More Than a Cookbook

Catherine has been supporting NZ Rally for more than 60 years—including being a Rally leader and serving on the Rally Council for a decade. It was while on the Rally Council that she floated the idea of putting together a cookbook.

"I grew up with a mother who was a very good cook and all the women in our church at Fielding were good cooks. And I always used to think, why don't we publish a cookbook? Doug Hewlett brought along a cookery book that a Marton group had done. And he said, 'why don’t rallies do a cookbook?' Well, it was just the very thing that I wanted to do."

Her fellow Rally Council members were supportive.  

"They all thought that was a good idea, but nobody else wanted to take it on. So I got to work. I started off by asking all the Rallies in New Zealand for recipes."

The catch was that the recipes had to be original—not produced in any other cookbooks. She received 1000 recipe submissions and had to whittle them down to 600 for the book through careful evaluation.

"I had dozens of different chocolate cake recipes sent to me, and 20 pavlova recipes… Now, I remember one was called a ‘never-fail pavlova’. Well, it was a dead loss to me. It might have worked for them, but it didn't work for me." 

Every recipe was fine-tuned and tested in the Birch kitchen—supported by Catherine’s husband Bill and four daughters… most of the time.

"We cooked and tried everything, even the foods that weren’t our favourites. For my youngest daughter she didn’t like rice. She sat there one night, and I had made something with rice in it. And she said, 'I hate this cookbook!'"

The Rally Cookbook #1 was first published in 1979 and was incredibly well received. It sold for just $2.50 and proceeds were used to fund the development of a four-year Devotional Syllabus created by Helen Martin.

Five years later, The Rally Cookbook #2 was in development—again Catherine received recipes, tested them, and collated the cookbook.

Each recipe has a name attached, and a location—from all over New Zealand. Seeing the names alongside the recipes is all part of the ministry of hospitality.

“People were hospitable, and we were well-known for it. A friend from another church nearby once told me that he hoped the Brethren would be in charge of the catering when we all get to heaven!”

Catherine still has her favourite recipes, her mother’s ‘Sponge Oysters’—small sponges cooked in a patty pan (no real oysters involved!)—and a recipe for chocolate chip biscuits that she still makes and keeps in a jar on the counter for her visiting family.