Minnesota Roots

Minnesota-grown author, Jennifer Switzer, teams up with her daughter, Megan Stezka, to explore their Minnesota Roots through recipes, stories, and photography. Jennifer Switzer has always had an interest in recipes and a love for the kitchen. The seeds of her passion were planted early in her life on a northern Minnesota farm. Growing up on the family farmstead, she spent summers baking from scratch during a time where recipes were mere guidelines. She continued to nurture her home cooking skills over the years and eventually turned them into a business, as a personal chef in Virginia Beach. Megan Stezka is an accomplished photographer with roots planted in Minneapolis, Minnesota. What began as a pandemic project to aid her mother in a gift for her grandparents and preserve their family's recipe collection evolved into an opportunity to explore food photography at a deeper level. Her photography brings the recipes to life, daring us with each tempting photo to cook and bake our way through her family's recipe collection. Minnesota Roots takes us on a trip back to a more simple time in the Midwest. It was a time when food and family were in the center of it all. She shares with us her memories of growing up in rural Minnesota and the recipes that bring those memories back. Through these stories, a bit of history, and more than 90 of her family's classic recipes, we can experience what life might have been like growing up on a Minnesota farm in the 1970s and 1980s. Tips from both Jennifer and Megan are scattered throughout bring in a modern flare to those family recipes. Nearly 100 full-color photographs are featured throughout the cookbook. These photographs capture Megan's journey as she lovingly cooked and baked her way through each family recipe. This cookbook will inspire any home cook to explore their own culinary roots after exploring the flavors from the Shelstad family and their Minnesota farm.