What I've Been Reading: An Everlasting Meal

I received "An Everlasting Meal" by Tamar Adler as a birthday gift from my dear friend Laura and have been reading it in short bursts since May.


This book is an ode to thoughtful and simple cooking.  It has recipes, anecdotes, and advice about using your food to the utmost.  It is also beautifully written.  The way she talks about food is so reverent and enthusiastic that it makes me look at the act of buying, preparing, eating and saving food with new eyes.  The author's love of food is evident in everything she writes.  Her chapter on eggs had me eating omelets every night for a week and savoring every morsel.  This book makes you fall in love with food all over again.

It is difficult to talk about this book since it is so unlike anything else I have ever read.  It has qualities of a cook book, but it is so much more than that.  The book suggests a way of life.  I don't mean that it is preachy, but it shows how it is possible to save the odd bits and pieces of leftover meals and turn them into something as delicious as the original meal (if not more so) for the second go-around.  The book is about using what you have and using it to the utmost.  An inspiring thesis, and an idea that I need to be reminded of from time to time.

And good books being read out there?  I finished the first book of the Abhorson Trilogy this week too. Two down, one more to go.

~Claire Out.