A Cookbook

One of the things that helped me most adapt to seasonal, local eating was a couple of good cookbooks. The Moosewood cookbooks are incredible. I especially like their New Classics, I've probably made one third to half of their recipes in the 4 or 5 years I've had their cookbook. Their Sundays at Moosewood cookbook is fun as well. That cookbook features different areas of the words and recipes from those areas. All Moosewood cookbooks are vegetarian, although fish and seafood recipes are included. The New Classics gave me lots of ideas for vegetables like summer squash, butternut squash, and cabbage to name a few. I enjoy Sundays at Moosewood for variety.

I have also found Mennonite Country Style Recipes and Kitchen Secrets by Esther Shank to be very helpful. If you want to start canning or freezing, this is an excellent place to start. It was first published in the 1970's or 80's (I think) and many recipes actually call for MSG, which I simply ignore. Curtis and I actually have sat down and laughed as we read this book because it not only gives cooking basics, but tells you how to kill a chicken and dress a rabbit. I can't say I've used that yet, but it's nice to know if I ever want to kill a chicken for stew, I'll know where to look.

By far, the most helpful cookbook has been Simply in Season (which is available at Ten Thousand Villages). This cookbook has both vegetarian and meat filled recipes. What makes it unique is that it doesn't often call for fancy ingredients you need to make a special trip to the store for and the chapters are divided by season. Granted, here we don't follow the same seasons as most of the US does, but it at least doesn't have things like asparagus and tomatoes in the same recipes (which are in season during very different seasons).

After collecting recipes from these cookbooks, cooking magazines, epicurious.com, and other cookbooks, remembering which recipe was where sometimes proved to be a problem. Thus, my own cookbook was born. I typed all my recipes into software I downloaded from blurb.com and created a location for all my tried and true recipes. I still am constantly finding new recipes (like the zucchini frittata, which incidentally, was from Moosewood's New Classics cookbook), which means eventually, there probably will be a volume 2. However, it's been really helpful to have everything in one place, sorted how I want them, and with an index I know how to use.