Iowa State University Alumni Association| online edition | winter 2006
Julie Trusler

 


WINTER 2006
Home

Cover Story:
>>Be our guest

Feature Story:
Good food, great service

Feature Story:
A shattered past

Departments:
Getting Started
Letters
Around Campus
College CloseUp
Association News
Giving
Sports



Julie Trusler: Home cooking

So you think your mom is a good cook?

Imagine waking up every morning to the smell of fresh cinnamon rolls baking in the oven. If your mom was Julie Trusler, that would be your childhood memory.
Trusler’s name is synonymous with good cooking in Newton, Iowa. The former home economist for Maytag Corporation started a small business when she decided to stay home after her second child was born. She started with the rolls – as many as 13 dozen a day – and catered meals.

Then one day she was catering a meal for a friend in Mingo. It was going to be in the basement of a building, and Trusler said, “Why don’t you just come to our house?”

Thus began a 25-year in-home restaurant business for Trusler and her family.

For a time, Trusler (’67 home economics education / textiles and clothing) served lunch and dinner and continued to do some catering, cooking meals in her family kitchen using everyday household equipment. That got to be too much with four kids, three of whom were still at home. The catering went first (“It’s too hard,” Trusler says.) Later, she dropped the lunches. Now she serves dinner in her home, nearly every night, to groups ranging from 8 to 30 people – one group per night.



Customers (Trusler says about a third come from Newton and two thirds from Des Moines and the surrounding area) are so enamored with her meals that they often make weekend reservations more than two years in advance. A quick look at Trusler’s calendar shows every night booked for the next four months, and every Saturday filled in 2006 and 2007. (Even Trusler’s own daughter says she had to make a reservation a year and a half in advance!)

Trusler’s clientele ranges from family groups (including the governor of Iowa’s family), groups of friends, business groups, and special occasions. She tearfully remembers one “very romantic” man celebrating his 40th anniversary in her home who renewed his wedding vows with his wife.

There are other memorable groups. Like the motorcycle gang who “relieved themselves” on the bushes in front of the house. And the governor’s son, who got scolded for using the back door (“It was a mess back there,” Trusler explains.) And the group of bicyclists who routinely ride to Newton from Des Moines and shower in the Truslers’ home before dining.

Julie Trusler’s food is so legendary, and her menus are so creative, that it’s surprising she didn’t publish a cookbook years ago.

At the urging of her children, who were all leaving home and requesting their mom’s recipes, she finally relented and set to work organizing, testing, and writing down each of her favorite recipes. It took two and a half years, but the resulting cookbook – JT’s Volume I: A Collection, published in 2001 – sold out of its first printing in less than three months and is now in its third printing, with nearly 7,000 copies sold. JT’s Volume I (Trusler won’t commit just yet to Volume II) is a unique cookbook, with Trusler’s personal comments, preferences, and cooking tips included with each dish. “You may have trouble with the topping sinking to the bottom of the cake overnight,” she writes about her overnight coffeecake. “If so, mix and refrigerate the batter overnight and sprinkle the topping on just before baking.”

If the folks who purchase and use Trusler’s cookbook didn’t know her before (many have been guests in her home), they’ll feel as if they did after reading the book. It’s filled with personal anecdotes about her husband, Laird, and four children (Mari, ’90; Sara, ’93; Karlene; and Darren, ’01), as well as Trusler’s background as a home economist and lifelong cook.

Trusler insists she serves “normal food” but admits she likes to “give it a little different twist.” Her customers, who return year after year for her galettes of dried beef and provolone with fresh spinach sauce, boned Cornish hen with sausage and mushroom stuffing, and chocolate cream caramel pecan pie, would say her special touches are anything but normal.

 

Read on | Bed and breakfast on an Iowa farm