By CRISTINA JANNEY
Hays Post
From Grandma Dot's rolls to Gracie's cheesecake, which funded an adoption, Andy Stanton's family life has centered around food.
"I have always loved to cook, being in the kitchen with my parents and grandparents. I have always enjoyed cooking," he said.
Stanton has self-published a new cookbook, "Kitchen Therapy," which he said is based on family recipes and others he and his family have refined over the years in his home.
Stanton, 56, admits he is by no means a professional chef. He has worked for years in communications and marketing and works out of a home office in Hays as a marketing coach for Farm Bureau Financial Services.
He learned from cooking with his grandparents, watching kitchen shows in the 1990s and 2000s, and experimenting in his own kitchen.
Andy's great-grandma, Ashley, was a school cook when the school lunch program began in 1948 in Logan, where Andy grew up. A few years later, his grandmother, Dot Stanton, joined her mother in the kitchen.
She was the head cook at Logan Public Schools for many years, retiring in 1977.
His aunt was also a full-time cook at the school, and his mom and dad were substitute cooks.
He fondly recalls in the book going to school in the wee hours of the morning with his grandma, who arrived early to bake bread.
The cookbook's first recipe is Dot's bread, a general yeast bread that Dot used to make rolls. All of the recipes in the book are favorites, but he said his grandmother's bread is a favorite among favorites.
He uses the basic recipe for dinner rolls, bierocks and cinnamon rolls.
"A lot of my time in the kitchen is reliving those old recipes and coming up with new ones," he said. "That is why I titled the cookbook 'Kitchen Therapy,' because it truly is my therapy. When I am stressed and I am done with everything, and I want to have my own time, I go to the kitchen.
"From baking to cooking meals, it's just been fun."
Andy decided cooking would be his niche.
"Some people spend time in the woodshop or on the golf course," he said. "I spend my time in the kitchen."
For years, Andy has shared images of his culinary creations on Facebook and Instagram. He went back to those images for inspiration, but he still needed more images for the cookbook.
His family and friends benefited from the bounty as he revisited some of his favorite recipes, taking color photos to show the step-by-step progression of the recipes.
The cookbook has a diversity of recipes from local favorites such as bieroks, green bean dumpling soup, and kolaches to a bit fancier cuisine such as creme brulee, cream puffs and eggs Benedict.
Andy said he had never had creme brulee until he was 30 and on a work trip. He researched and compared recipes until he found one that he liked.
"I usually put my own twist on it," he said.
When Andy's youngest son, Gabe, was in about seventh grade, he told his dad he wanted to learn to cook some of his recipes. A summer of cooking with Gabe is where the cream puff recipe came from.
"We had a dad and Gabe cooking school that summer," Andy said.
Gabe considered becoming a chef, but is now studying nutrition, health, and human performance at Fort Hays State University.
Andy's oldest son, Jackson, also loves to cook, but prefers smoking and working with meats.
Andy's biscuits and gravy is another favorite of the favorites. He makes his biscuits square. He saw no use in leaving so much waste by cutting round biscuits.
Jackson calls them square biscuits of awesomeness.
Although Andy and Dana's daughter, Gracie, who is preparing for law school at Kansas State University, prefers to stay out of the kitchen, she has a recipe named for her in the cookbook—Gracie's cheesecake.
Gracie and her brother, Gabe, were both adopted from China. When Andy and Dana decided to pursue adoption, they knew they needed to raise about $20,000 in a year.
"We said, 'OK, what are our talents? What can we do? We did all sorts of things, but one thing we did was start a catering company out of our home. One of the things we got really good at was making cheesecake," Andy said.
Gracie is not a big fan of cheesecake.
However, her parents said back in 2004, "We'll get to China one cheesecake at a time." And they did.
Although Andy has been asked about opening a restaurant, he said that's not in the stars for him.
"I don't want it to be my work," he said. "I want it to be my leisure time."
Trained in publication design, Andy designed, wrote and did all the photography for the cookbook. He published through Amazon Publishing on Demand.
Andy said his main objective was to compile his favorite recipes into a book to share with his friends and family.
But who knows?
"It would be great if I became a New York Times bestselling author, but I don't think that's going to happen," he joked.
This is not Andy's first foray into cookbooks or publishing. He helped put together a cookbook that contained some of his family's recipes as a fundraiser for the Logan school district. He also collected his grandparents' handwritten recipes into a few copies for his family.
His wife, Dana, joked as she flipped open a copy of the family cookbook, its pages filled with handwritten recipe cards.
"One is the one thing kids can't read—cursive," Dana laughed. "They call us up and say, 'I can't understand what grandma is saying.'"
Andy said he had been thinking about writing the cookbook for a couple of years, with periodic nudges from friends and family members, but he finally set a deadline this spring. He set his sights on completion by the end of October.
"I hope people enjoy looking at the book and making these recipes as much as I enjoy cooking them and sharing those dishes with my friends," he said.
He said he has already been collecting recipes for a second book.
Andy parted with a few tidbits of advice for beginning cooks.
• Always read the recipe completely before beginning to make sure you have all the ingredients and equipment you need. "Make a game plan."
• Good, sharp knives are a must. Dull knives can cause injuries in the kitchen
• Don't be afraid of experimenting and don't be discouraged if your recipe flops. "It happens to all of us."
The paperback copies of "Kitchen Therapy" are $14.99 on Amazon, and the hardbacks are $24.99. You can also purchase directly from Stanton locally for $15 for paperbacks and $25 for hardbacks.