Renee Pottle started cooking early in life.

At age 10, when her mother was hospitalized with a blood clot in her leg, the Eastport native helped out in the family’s kitchen. She rustled together hot dogs and Minute Rice and other simple meals for her younger sisters, Miki and Cammi, before their father came home.

The 1978 Shead High School graduate kept right on cooking after her mother recovered.

“From the time she started cooking, she was a natural,” Greta Brown, Pottle’s mother, recently recalled by phone from her Dennysville home. “She watched what I did in the kitchen, but then she would take the cookbook and go with it. She always did everything independently, ever since she was young.”

Pottle helped her grandparents dig dandelion greens, can Russian bear pickles and make chokecherry jelly. Her mother also put up jams and jellies from raspberries and blackberries picked in the back yard.

“When I was growing up there wasn’t a McDonald’s on every corner. We’d have to travel to Bangor if we wanted that,” the 45-year-old mother of two said. “Families just made everything from scratch.”

Pottle, who makes her home in Kennewick, Wash., has taken her practical know-how gleaned in the kitchen over the years and produced a cookbook, “I Want My Dinner Now!” The slender, self-published volume contains recipes ranging from Greta Brown’s popular hamburger casserole to husband Stephen’s jambalaya.

“I encourage people to get creative when cooking,” the cookbook author said, speaking by phone from Washington state. “A lot of my recipes that have gotten rave reviews were inspired by thinking, ‘Hmm, what do we have in the cupboard,’ and just throwing things together.”

After her early debut in the kitchen, Pottle went on to waitress at The Cannery Restaurant – now The Eastport Lobster & Fish House – where she prepared salads and chowders and picked up recipes for homemade sandwich fillings and salad dressings.

“I grew up thinking that cooking fast is what everyone did,” Pottle mused. “My mother was a creative cook, but that’s what happens when you don’t have a lot of money.”

As a college student and married twentysomething, Pottle steadily became more innovative in her cooking while working toward a home economics degree from the University of Maine in Farmington. Her husband would bring home carloads of famished friends for dinner – unannounced- and she would survey the contents of the fridge and cupboards and whip up soups and casseroles from frozen vegetables, rice, and pasta.

After graduating from UMaine in 1991, Pottle taught sixth- through 12th-graders food science and nutrition at Rangeley Lakes Regional School for four years. During this time, she began writing down some of her cooking ideas.

“I listened to the kids I taught to get a sense of what they liked to eat,” she said. “I would teach adult classes on how to cook quick meals on a tight budget, and I listened to their ideas as well.”

A decade ago, Pottle moved to Washington state with her husband, a forester who grew up on a large tree farm in Perry. She began contributing her own recipes to Pillsbury Fast and Healthy Magazine, while working as director of human services at the local Goodwill chapter.

Between working and writing recipes, Pottle was also raising two teenage sons, Adam and Trevor, who inherited their father’s 6-foot-plus height and his appetite. The boys loved to invite friends home for after-school snacks and their resourceful mother would make them peanut butter and jelly muffins – still wildly popular – and anadama bread sticks topped with butter.

Pottle eventually quit her Goodwill job and began putting together “I Want My Dinner Now!” In February, she self-published the cookbook through a company in her hometown.

The Eastport native is working on several other cookbook projects, including one called “Just a Little Bit Fancy: Saturday Night Suppers,” with recipes inspired by the wealth of produce she discovered at local farmers markets in Washington state. Geography, she realized, has a big influence on cooking.

The Columbia Valley, where the Pottles live, is among the largest wine-producing areas in the nation. Farmers markets there open as early as May 1 and boast exotic produce such as fresh apricots and Japanese eggplant. And because the climate is so much milder, Pottle expects to be picking peaches in her back yard by August.

Some Mainers, Pottle acknowledges, don’t use much fresh produce in their cooking due to time, budget or geographic constraints. That’s why she tailored “I Want My Dinner Now!” for households like hers. She has also geared her cookbook to people with limited cooking space and monetary budgets.

“The recipes call for more dry ingredients than frozen or fresh,” she said. “I lived in Maine for 30 years, and I know that you can’t always run out and get exotic ingredients. R&M IGA right in Eastport will carry what you need” to make the recipes, she said.

While she has come a long way from the dinners whipped up for her siblings, Pottle still strives to keep things simple. Cooking what grows in her own back yard and utilizing other practices learned from her mother and grandparents have served her well.

“Greta’s Favorite Casserole,” a tasty meal thrown together with macaroni, fried hamburger, Hunt’s tomato sauce and canned Cheddar cheese soup, reflects the cookbook’s spirit.

Greta Brown feels honored that her casserole was included in the book. Mother and daughter still swap recipes frequently by phone. In fact, Pottle scoured her mother’s recipe box while visiting her mother last month in Dennysville.

For Brown, it’s hard having her eldest daughter so far away.

“I’m very proud of her,” she said. “I know she loves it in Washington, but we wish she’d move back. At least to the East Coast.”

“I Want My Dinner Now!” is available for $12.95 through Hestia’s Hearth Publishing, P.O. Box 7059, Kennewick, WA 99336. Call 509-531-9225 or visit www.hestiashearthpublishing.com.