My Account

Simply in Season Expanded Edition, hardcover

Simply in Season Children's Cookbook Helping children make the connection between what they eat and where it comes from—and have fun, too!

More-with-Less Cookbook First published in 1976, this book struck a nerve with its call for every household to help solve the world food crisis. Now with more than 850,000 copies sold, it has become the favorite cookbook of many families.

Living More with Less Ideas and tips for living with less; includes chapters on money, clothing, homes, transportation and travel, celebrations, and recreation.

Extending the Table Recipes from around the world, interspersed with stories about how hospitality is practiced in other countries.

Click here for other Mennonite and Amish cookbooks from Herald Press.

Blogs!

Simply in Season blog by co-author Cathleen Hockman-Wert

Simply Me: A year of eating locally . . . mindfully .. . . simply by Wendy Hammond.

Emily’s Extending The Table Experiment by Emily Showalter.

More-with-Less blog by Valerie Showalter.

Read a story about these bloggers.

From the Preface

Whether they come from a farmers’ market, a CSA subscription farm, or your own garden, fresh local foods are good for the earth we share. Ultimately, they nurture our spirits as well as our bodies.

Simply in Season explores the complex web of factors that brings food to our plates. Before the advent of modern transportation and storage systems, eating local food was the norm—as it still is in much of the world. Within our memories we see our parents and grandparents with hands full of fruits and vegetables from their gardens or gardens nearby. Eggs, milk, and meat also came from local sources.

Today, the average food item travels more than a thousand miles before it arrives on our tables. We have become distant from our food, and not just in terms of geography. Who grows our food? What are their lives like? How is the soil cultivated and prepared for the next year? How are the animals treated in life and in death? How does the production of the foods we eat affect the land and the people who raise them? Does any of this really matter if we have plenty of food on our table?

It matters a great deal. For food production systems are not all the same—any more than the taste of a vine-ripened, homegrown tomato equals one picked green. Each food purchase we make is like a vote for the way we want food to be produced—and for the world in which we want to live.

Simply in Season does not offer all the answers. It does offer a starting point encouraging us to feed both body and spirit with nutritious food and challenging ideas about the world around us.

Woven through the recipe pages are writings, tidbits of information to reflect upon while the onions sauté, the soup simmers, or the bread bakes. You’ll hear the voices of our neighbors who farm as well as gardeners and consumers who find joy in eating with the seasons.

Spring explores the environmental impact of modern agriculture. Summer, Autumn, and Winter follow with thoughts on health, time, and the economic factors of food. The final recipe chapter, All Seasons, presents a vital overview of food production and food security issues, bringing us full circle in our understanding of the meaning and place of food in our lives.

Connecting all the seasons are invitations at the beginning and end of each chapter encouraging you to live fully in the particular time (season) and place (location) in which you find yourself.

Simply in Season also remains a cookbook filled with delicious recipes. Part of the fun of cooking with the seasons is learning to use what’s locally available, and that often means taking recipes as starting points: a theme on which to playfully improvise rather than a blueprint to follow precisely.

For easy reference, seasonal chapters are designated by color. The beginning of each chapter lists recipes by type—salad, main dish, etc. At the end of each season is a list of menu ideas. And if you come across a term you don’t know, try the glossary in back. As fruits and vegetables are the centerpiece for eating locally, the colorful guide following these pages offers you information on how to select, store, and prepare many.

Whether you have long cherished local food or are new to these ideas, we hope you are encouraged in your journey with food choices. The journey is long and continuous, with innumerable points of entry. None of us has “arrived,” and each of us will have to decide what choices are right for our own circumstances. But it is a delight to share the stories—and recipes—of fellow travelers who love good food.

Welcome! And enjoy!

Mary Beth Lind, Cathleen Hockman-Wert, authors