We have a tradition in my house. It started years ago when I inherited some old cookbooks from my grandparents. After they sat on my kitchen shelves for far too long, I decided I needed to either make use of them or retire them to the donation bin. I made a deal with my husband: Once a week, we’d make dinner using only these extremely dated recipes. While I’m known to deviate liberally from recipes, these would be made with the exact ingredients, and the instructions would be followed to the letter.

And thus, Vintage Supper Club (VSC) was born.

We started nearly seven years ago, when my firstborn was just a baby. After a short hiatus while we moved back to Minot and resettled, the VSC was resurrected—first as a weekly dinner with a friend during the long, cold months, and later, it became a year-round Sunday ritual.

We’ve pulled recipes from my Grandma Allender’s meticulously typed and categorized pages. I’ve squinted to decipher handwriting on brittle sheets from a book curated by my husband’s great-grandmother. We’ve eaten hand-pies, meat porcupines, cold weather stew, butterfly bread, and something called a “carrot ring.”

Each attempt is entertaining as we choose something new to try and watch it come together—without photos, Pinterest boards, or blog post-style instructions. With a little guesswork and a lot of luck, there have been no disasters—except for that one time we had “Rice and Jello Salad.” It came out fine, but we’re still talking about the awful texture nearly a year later.
Recently, I thought it would be fun to expand Vintage Supper Club to include some “new” old recipes from Hotdish Land. Then, I happened to come across a treasure trove of time-tested local recipes. I had been working on some freelance projects from my laptop at the Minot Public Library. On this particular day, I had set up my “office” in the Great Plains Room—a special space dedicated to housing books and maps that are historically significant to our region. I stood up to stretch and began browsing the regal-looking shelves of books.

That’s when a series of cookbooks caught my eye. Here they were: ideal VSC fodder. Books filled with more bar, hotdish, and Cool Whip-based salads than I ever imagined. Filled with curiosity, I took the North Dakota Centennial Cookbook from the shelf and flipped to the salad section. I’d been looking for a cookie salad recipe for years. Maybe this would be the day I’d finally find it.

The first time I had cookie salad was at a wedding reception in 2013. It wasn’t my favorite item in the buffet line, but the fact that it was called “cookie salad” intrigued me. And the enthusiasm it garnered from locals was endearing. On and off since then, I’d searched for a recipe, but most locals told me it was just something they “knew how to make.” Or, they’d never made it themselves but enjoyed it at family get-togethers, where it was usually brought by their mother or grandmother.
There, in the Great Plains Room, as I flipped through the pages of a book boasting North Dakota family favorites, I found it. The recipe that had made it into the Centennial Cookbook, was surprisingly vague. No wonder no one had been able to give me a recipe—it really is the kind of thing you just “make.”

Last weekend, for Vintage Supper Club, I made a hotdish and cookie salad from this cookbook. I documented my first attempt at cookie salad and shared it on my Instagram account, Hey Minot. It quickly gained thousands of views, and many comments and messages, with everyone chiming in with their memories of this recipe, their family’s unique take, and tips on perfecting my technique.

All of this reminded me that food has a special way of bringing us together. Recipes—especially those in a well-worn cookbook—help us understand each other, new places, and even our own history. Sure, I could have Googled “cookie salad” long ago. But the camaraderie formed from discovering it, and finding a version in an actual book, has been much sweeter than the instant gratification of search engine results.

If you want to try your hand at Cookie Salad, the recipe is pictured here. For more stories from Hotdish Land, you can find me online at amyallender.com, Instagram @heyminot or @amy_allender, and Facebook @amyallenderblog.