The Country Mothers Cookbook: A Celebration of Motherhood & Old-Fashioned Cooking

Hopping ( The Pioneer Lady's Country Kitchen) is at it again with yet another fetching chronicle of the primitive prairie hearth. This collection--of homey prose (her own), poetry (Edgar A. Guest, James Whitcomb Riley), drawings (anonymous) and, of course, recipes--focuses on the comforts of cooking on the family farm. At her strongest, Hopping is refreshingly direct. ``If you don't like raisins,'' she writes in a footnote to a recipe for old-fashioned tea biscuits, ``select another recipe; they are an important part of . . . this biscuit.'' (So much for substitutions.) Other treats here are cauliflower and watercress salad, sorghum-dipped Southern fried chicken, ``rise-and-shine'' fruited oatmeal bread, and ``cloud-light'' lemon sponge pudding. While recipes are organized seasonally, a book that's kicked off with a cookie number reveals the author's true bent: sweets. The only flaw is overabundant poetry, cheating readers of the author's stick-to-the-ribs sentences. Advertising; Better Homes & Gardens Book Club main selection; author tour. (Apr.)