Tag: traditional food

Back to Butter by Molly Chester

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back to butterWhat if butter and other “banished” foods like eggs, cream, and bacon had the inherent potential to restore our health and well-being–and that of future generations? It’s a pretty good question, isn’t it?

Traditional foods are the real, whole, unprocessed ingredients of our ancestors’ kitchens. These simple foods nourished us for centuries, before modern food processing turned our health upside down. Their value is once again gaining recognition. Traditional foods include: Grass-fed Meats and Wild-caught Seafood Organic, Farm Fresh Produce Pastured, Whole, and Raw Dairy Healthy Saturated Fats and Unrefined Oils Soaked and/or Sprouted Grains, Nuts, Seeds, and Beans Fermented Vegetables and Cultured Condiments Unrefined Sweeteners. Back to Butter explores these topics and more. Beautifully photographed and divided into two parts, Part I teaches you how to stock a traditional foods pantry and offers step-by-step guidance on the techniques and preparation methods practiced in traditional foods–including sprouting, soaking, and fermenting. Part II showcases more than 75 mouthwatering recipes, from main meals to side dishes, desserts, and more,

Learn just how nourishing and delicious it can be to revisit the wisdom of our ancestors and return Back to Butter. (description from publisher)

Roast Figs Sugar Snow by Diana Henry

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Just because we’re deep into the dark days of winter, surrounded by cold and snow and ice, that doesn’t mean you can’t still enjoy great homemade food. Roast Figs Sugar Snow by Diana Henry is geared to show you just how great cold-weather cooking and eating can be.

Henry has brought together a collection of ideas and winter recipes from the Northern Hemisphere including northern Italy, France, Russia, Vermont and the Scandinavian countries. The emphasis is on food that stores well for the winter – apples, pears, root vegetables, squash, nuts – and hearty meats – pork, beef, smoked fish. Dishes reflect the regions they are adapted from such as Mussel Chowder from Quebec, Swedish Thursday Soup, Danish Christmas Kringle and Russian Cheese Pancakes.

Scattered throughout are essays on the unique pleasures of winter food (including, yes, a discussion of sugar-on-snow parties, familiar to many from reading Laura Ingalls Wilder’s Little House in the Big Woods and which still take place in Vermont today) The overriding theme of this beautiful book is that winter isn’t necessarily a time to endure, but a season to be enjoyed and savored.