New Simply in Season Cookbook Follows in Spirit of More-with-Less
Scottdale, Pa.—Not so long ago most fresh food on North American tables came from home gardens and local farmers markets. Today, the average item of food travels more than a thousand miles before it lands on our tables. It’s a remarkable technological accomplishment, but has not proven to be healthy for our communities, our land or us.
Through stories and simple “whole foods” recipes, Simply in Season, a new Mennonite Central Committee (MCC) cookbook from Herald Press, explores how the food we put on our tables impacts our local and global neighbors. The cookbook shows the importance of eating local, seasonal food and invites readers to make choices that offer security and health for our communities, the land, our bodies and spirit.
Today most of us make no connection with the time of year and season to place or location of food we eat. Written in the spirit of MCC’s first cookbook, More-with-Less, Simply in Season makes this connection by featuring the use of local, seasonal foods in wholesome, delicious dishes.
The cookbook authors, Mary Beth Lind of West Virginia, and Cathleen Hockman-Wert of Oregon, spent nearly two years gathering more than 1,600 recipes from some 450 contributors across Canada and the United States. This 352-page full color cookbook offers 307 recipes for Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter and All Seasons.
It also features a colorful Fruit and Vegetable Guide to assist readers in learning about the selection, storage, handling, preparation, and serving suggestions for fresh fruits and vegetables featured in the recipes.
Simply in Season is the third cookbook in the MCC World Community Cookbook Series. The two previous cookbooks, More-with-Less and Extending the Table each offer unique recipes and writings to assist readers in raising awareness about world food issues and the interconnectedness of our global community.
The book is available from bookstores in paper edition, retail price: $13.99 ($17.49 in Canada) ISBN: 0-8361-9296-6; and plastic comb edition, retail price: $19.99 ($24.99 in Canada) ISBN: 0-8361-9297-4.
Mennonite Central Committee is the relief, development and peace agency of the Mennonite and Brethren in Christ churches of Canada and the United States. For more information about Simply in Season and other MCC cookbooks, contact Herald Press at www.heraldpress.com (Orders: 1 800-245-7894) or log onto www.simplyinseason.org.
“In the spirit of More-with-Less”
The inspiration for the Simply in Season cookbook has been the publishing phenomenon called More-with-Less, released in 1976. The Doris Janzen Longacre cookbook stands as the measure of Mennonite Central Committee’s World Community Cookbooks which combine a Christian conscience and world food concerns with healthy nutrition and simplicity.
More-with-Less book caught a spirit of an increasingly international people who were looking for positive and healthy alternatives to artificial fats, sweeteners and obesity. The cookbook has gone through 51 printings and has over 900,000 copies in print; it remains one of Herald Press’ best selling titles every year.
"More
with less" entered the vocabulary to express a lifestyle which went
beyond foods and cooking. Janzen Longacre went on to author Living More-with-Less
which was published in 1980, shortly after the author’s death in 1979.