Dolly Parton and her sister Rachel Parton George are sitting in front of a huge serving of strawberry shortcake – a recipe from their new cookbook – but they remember something a little more savory. The Parton family called it “Left Sauce.”
“Our dad was left-handed,” Dolly, 78, tells PEOPLE in this week’s issue. “There were two or three of us in the family who were left-handed,” says the star, one of 12 children who famously grew up in the Tennessee Smoky Mountains. “So if dad made his own gravy, when our mom was sick, he’d make breakfast, stir it with his left hand.”
“We always thought his sauce was so much better than Mom’s because it was left sauce,” adds Rachel, 65.
“And it was,” says Dolly.
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She knows how to tell a good story. We all know that, and Dolly’s own story has inspired: books, movies, TV shows, an amusement park, cake mixes, fragrances, more than 1,000 recorded songs, and generations of other musicians. But her family’s life story has now inspired a new cookbook with her sister, Good Lookin’ Cookin’: A Year of Meals – A Lifetime of Family, Friends and Food (releases September 17). Although music has always been the Parton family’s business, they say that eating is the Parton family’s pastime.
Good Lookin’ Cookin’ Dolly Parton and Rachel Parton George.
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Or is it storytelling? For the Partons, the two seem intertwined, which is how they came to write the cookbook, remembering (and celebrating) the food that shaped them as children and continues to inform them today.
On the set with PEOPLE, they take a moment to go back to their kitchen when they were growing up. They smell the bread.
“Bread always brings me back to our childhood home,” says Rachel. “Cornbread.”
“I still love the smell of baking bread,” says Dolly, “whether it’s just a loaf of bread that Rachel is making or a little cornbread. I just don’t think he’s saying anything [home] more than just the smell of bread.”
Rachel caught the cooking bug thanks to cornbread. “My mom probably just wanted to get out of my way, so she pulled up a chair and got all the stuff in a bowl,” he recalls. “And she said, ‘Here, you can make cornbread tonight.’ So I worked hard to make that cornbread.”
When dinner was served that night, her dad was proud, she remembers: “He said it was the best cornbread he’d ever had. And I believed. Since then, I have loved to cook.”
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Cassie Parton, Dolly Parton and Rachel Parton.
Katherine Bomboy/NBC/Getty
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Dolly learned to cook “out of necessity,” she says. “We would have to climb on chairs to peel potatoes or turnips or whatever. We really helped when mom was not well, or in bed with the child or when the newborns or whatever… so my first [lesson] stemmed from the fact that, as older girls, we had to help mom.”
With 12 children and 14 mouths to feed, mealtime required skill, coordination and negotiation. “Everyone knew how to be there at the right time,” says Rachel. “We wanted to be together.”
“It was breakfast, lunch and dinner. We called it breakfast, dinner and supper,” says Dolly. “When we were growing up, it was mandatory that we were all at the table after Dad got home from work. It was a thing we had in our house to sit around the table and talk and have a bite to eat.”
They are eating a little healthier these days. “Southern food is healthier than people think anyway,” says Dolly. “And Rachel has a way of not overdoing it these days. You can learn to cook good Southern food without putting in so much fat, lard, bacon, whatever you do, or butter.”
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Dolly Parton with her parents, Avie and Robert Lee Parton.
Dolly Parton’s Instagram
They have a fondness for many of the things they ate growing up—even if they may not eat everything today.
“Mom used to make groundhogs,” says Dolly. “That was my dad’s favorite thing. A groundhog is like a big fat pig running around in the forest. But mom called them whistling pigs because they looked so much like a pig. It tastes like pig, but I wouldn’t want to eat it right now.”
Their family lived off the land. “We always loved rabbit and squirrel, because our brothers hunted with our uncles and dad. They would often bring home rabbits and squirrels and it was the best thing you ever ate,” she says.
Dolly Parton and her sister Rachel share family recipes in their new cookbook looks good cooking
There are more than 80 family recipes looks good cooking — ham and biscuits, ribs, meatloaf, open Dolly who mentions multi-colored sweets and that strawberry shortcake. Dessert calls for “Dolly Dollop” whipped cream. What exactly is Dolly Dollop?
“AND generous it helps, how is that?” Rachel says.
“I just love sauces and I love creams,” Dolly replies. “I can never have enough. So when I make a Dolly Dollop, as Rachel says, I just make a good, good, good hearty meal. Rachel could put that in to make it pretty and not spoil the rest.”
There is a recipe that is not in the book: Dolly’s Chicken and Dumplings. Everyone in the family seems to have an opinion. “Dolly’s great at it,” says Rachel. “We all have different recipes in our family, and sometimes if we get together, someone will say, ‘Well, I’m going to get chicken and dumplings.’ And I’ll say, ‘Well, I could bring chicken and dumplings.’ So we could have five versions of chicken and dumplings.”
Dolly says, “And my version isn’t in the cookbook because it doesn’t look good enough.”
“Because you won’t tell anyone the recipe!” Rachel jokes.
“No, I won’t because it doesn’t look good. It just tastes good,” says Dolly. “Just like mom said, ‘there’s just love in it.’ I just put a lot of love into it.”
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Source: HIS Education