Frances Gillette cooks the way the farm taught her. Real butter, a hot oven, ingredients you already keep, and no step you have to look up. The Heartland gathers prized recipes from home cooks across the country and photographs them in full color, so you can see what you are aiming for before you crack an egg. Roasts and pan gravy, yeast breads and rolls, pies with a proper crust, the potluck dishes people ask for by name.

She writes from a small farm in Yacolt, Washington, in sight of Mount St. Helens, and the book carries that plainness the whole way through. This is back to basics cooking in the honest sense: nothing hides behind technique, and nothing calls for equipment you would have to go and buy.

224 pages in a big 9 by 11.5 inch format that stays open on a counter instead of snapping shut on you. Her books have sold well past 100,000 copies on word of mouth alone, which is what happens when the recipes work. A good first cookbook for a new household, and the obvious second copy when the first one is stained shut.