‘We Wanted to Be Together’ (Exclusive)

Dolly joined forces with her sister Rachel Parton George on a new cookbook: ‘Good Lookin’ Cookin’: A Year of Meals.’ The siblings tell PEOPLE how cooking kept their family bond strong

Dolly Parton and her sister Rachel Parton George are sitting in front of a towering serving of strawberry shortcake — a recipe from their new cookbook — but are reminiscing about something a bit more savory. The Parton family called it “left-handed gravy.”

“Our daddy was left-handed,” Dolly, 78, tells PEOPLE in this week’s issue. “There was two or three of us in the family that were lefties,” says the star, one of 12 kids famously raised in the Tennessee Smoky Mountains. “So if Daddy was making his gravy, when our mom would be sick he’d make the breakfast, he’d stir it with his left hand.”

“We always thought that his gravy was so much better than Mama’s because it was left-handed gravy,” adds Rachel, 65.

“And it was,” says Dolly.

Related: Dolly Parton Announces ‘Glamorous’ Beauty Collection — and, of Course, the Lipsticks Are Covered in Crystals

She knows how to tell a good story. This we all know and Dolly’s own narrative has inspired: books, movies, TV shows, an amusement park,cake mixes,fragrances, more than 1,000 recorded songs, and generations of other musicians. But her family’s life story has now inspired a new cookbook with her sister, Good Lookin’ Cookin’: A Year of Meals – A Lifetime of Family, Friends, and Food(out Sept. 17). While music has always been the Parton family business, they say eating is the Parton family pastime.

Or is it storytelling? For the Partons, the two seem intertwined, which is how they came to write the cookbook, by remembering (and celebrating) the foods that shaped them as kids and continue to inform them today.

On set with PEOPLE, they take a moment and go back to their kitchen when they were growing up. They can smell the bread.

“It’s always bread that takes me back to our childhood home,” says Rachel. “Cornbread.”

“I still love the smell of bread cooking,” says Dolly, “whether it just be some loaf bread that Rachel’s doing or some cornbread. I just think nothing says [home] more than just the smell of bread.”

Rachel caught the cooking bug thanks to cornbread. “My mama probably just wanted me out of the way, so she pulled up a chair and had all the things and she had it in a bowl,” she recalls. “And she said, ‘Here, you get to make cornbread tonight.’ So I was working hard at making that cornbread.”

When dinner was served that night, her dad was proud, she remembers: “He said it was the best cornbread he had ever eaten. And I believed it. From then on, I loved to cook.”

Related: Dolly Parton ‘Honored’ That Beyoncé ‘Did Her Own Version’ of ‘Jolene’: ‘She Beyoncé’d It Up’

Dolly learned to cook “out of necessity,” she says. “We’d have to climb up on the chairs to peel potatoes, turnips or whatever. We were really helping out when Mama was not well, or in bed with a kid or having a new baby or whatever… so my first [lesson] came out of just really being a necessity of us helping mom as the older girls.”

With 12 kids and 14 mouths to feed, meal time took skill, coordination, and negotiation. “Everybody knew to be there at the right time,” says Rachel. “We wanted to be together.”

“That was breakfast, lunch and dinner. We called it breakfast, dinner and supper,” says Dolly. “When we were growing up, it was a must that we all kind of be around the table after Daddy got home from work. It was just a thing that we had in our house to sit around the table and talk, and eat with a mouthful.”

They eat a little healthier these days. “Southern food is healthier than people assume it is, anyway,” Dolly says. “And Rachel has a way of not going overboard these days. You can learn to cook good southern food without putting as much grease, lard, bacon grease, whatever you do, or butter.”

They have fondness for many things they grew up eating — even if they might not eat all of them today.

“Mama used to make groundhog,” says Dolly. “That was Daddy’s favorite thing. A groundhog is just like a big fat hog that runs around in the woods. But mama used to call them whistle pigs because they were that much like a pig. It tastes very much like a pig, but I wouldn’t want to eat one now.”

Their family lived off the land. “We always loved rabbit and squirrel, because our brothers hunted with our uncles and dad. They would often bring home rabbits and squirrels and that’s some of the best eating you’ve ever had,” she says.

Related: Dolly Parton and Her Sister Rachel Share Family Recipes in Their New Cookbook Good Lookin’ Cookin’

There are more than 80 family recipes in Good Lookin’ Cookin’ — ham and biscuits, spare ribs, meatloaf, an overt Dolly referencing Slaw of Many Colors, and that strawberry shortcake. The dessert calls for a “Dolly Dollop” of whipped cream. What is a Dolly Dollop, precisely?

“A generous helping, how’s that?” says Rachel.

“I just like sauces, and I like creams,” answers Dolly. “There’s never enough for me. So when I do a Dolly Dollop, like Rachel says, I just do a good, good, good hearty spoonful. Rachel might put it on to be pretty and not mess up the rest of it.”

There is a recipe that is not in the book: Dolly’s chicken and dumplings. Everyone in the family seems to have their take. “Dolly is great at that,” Rachel says. “Our family, we all have a different recipe, and sometimes if we’re having a get together, someone will say, ‘Well I’m going to bring chicken and dumplings.’ And I’ll say, ‘Well, I might bring chicken and dumplings.’ So we might have five versions of chicken and dumplings.”

Says Dolly: “And my version is not in the cookbook because it isn’t good lookin’ enough.”

“Because you won’t tell anybody the recipe!” Rachel quips.

“No, I won’t because it’s not good lookin’. It just tastes good,” says Dolly. “It’s just like Mama said, ‘It’s just got love in it.’ I just put a lot of love in it.”

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