20 years of 'swapping': Susan McClanahan's 'Recipe Swap' celebrates milestone

In the 20 years since "Recipe Swap" first landed on the pages of the Southeast Missourian, columnist Susan McClanahan has seen vast changes in the way her column gets to the newsroom, but the center of her work hasn't changed.

Food.

It's food, and it's commentary.

McClanahan said she'd written pieces here and there for the paper, with recipes or food ideas, but nothing formal until former managing editor, the late Joni Adams Bliss, came to McClanahan with an idea.

"She said, 'We're thinking about starting a recipe column, people could write in with recipes, call it a recipe swap,'" McClanahan recalled.

Susan McClanahan bakes cookies in her kitchen Tuesday in Cape Girardeau.KASSI JACKSON

And she turned in her first column, written out on her desktop computer, saved to a floppy disk and delivered to the newsroom by hand.

"Joni called me and said, 'This isn't gonna work, Susan,'" McClanahan recalled. "'We're going to need commentary.'"

So she obliged, introducing each column with a quip or anecdote, and adding a little bit of her reaction or advice to each recipe.

She added her story, she said.

Her column includes down home, country, Midwest fare, as opposed to Tom Harte's "Harte Appetite," which she called "the other end of the spectrum."

KASSI JACKSON ~ kjackson@semissourian.com Susan McClanahan bakes cookies in her kitchen Tuesday, Nov. 27, 2018, in Cape Girardeau.

The only thing is, for a recipe swap, "It's not much of a swap, really. People just don't send stuff in."

But that's OK, McClanahan said, standing in front of her wall of cookbooks -- more than 500 in her kitchen alone.

That's about one-third of the collection, too. Another 500 or so books are in her basement, and the rest line the walls of her office at the Cape Girardeau Senior Center.

"People downsize, they give me their cookbooks," McClanahan said.

McClanahan is the director of the senior center, and started at her job there 24 years ago.

The column became her journal of sorts, she said, and she'd talk about what her children were up to -- Lexie and Ross, barely born when the column started, are embarking on their own adult lives now.

"Over time, it's evolved," McClanahan said of the column's content.

She used to fill two pages of a word processor document with recipes, but, she said, that's been steadily increasing.

"Internet and blogging have changed the world, how recipes are shared -- it's so different," McClanahan said.

And any of her recipes that don't make it into the print edition of the newspaper, run online, she noted.

She picks a theme and scours the internet for fun recipes to include, she said. Usually it's seasonal, as this week's column was -- planning for Christmas menus.

McClanahan said tracking the trends and cycles has been fun, over the years.

"A few years ago, Amish friendship bread was all the rage," McClanahan said. "People wanted to know how to make the starter. But, you know, several things like that have come and gone."

Watergate salad, Watergate cake, before, and ham and cheese sliders now -- except the sliders are different. Where before, the filling was spread on the inside, now it's melted and drizzled over the top.

"It's a Pinterest thing now," she said.

McClanahan said her favorite part of writing the column is the people she's met. "People call me at the senior center, since they know I work there, and they'll tell me they've accidentally thrown their paper away, can I read it off to them? That's nice," she said.

A point of pride: "I've never missed a week," she said.

And only once did the wrong column run.

Back when she used a floppy disk to turn in the column, she said, she wouldn't erase the old columns.

So, in the January paper, her column excitedly declared strawberry season to finally be here.

"Whoops," she said.

But she loves to cook, she said. Obviously.

In her kitchen, she has some rolling pins displayed in her wine rack -- among them is one that belonged to her mother, who recently passed away.

"It's very, very special to me," she said. "I used it at Thanksgiving."

And she also has a rolling pin from husband Scott's grandmother, made by her husband -- Scott's grandfather -- while they were married.

The one dish she always has to have on Thanksgiving and Christmas, she said, is hand-ground cranberry relish.

"We always grind our own cranberry relish with a grinder," McClanahan said. "My dad always did it. I grew up on it. It's what we do."

And they use the grinder her dad always used.

"Emotional eating is a thing," McClanahan said. "Thank goodness."

mniederkorn@semissourian.com

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