Food. Beautiful, Functional, Delicious!

An Everlasting Meal: Cooking with Economy and Grace by Tamar Adler
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

This book rates a 5 just for the fact that is making me rethink the way I do food in my house.

First, this author loves food and her writing affirms this. Take eggs for instance:

"Good eggs are worth it, as long as your stance egg in hand isn't automatic. As long as you stop before cracking it and think: "I am going to softly scramble this egg," or "A bowl of yesterday's rice would be delicious topped with this one . . . A gently but sincerely cooked egg tells us all we need to know about divinity. It hinges not on the question of how the egg began, but how the egg will end. A good egg, cooked deliberately, gives us a glimpse of the greater forces at play."

This is how Waters talks about every food - with respect, love, and a little bit of amazement at all these riches the earth delivers to us.

Since God created the earth to so richly provide for us I want to prepare the food at my table with a grateful heart. Have you noticed how really beautiful vegetables are? I'm not talking about that canned stuff we buy in the store, but the carrot or onion dug out of the dirt? Compare the taste of that freshly purchased leek from the Farmer's market to the leek you bought from the produce section at the grocery store--the taste, and even the small, can't compare. (Leeks are a new vegetable for me,I'm telling you this book has inspired me!)

So, to date, these are the changes I've made at my table.

You know those rotisserie chickens? Well, I buy those here and now, and I have been so wasteful with them. Now I take what's left and boil the carcass on the stove to get every leftover piece of chicken I can and a delicious broth as well. You can do this with raw chicken too. I bought a boiler, let it cook overnight in the crockpot and in the morning the meat just fell off the bones. This worked great other than waking me up multiple times in the night because of the delicious smells.

Onion/Leek tops - throwing these in the freezer to toss in with chicken or beef to flavor the broth.

Bread - I have a bread machine, and we never seem to finish the loaf after that first yummy, warm out of the oven freshness. Now I cut off the crusts and make croutons.

Picnic ham cooked down for 2 meals - scalloped potatoes with ham, and pea soup (I used both the broth and the ham for this).

Beef - cooked for dinner, and have leftover beef and broth in the freezer for at least two more meals -  most probably stew and soup - or, it could be transferred into hot roast beef and mashed potatoes on toast.

One of the things I have not done yet is to take fresh root vegetables from the Farmer's market, roast with some olive oil and salt in the oven and then freeze for future meals.

An Everlasting Meal is all about respecting our daily provisions and being thankful for them, whether they are animal, fruit or vegetable. No more wasting chicken lives for me!

I gather this book is a classic--I thank my friend, Sara, for recommending it to me, and recommend it to all of you!


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