Customer Reviews

Extending the Table: A World Community Cookbook

5 star:		(30)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

The recipes from all over the world, mainly third-world nations, are delicious, easy-to-prepare, healthy, and can be made from inexpensive ingredients after an initial investment in spices. My husband and I were unemployed students and this cookbook gave us an endless variety of ideas for how to prepare lentils, at 50 cents a meal! I buy fresh garlic and ginger and keep both in my freezer. No need to peel the ginger if you've washed it before freezing it, and it breaks apart easily when it has been frozen. Though seasonings can be expensive, they can make the most basic ingredients--dried beans, lentils, grains--savory and satisfying! If you don't have the ingredients the recipe calls for, improvise! These recipes are extrememly versatile.

There is a index for the recipes origin, so you can decide to have a complete dinner featuring a particular nation or region. Many meals can be prepared with one or two pots on your stove, as many kitchens in the world contain only a wood-fired stove.

If you buy this book, spend some time just reading it-- it is filled with stories and observations from MCC volunteers who lived in community with the poor of the world and experienced generosity and hospitality of their neighbors. Some stories will bring you to tears. You will never think of food in the same way again.

My husband and I cook almost exclusively from this cookbook and its companion, More with Less. But I love this one! A few of the recipes are too spicey for me, but by and large it's taught me whole new ways to "do" food that I never would have thought of.

It's important to us to live lightly on the earth and not overconsume, so we are delighted to have this resource to help us eat "low" on the food chain while also saving money and eating some of the tastiest dishes we've ever made! I really like that it's a cookbook not just about eating, but about everything from farming and environmentalism to poverty and hunger to fellowship and sharing to energy use in cooking. It really helps us make conscious choices about our cooking - after all, food is a moral choice.

But most of all, the recipes are all delicious, hearty, nutritious, inexpensive, and easy to make, even for a cooking klutz like me!

I have been searching for a cookbook since I moved to an area with limited international restaurants. Specifically, I was searching for a cookbook with Ethiopian recipes which I particularly love. This book is it! Everything that I have made has tasted authentic--Ethiopian and Indian. I have even tried some recipes of which I am not familiar (Dominican Republic and South African), all were delicious. I plan on giving this as a gift to my friends in the future.

This is positively the best cookbook I own! I bought it while living in Belize, where specialty ingredients are scarce, and I was cooking all the time. Every single recipe I have made from this book (and I've made a few!) turned out perfect and amazingly tasty the very first time. The authors and testers have clearly done their work well. This book is worth buying for the (very-simple-to-prepare) Korean spinach salad recipe alone. People who *hate* spinach will love it! Hope you enjoy this cookbook as much as I have.

I've collected hundreds of books - from philosophy to mysteries to cookbooks. And, I'm a philosophy teacher who reads (lots of) fiction for pleasure. But if I were to save only one book for eternity, it would be this one. The recipes are presented clearly and are simple to prepare. But the book is more than the recipes. It is also a collection of inspiring stories from around the world. For those of us in the US, with luxuries and overabundance the norm, it is a humbling look at how the rest of the world struggles with the simplest needs. I have no particular religious affiliation but this is the book I turn to (at least once a year) for a spiritual overhaul and reality check. I can't recommend it enough.

Great cookbook for living on a budget, but having gourmet tastes. Interesting, tasty and low cost meals that are easy to prepare. Uses alot of basics - beans, rice, etc.

We've had this book for several years now, and still use it frequently. We like foods from all over the world, we don't have much time to cook but like dishes made from scratch, cholesterol is a concern in our household, and unusual ingredients are a problem with some ethnic-y cookbooks. This book is very good on all these fronts.

Other pluses: It's modestly sized and spiral-bound, so it doesn't take up much counterspace and stays open to the desired page. The interspersed black-and-white photos of people cooking in other cultures, along with the quotes from the Americans who contributed the recipes after living overseas, make the book fun - and thought-provoking - to browse thru.

This is a lovely cookbook and general user-friendly guide to world conditions. It is inviting and the recipes are clear and tasty -- or at least authentic. You get the impression that you would like to have the authors over for dinner.

Like the two books preceding it (The More-with-less Cookbook, and Living More with Less), this is a book to touch the heart as well as the kitchen and the purse. It's the kind of book you wear out, and buy again, and give to friends.

Stories from people who have lived in other countries, first as well as third world, give us a glimpse of other ways of life, sometimes delightful, sometimes painful, always less prodigal than we are with our own and the world's resources.

I was so excited to see that this cookbook not only included recipes that are not found in most ethnic cookbooks but also included so much about the people and places that they came from. How fun it has been and we have only tried 4 things so far. And they have been delicious.