MCC and Herald Press release Simply in Season

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. This system is 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, and shows the importance of eating local, seasonal food.

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. The 352-page, full-colour cookbook offers 307 recipes for spring, summer, fall, winter and “all seasons.”

It also features a fruit and vegetable guide to assist readers in learning about the selection, storage, handling, preparation and serving of fresh fruits and vegetables featured in the recipes.

Simply in Season is the third cookbook in the MCC World Community Cookbook Series. Its inspiration has been the publishing phenomenon called More-with-Less by Doris Janzen Longacre, first released in 1976, which has gone through 51 printings and has over 900,000 copies in print.

Mary Beth Lind, Cathleen Hockman-Wert

“More-with-less” entered the vocabulary to express a lifestyle that went beyond foods and cooking. Before her death in 1979, Janzen Longacre also wrote Living More-with-Less.

A second cookbook in the series was Extending the Table. Both cookbooks raised awareness about world food issues and the interconnectedness of our global community. To order, contact Herald Press at 1-800-245-7894, or log onto World Community Cookbooks.

—MCC News