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Eva Sue Akins

Besides cooking, Eva Sue is passionate about sewing.  She joined 4-H Club in the 5th grade with sewing as her main project and won the style review all four years of high school.  She made most of the clothes for her family, as well as wedding gowns and bridesmaids dresses for her daughter-in-laws and friends.

 

Eva Sue graduated from Norton Memorial Hospital Nurses Training in 1958. A few weeks later she married the love of her live, Richard (Dick) Akins and moved to Evanston, IL where Dick went to graduate school at Northwestern University.  Eva Sue worked at the Evanston Hospital as head nurse for three years, before starting a family in 1961 and becoming a full time mom. In January 1991, after her children were grown, she started working at the Country Gift Shop in Manhattan, KS as manager of their satellite store in the Holiday Inn.  She retired in 2002.

 

Over the years Eva Sue has had many interests.  She is very talented with her hands and is good at almost every craft!  Besides sewing, Eva Sue likes to scrapbook, weave baskets, do decorative painting, English smocking, counted cross stitch, knitting and crochet, and even learned how to research her family genealogy. At present she does mostly quilting. For 18 years she sold things she made from the above interests at the local Pumpkin Patch craft market.

 

Her faith in Jesus has been a main stay in her life and she has always been active in her church. Eva Sue taught Sunday School to babies and two/three years old for 53 years.  She has given countless baby showers and bridal showers to young women in their church, provided countless meals to families with a new baby or someone with an illness.  She and Dick have been part of a small group of friends for over 50 years.  They call themselves “The Club” and try to get together weekly.

 

Eva Sue is loved by all!  She goes by many titles - wife, mom, grandma, grandma Freddy (by Wyatt and Colby), Gran (by the great grand kids), friend, but most importantly, she is a faithful servant to her Lord and Savior.

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Susan Akins Griffiths

When we started talking about updating mom’s cookbook several years ago, neither mom nor dad were up for the task.  After spending an enormous amount of time working on this new version, I can see why they were happy to pass it off to the next generation!  But it has truly been a labor of love.  I’ve learned so much during this process.  I learned a new software so we could self publish, made lots of recipes I’ve never made before for photographs, and learned some new things about everyone in the family.  I must have called or text mom a thousand times with questions.  Everyone helped this time around.  We removed some old recipes and added about 60 new recipes.

 

I’m grateful beyond words, as I’m sure my two brothers are also, to have been blessed with Godly Christian parents who are both very talented, and a stay-at-home mom who was always there for us.  Mom taught me to cook when I was very young and although I can’t claim to be as good a cook as she is, my friends all say I’m a great cook.  I would say I’m definitely a better cook now, having tried so many new recipes and spent so much more time in the kitchen!  My husband has been a good sport eating all kinds of new things and allowing me the countless hours needed to working on this project.  We both have found new favorite recipes that I’ll be making again!

 

This is more than just a cookbook - it’s a legacy of our family.  Each section has pictures and information about someone in the family.  Each recipe has a sentence or more about where it came from, who really likes it, or when mom likes to serve it.  None of the recipes are particularly complicated, or overly sophisticated, rather just good old down home cooking!  All the photos are of actually dishes we made, photographed by us. 

 

We hope you enjoy both the stories of our family and the recipes as much as we do!

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