The Most Cherished Book In Whiting and Robertsdale?

Jerry Banik

October, 2024

A cultural icon, Favorite Recipes of St. John’s Rosary Society, is a book that has been passing down traditions, customs and, yes, recipes for the last seventy-five years.

There are recipe books that are cookbooks, but only a very few that are history books.

Favorite Recipes of St. John’s Rosary Society  has yet to receive an International Association of Culinary Professionals Cookbook Award.  You won’t  find it on the New York Times bestsellers list.  Yet it’s entirely possible that more copies of the Favorite Recipes have been sold in Whiting and Robertsdale than has any single national best seller.  There’s a copy in that many local homes.

Between 1899 and 1915, close to half a million Slovaks are said to have emigrated to the United States.  The Whiting-Robertsdale Historical Society notes that at one time, in the 1920s and ‘30s, there was no city in America that had a higher percentage of Slovaks in its population than Whiting.  All four of this author’s grandparents were Slovaks who settled here, and, when young, my outsized imagination sometimes made me think that the rest of the half-million must have settled here, too.  Of those who did settle in Whiting and Robertsdale, most were parishioners of Immaculate Conception Catholic Church or, like my family, St. John the Baptist Catholic Church.

Twenty-nine pages of the book are dedicated just to Slovak foods, including multiple recipes for halushki and even more for halupki.

Are you ready? There’s also bobalky, pagach, paska, cirak, orechovnicky, roshy, kolachky, strudlichky, cheregies, pierogi, kolbasa, studenina and much, much more! If you’ve never eaten or even heard of any or all of these delicacies, you don’t know what you’re missing.

In 1949, Favorite Recipes of St. John’s Rosary Society was assembled by the Society’s members.  First published in celebration of the parish’s fiftieth anniversary, it is currently in its twenty-third printing, and is still available for purchase through the Rosary Society or at the church rectory.

Introducing that first edition, St. John’s pastor Father John Lefko said, “Cooking is a contribution to the rich and full living implied in the term Catholic.  [This book] includes treasured culinary lore from the old homeland, which should prove invaluable to the younger generation.  It should go a long way toward proving that the delight of food is not all in the eating.”

An amazing collection from many sources, it begins with “The Housewife’s Prayer,” and goes on to say, “To those who lay claim to Slovak parentage, this book should prove a precious heritage.  It preserves in writing some of the treasured customs and traditional recipes that heretofore have been committed by word of mouth from Mother to Daughter.  Something of the cultural history of the Slovak people lies before the reader.”

It also includes “The Kitchen Prayer,” beseeching the Lord to, “Warm all the kitchen with Thy love, and light it with Thy peace. Forgive me all my worrying and make my grumbling cease. Thou who didst love to give men food, in room or by the sea, accept this service that I do.  I do it unto thee.

171 pages of favorite family recipes, many handed down by mothers and grandmothers who made them in the “old country”, it proudly displays, alongside each of the recipes, the names of the women who shared them.

It contains more than 400 mouthwatering recipes arranged in 13 chapters covering breads and rolls, meats, fish, poultry, pickles, preserves and relishes, soups and salads, candies, cakes, pies and most everything in between.

Mrs. Ralph McCampbell, Sr., Past President of the Rosary Society, dedicated the book, saying, “May this book be an inspiration especially to the young girls of our parish family.”

Traditional menus for Christmas and Easter are especially interesting, while at the same time they vary according to local regions of Slovakia. The book describes the food and the customs of both:

“The Christmas celebration begins with the gathering of the entire family.  The grand climax is the gathering of all the families in the parish church for midnight mass.  The family gathers in each home to partake of a special feast which the women have prepared with the greatest care.  Nothing is without its symbolic meaning.  The head of the house offers the prayer, followed by a toast to the health of the family.  At the end of the meal is the prayer of thanksgiving for a bounteous repast.  Immediately thereafter the gifts are opened and carols are sung.  It is thus that earth and heaven, the material and spiritual, unite for the celebration of Christmas.”

To celebrate Easter, a special breakfast menu and custom are also included:  “Easter food is blessed in the church.  All the food on this menu is placed in a basket, covered with a cloth, and taken to the church to be blessed by the pastor.  His prayer:  ‘Through the blessing of these eggs assist us, O Lord, so that this food may prove profitable to thy children, who partake thereof in memory of the resurrection of our Lord, Jesus Christ.  Lord Jesus Christ, bless this bread, as you once blessed the five loaves in the desert; and grant that those who partake of it may receive health of soul and body.  Amen.’ ”

——— The Rosary Society ———

One of my fondest childhood memories of St. John’s in Whiting is arriving early at church on Sundays for 10:30 mass, that being the day’s only Slovak mass.  Of the four or more masses every Sunday, 10:30 was the one of choice for many of St. John’s older parishioners, for whom English was strictly their second language.

The south wing of the church’s pews faces one of its two side altars, “St. Mary’s altar.”   It would slowly fill with women praying the rosary aloud, in Slovak, before mass began.  The church was soon filled with repetitions of the “Hail Mary.” The prayer’s first half was prayed by a lone woman, in something of a one-note, Gregorian chant, with little variation or fluctuation. She began, “Zdravas Mária, milosti plná...,” and, when finished, the rest of the women chanted the second half in unison, “Svätá Mária, matka Božia...”

The Rosary Society was chartered by the First Catholic Slovak Ladies Union, a national organization, one mission of which was to provide a death benefit for members. That mission carries on today.

The Saint John’s parish web site tells us, “The purpose of the Rosary Society is to cultivate and promote devotion to our Lord and His Mother by attendance at monthly Benediction Services and the daily recitation of the rosary.”

Today it still holds monthly meetings that begin with the praying of the Rosary followed by a business session and refreshments.

In St. John’s early days, parish men, but not women, could belong to the Holy Name Society as well as the Knights of Columbus.  Robertsdale’s Carol Vargo, a third generation Society member of more than forty years and a current board member, recalls that, “Back in the day, I think this was a group for women to not only pray the rosary but to talk about raising a family, running a household, etc.  They were each other’s ‘therapists.’  Gone are the days when Moms can solve all their problems talking over the fence with their neighbors.”

In 2024, St. John’s Rosary Society celebrated the 125th anniversary of its founding. 

So, to Saint John’s Rosary Society, “Congratulations and Happy Anniversary!”