The following is an article which was published in the Pocono Record on Jube 26, 2000

The story was also featured in an article in The Pocono Post in he July 7-13, 2000 issue.

Clamor for beloved local cookbook convinces daughter to republish late mother's work

Letters, letters and more letters.

Each writer - proclaiming he virtues of an out-of-print cookbook that they either wore out or loaned out and never got back - inquired about purchasing another copy. Letters were sent to the Pocono Record's Write to Know consumer column, to the late author's home and to the author's daughter.

Mildred Haney Ryerson - perhaps on of the most well-known pie bakers in the Poconos published "Cooking in Upcountry Pennsylvania" in 1981. She had baked pies for Besecker's Diner, which later became Snydersville Diner, and created elaborate wedding and birthday cakes. Ryerson, who had lived in Sciota, died on Christmas Day in 1997.

"We feel my mother's cookbook and her recipes are her legacy that she left behind." said Ryerson's daughter, Nancy Reifinger, who recently published another edition with the help of her daughter Jamie Lynne, and son David. " I don't believe she know how much she impacted people."

The letters reveal Ryerson's effect on others.

One letter writer from Homestead was trying to find a copy for his granddaughter who wanted to be "A cook, a good cook." That letter, which arrived in January, was the proverbial straw that broke the camel's back - for it was the one that prompted Reifinger, who lives in Stroud Township to get moving on the project and print 1,000 copies.

Nothing is changed in this edition, from My Daughter's Wedding Punch to Pennsylvania Dutch Sneckner Rolls to Gramp's Baked Salmon to Homemade Chocolate Ice Cream. It also includes snippets of local history and Ryerson's life.

"Upcountry" is a blend of Pennsylvania Dutch cooking with a seasoning of English, Scottish and Irish elements, as Ryerson explained in her introduction.

The book includes the recipes that were in Ryerson's first cookbook "The Pies That Made Sciota Famous." Published in the mid-1970's."tell anyone purchasing this book not to loan it out" Reifinger said. "It is rarely returned."

A Rough Start

Ryerson was born in September 1914 out of wedlock to a 15 year old mother, who was living with her uncle and grandfather. Ryerson's mother, Ella May Mills, abandoned the 4 year old girl at Sciota hotel, where Mills had worked. It was there that Mrs. Catherine Fellencer - known simply as "Mrs." to young Ryerson - watched over the youngster while she operated the hotel.

"I believe that is where my mother learned her basic skills. She loved to cook. With my mother there were three meals on the table each day." Reifinger said. Meals were ready at a certain time and everything was promptly cleaned up afterwards.

"It was a different life. I don't feel people today live life that way. We're too busy." she said.

Ryerson's mother eventually came back, but Ryerson never knew her father. " My mother was always searching. I think she thought that she would find her father someday." Reifinger said.

While growing up at the hotel, Ryerson watched and learned form the often cranky and stern "Mrs." who cooked Pennsylvania Dutch style. She also set out roaming the countryside, pausing at a local gristmill, Fenner dam, Sciota mill - anyplace that caught her fancy.

"My mother was a fighter," Reifinger said. "My mother was constantly working. She had a lot of ambition. In her house and even in her bakery, you could have eaten off the floor."

That ambition carried her through he tough times.

Her first husband lost his job when the hosiery mill near Stroudsburg moved south. The industrious Ryerson placed and advertisement in the newspaper to sell pies. Besecker's Diner responded - the birth of a local tradition. At one point, she made 25,000 pies a year.

She had also opened her own diner, Haney's Diner in the early 1950's, closing it after experiencing help problems. But she continued to bake pies.

Reifinger, who took a job at the bank in her early 20s came home every day to help clean the bake shop or to do the preparation work of peeling apples, pitting cherries, cutting rhubarb. "I didn't mind. I wanted to help. She was working very hard," Reifinger said.

People would stop by the house to order pies. Many tourists too pies back home.

"They were the best. Her pie crust was fantastic. She could roll the pie crust out in a minute." said Reifinger, two recalled eating a piece of pie every day. The secret was in the"feel". "My mother had the feel," Reifinger said.

Ryerson passed that knowledge on to her children.

"I believe she loved baking. My father liked it. We always had pie. That was part of the culture she grew up in at the hotel, she never shared her recipes while she was in business or baked for the diner." Reifinger said.

After retiring, Ryerson decided o share her talent by publishing the recipes.

Another letter, written in 1994 shares a story that Reifinger found to epitomize how her mother changed peoples lives.

The writer had picked up a copy of the cookbook while visiting Sciota. After the family trucking company went out of business, the woman started a restaurant in Texas using Ryerson's pie recipes. With 15 area restaurants filing for bankruptcy, the woman;s husband credited the pies for saving their restaurant.

But that's not all. The woman's daughter gave birth to a baby out of wedlock. Because of Ryerson's personal story in the cookbook, the woman's daughter decided to keep the baby. She wrote: " I bet you never realized that you helped a whole family survive, put a son through college and even help make an important decision affecting a baby's life."