More-with-Less

During Lent I will be blogging about a favorite cookbook: The More-with-Less Cookbook. My plan is to create each week a few of the recipes from the book, one or two of which I will share. Bethyl and I are going for a Meatless Monday each of the seven weeks, and the cookbook has several meatless recipes. I’ll post pictures of the dishes, reprint the recipes, and use a few slow-cooker recipes that are in keeping with the spirit of the book.

I was in my first appointment when introduced to the cookbook by the senior pastor’s wife, Jenella Smith. When first published in 1976, The More-with-Less Cookbook, by Doris Janzen Longacre, struck a nerve with its call for every household to help solve the world food crisis. Now with more than 850,000 copies around the globe, it has become the favorite cookbook of many families. Full of recipes from hundreds of contributors, mostly Mennonites, The More-with-Less Cookbook offers suggestions "on how to eat better and consume less of the world's limited food resources."  The subtitle of the book is “Live simply, so that others might simply live.”

The More-with-Less Cookbook includes a number of unique features. Interspersed throughout the text are inspirational inserts and interesting personal remarks about certain recipes. The introduction itself offers great reading material for Lent. The one-third of the book not devoted to recipes contains a lot of valuable information. Useful tables detail daily food requirements, the nutritive content of commonly used foods, and the comparative costs of foods.

            I read not too long ago in the Arizona Republic that the use of recipes is on the rise and likewise the sales of cookbooks. According to the article, one motivation is to “eat well for a lot less money.” I’m expecting to have delicious, simple, and wholesome meals, and I invite you to cook along with me. As you cook, you might want to put a recording of Aaron Copeland’s “Appalachian Spring” on the stereo and recall the words of “Simple Gifts”:

            “Tis the gift to be simple, 'tis the gift to be free

Tis the gift to come down where we ought to be,

And when we find ourselves in the place just right,

'Twill be in the valley of love and delight.”

Mike Pearson