipe cards to recipe-test and photograph some of the most special ones. The 60 recipes in this book are however, truly just scratching the surface on the recipes my grandmother created.

With love,
Josephine

What kind of recipes will you find?

Main Entrees

From my grandma's infamous tortilla cup eggs to my grandpa's granola that makes a great gift and barely lasts a week in our household, the first section illustrates some of the main entrees that were often (but not always) the star of the breakfast.

Grandpa's Granola

Coffee Cakes & Muffins

Alongside the main entree, some sort of baked good was passed around - often a slice of blueberry coffee cake or the Quilt House Muffins. Miriam always encouraged guests to take a few extra muffins with for snacks while hiking during the day.

Quilt House Muffins

Breads

While not always served for breakfast, my grandmother worked to develop a collection of her own homemade bread recipes, that she went ahead and published a small book on. Her philosophy of making three loaves per recipe was always to "eat one, freeze one, and give one away" as an act of community building and being neighborly.

Oatmeal Molasses

Preserving

Growing up in Colorado with an abundance of summer fruits, like peaches and apples, my grandmother developed many jam and canning recipes to preserve these harvests for the cold, harsh winters. Alongside her many bread recipes she always wanted a jam or preserve to serve with a fresh loaf out of the oven. I think that canning and knowing how to preserve foods safely is becoming a lost art.

Rhubarb Compote

This is my grandma’s cookbook. Miriam Michel Graetzer was one of seven children and the first in her family to go to college where she majored in Home Economics and Business. She grew up on a sugar-beet farm in Colorado surrounded by many other hard-working “Volga German” immigrant families.

In a busy kitchen my grandma tried to write down and record some of her mother’s recipes. While her mother rarely measured her cooking, as a college student Miriam understood the importance of consistency and standardization. One day she stuck a measuring cup under her mother’s heaping handful of flour and measured it to be exactly one cup. Miriam learned how to create and transcribed frugal, healthy and delicious recipes by her mother’s side.

Many years later, my grandparents were looking to move back to their beloved Colorado, a place of hiking and recreation in the Rocky Mountains for my grandfather and a place of home and belonging for my grandmother. After Hans retired early as a physics university professor in South Dakota, my grandparents were looking for a new project in retirement. In my grandfather’s words, opening a Bed & Breakfast allowed him to work side-by-side Miriam for the first time in his career and to help finance over 30 trips they took around the world(to India, China, Mexico and beyond).

The Quilt House welcomed hundreds of guests over its 27 years and served many warm, hearty breakfasts.

These are the recipes they served.