“It’s the many dimensions of sensual experience that make cooking so satisfying. You never stop learning.”
– Alice Waters, The Art of Simple Food: Notes, Lessons, and Recipes from a Delicious Revolution
From time to time people ask me if the publisher of Simply in Season Expanded Edition (World Community Cookbook)
Well, the marketing guy for the publisher is a reader of this blog, and doesn’t seem to mind. I think it’s because he knows what all of us cookbook and food blog readers know: It’s not about the recipes.
If all we wanted was the recipes, we’d just head over to allrecipes.com or myrecipes.com and be done with it. But food blogs, and especially cookbooks, are about something more. Especially cookbooks like what I affectionately call The Mennonite Trilogy, which includes More-With-Less Cookbook (World Community Cookbook)
The Mennonite Trilogy cookbooks include lots of little essays in them, and you can actually sit down and read them cover to cover, even if you’re not a nerd like me that likes to read cookbooks and imagine making all kinds of tasty treats and then not actually make them unless you have a blog post due. I get lots of comments from people who have these books but have never cooked out of them—I’m guessing because they get put on your bedside table or reading corner and don’t quite make it into the kitchen.
Take, for example, More with Less. This is the most famous cookbook of all in the missionary world. Why? Of course, the recipes are great. But, it also includes helpful tips and encouragement for living with less, so that others can have more. One of my favorite poems from the book:
Be gentle
When you touch bread.
Let it not lie
Uncared for, unwanted.
So often bread
Is taken for granted.
There is so much beauty
In bread—
Beauty of sun and soil,
Beauty of patient toil.
Winds and rains have caressed it,
Christ often blessed it.
Be gentle
When you touch bread.
–Author unknown
To read more about the cookbook, head on over to morewithlesscookbook.blogspot.com, where a fellow blogger is cooking through it.
Extending the Table is the second book in the trilogy, and includes nuggets from all over the world. “Here’s an opportunity for cooks to learn about our world and its wide variety of flavorful foods. Sit at the table with people you have never met, taste the flavors of their food, feel the warmth of their friendship, and learn from their experiences,” the back cover says.
Having traveled overseas for work, visiting very poor villages, the poem that I treasure most from this cookbook is this:
O Lord, I don’t want to be a spectator
A tour passenger looking out upon
The real world,
An audience to poverty
And want and homelessness.
Lord, involve me—call me—
Implicate me—commit me—
And Lord—help me to step off the bus.
– Freda Rojotte, World Council of Churches, Geneva, Switzerland
Believe it or not, a fellow blogger is cooking through Extending the Table too! extendingthetable.wordpress.com
OK, so I know, you’re dying to know what my favorite poem or nugget is from Simply in Season. Ready? It’s from the introduction to the Spring section. Here goes:
Snow turns to mud.
Mud turns to humus.
And we leave our cocoons of artificial light and heat
To breathe the fresh air,
Feel the sun’s warmth,
And plunge our hands into the soil.
All around us the gray of winter recedes
As bright shades of green burst forth.
Spring invites us to connect with the land
On which we live
And recognize that eating locally and seasonally
Is healthy for the earth and our environment.
Full disclosure: I did not receive a free copy of any of these cookbooks, including Simply in Season, from the publisher. I paid for them with my own hard-earned money. They were worth every penny. I am, however, getting a new copy of Simply in Season from the publisher because I asked nicely, and because my existing copy’s cover fell off and it’s falling apart from almost daily use.
This post linked to Things I Love Thursday
Oh. My. Word. More With Less is one of the 1st cookbooks I bought after I became a Christian in 1978! It was on the bookshelf of the Westown Co-op where I suddenly found myself the head buyer…knowing pretty much nothing about healthy cooking/eating. (they were desperate!) I love it! It is so much more than a cookbook…it is real life stories from real women. I can’t wait to check out the blogs you recommended!
I could spend all day reading cookbooks. In fact, I have spent hours on my couch, reading them! 🙂
Just stopped over from Organising Your Way.
I love seasonal food and have been meaning to cook more seasonally, I need to learn more about it though and actually take steps towards it.
I’m a cook book reader – the best ones are those with amazing pictures.
Jade
Wendy, the cookbook readers of the world salute you! I think I had this exact conversation with Crescent Dragonwagon on Twitter – for me, a cookbook is first and foremost a *book* and food writing is, at the end of the day, *writing* that has to draw me in, weave me a story.
I also have a copy of ‘More with Less,’ from which I’ve never cooked – but I’ve read it cover-to-cover at least three times. I’ve got dog-eared copies of Laurel’s Kitchen, The Moosewood Cookbook, Sunday’s at Moosewood, The Encyclopedia of Italian Cooking, Vegetarian Epicure, a Farm Journal cookbook and maybe my most beat-up cookbook of all time – The Farm Vegetarian Cookbook. Cooked from them? Of course, all the time. But some days I just make a cup of coffee and *read* them, cover to cover.
Because it’s all about the story – and the recipe without the story isn’t why I bought the book in the first place!
.-= Pat Steer (Gaelen)´s last blog ..Comfort Food Jam: Steak House Soup =-.
You are the second person to mention Simply In Season to me this week. So I am just going to take that as a sign that I need this book. Going to buy it now. Thanks so much for participating in Things I Love Thursday.
I loved the bread poem! Visiting from SITS. 🙂 Happy Friday!
Hey someone who also loves to read cookbooks! People used to think I was crazy because I would curl up with a good cookbook. My favorites are my Foods of the World collection. It was not just the recipes but the culture behind the food and the stories of the people met along the way. I have never heard of these other cookbooks because I tend to live in the past but I will have to check them out. Oh I’m visiting from the UBP but will comment on that post. Thanks for stopping by!