Dolly Parton and her sister Rachel Parton George sit in front of a huge serving of strawberry shortcake – a recipe from their new cookbook – but reminisce about something heartier. The Parton family called it “left-handed gravy.”

“Our dad was left-handed,” Dolly, 78, tells PEOPLE in this week’s issue. “Two or three of us in the family were left-handed,” says the star, one of 12 children growing up in the Tennessee Smoky Mountains. “So when dad was making his gravy and our mom was sick, he would make breakfast and stir it with his left hand.”

“We always thought his sauce was so much better than Mama’s because it Left-handed sauce,“adds 65-year-old Rachel.

“And that was it,” says Dolly.

She knows how to tell a good story. We all know that, and Dolly’s own telling 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 Life of Family, Friends and Food (released on September 17). While music has always been the Parton family’s business, it is said that food is the Parton family’s pastime.

Or is it storytelling? For the Partons, the two seem to be closely intertwined. That’s how they came to write the cookbook, remembering (and celebrating) the foods that shaped them as children and that continue to influence them today.

On the set of PEOPLE, they take a moment and think back to their kitchen growing up. They can smell the bread.

“It’s always bread that reminds me of our childhood home,” says Rachel. “Cornbread.”

“I still love the smell of freshly baked bread,” Dolly says, “whether it’s just the bread Rachel is making or cornbread. I just think nothing says (home) more than the smell of bread.”

Rachel caught the cooking bug thanks to cornbread. “My mom probably just wanted to get rid of me, so she pulled up a chair and put everything in a bowl,” she recalls. “And she said, ‘Here, you can make cornbread tonight.’ So I worked hard to make that cornbread.”

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

Dolly learned to cook “out of necessity,” she says. “We had to climb on the chairs to peel potatoes, turnips or whatever. We really helped when mom wasn’t well or she was in bed with a child or had a new baby or whatever… so my first (lesson) was just a necessity that we, as older girls, helped mom.”

With 12 children and 14 mouths to feed, mealtime required skill, coordination and negotiation. “Everyone knew they had to be there at the right time,” says Rachel. “We wanted to be together.”

“It was breakfast, lunch and dinner. We called it breakfast, lunch and dinner,” Dolly says. “When we were little, it was a must that we all kind of sat around the table after Dad came home from work. It was just that in our house, we sat around the table, talked and ate with full mouths.”

They eat a little healthier these days. “Southern food is healthier than people think,” Dolly says. “And Rachel has a way of not overdoing it these days. You can learn to cook good Southern food without using so much fat, lard, bacon grease or whatever, or butter.”

They have a fondness for many of the things they ate as children – even if they may not eat all of them today.

“Mama always made groundhogs,” Dolly says. “It was Papa’s favorite food. Groundhogs are like big, fat pigs that run around in the woods. But Mama always called them whistling pigs because they look so much like pigs. They taste a lot like pork, but I wouldn’t want to eat one today.”

Her family lived off the land. “We always loved rabbits and squirrels because our brothers hunted with our uncles and our father. They often brought home rabbits and squirrels and it was the best food you ever had,” she says.

There are more than 80 family recipes in Good looking cooking — Ham and biscuits, spare ribs, meatloaf, an obvious Dolly-referenced “Slaw of Many Colors,” and this strawberry shortcake. For dessert, you need a “Dolly Dollop” of whipped cream. What exactly is a “Dolly Dollop”?

“A generous help, what’s that like?” says Rachel.

“I just like sauces and I like creams,” Dolly replies. “I never have enough of them. So when I make a Dolly Dollop, as Rachel says, I just take a good, good, good, hearty spoonful of it. Rachel might make it pretty and not mess up the rest.”

There’s one recipe that’s not in the book: Dolly’s chicken and dumplings. Everyone in the family seems to have their own version. “Dolly is great at it,” Rachel says. “In our family, we all have a different recipe, and sometimes when we get together, someone says, ‘Well, I’ll bring chicken and dumplings.’ And I say, ‘Well, maybe I’ll bring chicken and dumplings.’ Then we might have five versions of chicken and dumplings.”

Dolly says: “And my version isn’t in the cookbook because it doesn’t look good enough.”

“Because you don’t tell anyone the recipe!” jokes Rachel.

“No, I won’t because it doesn’t look good. It just tastes good,” says Dolly. “It’s just like Mom said: ‘There’s just love in it.’ I just put a lot of love into it.”