Jill Winger, author of the bestselling The Prairie Homestead Cookbook, returns with The Old-Fashioned on Purpose Cookbook—a collection of more than 100 brand-new recipes, practical guides, and time-tested skills designed to bring resourcefulness and old-fashioned know-how into your kitchen.
True to Jill’s down-to-earth teaching style, this isn’t a book about doing everything the hard way or recreating life in 1850. It’s about learning the skills that still make sense today—and using them in ways that fit your real life.
If The Prairie Homestead Cookbook helped you begin your from-scratch journey, The Old-Fashioned on Purpose Cookbook is the next step: deeper skills, fresh recipes, and a more flexible approach to creating a capable, well-fed life.
What You Can Expect from the Old-Fashioned on Purpose Cookbook
- Build a kitchen that saves you money instead of constantly sending you back to the grocery store.
- Master the old-fashioned skills that are actually useful in modern life. From milling flour and baking bread to fermenting, preserving, and cooking from bulk ingredients, Jill breaks down intimidating skills into approachable, doable steps.
- Become more flexible when the fridge is bare, the garden is overflowing, or supper didn’t go according to plan.
- Preserve food without feeling like you need a pioneer-sized harvest. Straightforward guides for water-bath canning, pressure canning, fermentation, quick pickling, and other practical ways to make even small amounts of food last longer.
- Make wholesome, from-scratch food fit your actual schedule. These aren’t fussy recipes requiring obscure ingredients and an entire afternoon—they’re dependable breakfasts, breads, dinners, desserts, and staples designed for real households and real life.
- Create a more capable, resourceful kitchen without trying to live like it’s 1850. Keep the best parts of old-fashioned foodways, skip the parts that no longer serve us, and use modern tools when they make sense.
Pre-Order Bonuses
Old-Fashioned on Purpose Printable Art
"Here's to the ones disenchanted with the blandness of conformity. The ones who swim upstream while the rest ride the river of least resistance. The ones who favor homegrown and handmade..." Celebrate your old-fashioned lifestyle with a printable copy of this popular quote. ($14 value)
Cast Iron Confidence Guide
Take the mystery out of cast iron with simple guidance for seasoning, cleaning, troubleshooting, and cooking with your skillet confidently for years to come. ($19 value)
The Bulk Buying Blueprint
Learn how to buy pantry staples, grains, meat, and other essentials in bulk without overspending, overbuying, or ending up with food you never use.($12 value)
Good, Better, Best Grocery Guide
A practical guide for deciding where your grocery dollars matter most—so you can make better ingredient choices without feeling like everything in your cart has to be perfect. ($9 value)
Three Bonus Condiment Recipes
You'll also be entered for a chance to win three printed bonus condiment recipe cards-- these will be selected at random from all preorders and the physical copies will be mailed to you.Claim Your Bonuses!
If you’ve preordered The Old-Fashioned on Purpose Cookbook, you can claim your bonuses now.
Just click the button below and enter your preorder information on publisher’s website. Once your purchase is verified, you’ll receive access to all of the bonus materials.
For Real Kitchens & Real Life...
Hi, I’m Jill.
Since I was a little girl, I’ve sensed something was missing in our modern paradigm…
But I didn’t quite know what it was.
It wasn’t until I moved to a tumble-down farmstead in the middle of the Wyoming prairie that I found it. Rediscovering a collection of time-honored skills and principles has changed my life forever.
But you don’t have to move to a farm to experience this same transformation.
Since 2010, I’ve taught thousands of people how to cook nourishing homemade meals, grow food in their backyards, and find joy in a simpler, slower life.
Our high-tech, modern world isn’t the enemy. But it’s not the only way, either.
So friend, that craving you feel for a simpler, slower life? Don’t ignore it. It’s pointing you down a thrilling new (yet old) path.
I can’t wait to explore it together.
