Customer Reviews

Country commune cooking

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The author is a graduate of Bryn Mawr College, who worked as a maid back in the later 60s or early 70s to save enough money to travel around the country visiting communes, and collecting recipes. According to her, food there was wonderful -- and the recipes I've tried have been both unique and delectable. Off the top of my head, I particularly recommend the kremsils -- sort of a pancake made with cottage cheese and matzoh meal, traditional during Passover, but delicious enough to serve year round (including by those of us who are not Jewish). This book is wonderful for both its recipes and its stories/information.

Eating, not sex, was the activity at the center of communal life, claims author Lucy Horton. Communes and their fare, back in the sixties and seventies, differed vastly from commune to commune, but all those cooking for their own group, set themselves to making something special, delicious, and healthful, from very few ingredients. This necessity of making much from little is not what had originally attracted me to Horton's book, back when it first came out, all those years ago, but when I ultimately moved out on my own, and often had much more appetite than either ingredients or money to buy them, it was this frugal creativity that kept this book open on my landlady's old table.

With storage containers full of whole wheat flour, brown rice, jars of un homogenized honey, and bags of sesame seeds (a great find in a Chinese deli), Horton's cookbook kept me and those who passed through my door fat and happy, so to speak, with dinners of peanut rice, humus, honey whole wheat bread, and halvah.. Brew up and then ice some Red Zinger tea, and you will have a basic but satisfyingly nostalgic lunch or dinner...just add some tunes from the time, and you are all set. This is a highly enjoyable cookbook, whether you buy it for the recipes, or just to enjoy the people and places Horton shares with her readers. The hardcover has a groovy little kitty stamped in silver on the black book cover, a nice, tactile touch .A great gift for anyone enjoying natural foods and looking back to a very different time. Horton's book still proves basic does not have to be bland.

okay, I will admit, I'm totally from the generation that this book was written about and for - and that's why I bought the book. A trip down memory lane.

Its also full of good ideas, as well as stories. Being a what's in the frig and pantry cook, as well as prefering meatless meals, lots of good stuff in here.

And yes, I've now reached the "good old days" stage of life - and these were the good old days . . .