Guy Fieri supports Ferndale Museum cookbook
Celebrity chef wrote book's foreword and will be at the Victorian Village for book signing
After Wendy Crisp Lestina retired from the Ferndale Museum in July 2021, she stayed on with the nonprofit, putting in many volunteer hours to finish working on a fundraising cookbook project.
The newly released book — written and edited by Lestina and featuring a foreword by celebrity chef and Ferndale native Guy Fieri — is titled “Sweet Memories of Ferndale: Celebrating with Food & Love.” It showcases the history of the town from the 1960s through the 1980s featuring firsthand accounts, lots of photos and plenty of recipes.
“I created it and wrote most of it and edited it, but the concept and the way it came together went far beyond what I could have imagined, and it is a powerful book full of good stories told in many voices,” said Lestina, who served as the museum's manager of media, marketing and membership before retiring to focus on the lodging business, Airbnb and Hipcamp, that she runs with her husband, John.
To celebrate the new cookbook's release, Fieri will be on hand for a book signing Saturday, April 9, from 11 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. at the Ferndale Museum, 515 Shaw Ave. in Ferndale. There's no fee to attend the event, though book sales are encouraged, Lestina noted.
“Sweet Memories of Ferndale: Celebrating with Food & Love” costs $40 plus sales tax, and can be purchased at the Ferndale Museum as well as at Ring's Drug Store, 362 Main St. in Ferndale, and online at ferndalemuseum.com. All proceeds from cookbook sales benefit the museum, which delves into the history of Ferndale and the Eel River Valley.
Lestina's love of Ferndale goes back to childhood. She's a 1961 graduate of Ferndale High School and went to college at Whitman College in Walla Walla, Washington. After a long career in the magazine business that took her to Los Angeles and New York, she returned to the Victorian Village in 1993 after the death of her aunt, Hazel Waldner, who, along with husband George, had been editor/publisher of the Ferndale Enterprise for 55 years.
“I inherited the Waldners' home west of Ferndale,” Lestina said.
In 1994, Lestina sold a book to Putnam, now Penguin, and made enough money to take a year off from work.
“I spent the year as a volunteer, writing a cookbook, `Old Favorites from Ferndale: The Museum Cookbook.' The cookbook covered the decades of the 1930s, '40s and '50s in the Eel River Valley, taking stories from the Enterprise, and adding recipes from the people who were named in the stories. The book is still in print and is sold at the museum. In the introduction to the new cookbook, I refer to this former book as the prequel to the current book.”
The 300-plus-page “Sweet Memories of Ferndale: Celebrating with Food & Love” features recipes ranging from Prayer Breakfast Burritos, Neverfail Fudge and Danish Finger Cookies to Beer Beans, Tamale Pie and Gaga's Turkey Stuffing; historical accounts from folks such as Helen Vatcher, Lynn Mcculloch, Don Andersen, Nadene Bass, Dayton Titus, Pete Giacomini, Earl Ambrosini Jr., Diane Renner and Susan Diehl Mccarthy and a host of old-time photographs of places and people from the Eel River Valley.
Fieri's foreword kicks off the cookbook's content.
“Guy Fieri's father, Jim Ferry, called me — we're good acquaintances — and said that if I didn't have anyone else in mind and that if I thought it was appropriate, Guy would like to write the foreword for the book. I would never have had the chutzpah to ask him. Of course, I was very pleased. It would mean a great success for the museum.”
In the foreword, Fieri says that his hometown of Ferndale has had a “huge impact” on his life.
“Some of my earliest food memories come from our great town, and I truly believe that without having been raised in such a fun, funky, unique community, I wouldn't have the same perspective on food that I have today,” Fieri's foreword says.
For more information about the Ferndale Museum, go to https://ferndalemuseum.com.