Mediterranean Light,
by Martha Rose Shulman. William Morrow, 1989
The Victory Garden
Cookbook, by Marian Morash. Alfred A. Knopf, 1982
I lucked out at a used book store in Pullman; they had a
selection of cookbooks on their sale shelf this time. I found two that really
appealed to me.
“Mediterranean Light” takes recipes from all around the Mediterranean
Sea; Italy, Greece, Egypt, the Middle East, north Africa, even France, and
reduces the calorie content of them all. While admitting that olive oil is good
for one’s health, she cuts the amount of oil in the recipes down drastically. There
are almost no dairy products included, and red meat is super scarce. Even chicken
doesn’t make very many appearances. There are some fish recipes, and a couple
of egg ones. So it’s a good book for the near-vegetarian. The part I love,
though, is that the recipes are all well flavored with herbs and spices, so
that one never feels like one is eating ‘diet’ food. It’s a complete way of
eating. I can’t wait to try the Moroccan Chick-pea soup, among others.
The second book is ‘The Victory Garden Cookbook”, by Marian
Morash. Most people are aware of the PBS TV show “Victory Garden”, named after
the vegetable gardens people were encouraged to plant during WW 2 to help with
the food shortage. Originally a gardening show, it added cooking as viewers
wrote in, asking how to cook the vegetables they had grown. Arranged with the
vegetables in alphabetical order, from asparagus to turnips (zucchini are dealt
with under “Squash (Summer)”), it’s easy to find what you want. The author
tells us how to pick them from the garden, what the preferred methods of
cooking them are, some simple methods, the yields, how to store and preserve,
and hints; and then we get the recipes, both simple and more complex. Note that
this book *does* use heavy cream, cheeses, sour cream, and butter; this is not
a diet book but more like a farm cookbook. But it isn’t that hard to substitute
lower fat ingredients for those. This cookbook may have just pushed my old
vegetable cookbook favorite, the Farm Journal one, into number two status.
<iframe style="width:120px;height:240px;" marginwidth="0" marginheight="0" scrolling="no" frameborder="0" src="//ws-na.amazon-adsystem.com/widgets/q?ServiceVersion=20070822&OneJS=1&Operation=GetAdHtml&MarketPlace=US&source=ac&ref=tf_til&ad_type=product_link&tracking_id=mancatman-20&marketplace=amazon®ion=US&placement=039470780X&asins=039470780X&linkId=dcf8a9ec9f37bfafb90d667ca516744f&show_border=false&link_opens_in_new_window=false&price_color=333333&title_color=0066c0&bg_color=ffffff">
</iframe>
</iframe>
<iframe style="width:120px;height:240px;" marginwidth="0" marginheight="0" scrolling="no" frameborder="0" src="//ws-na.amazon-adsystem.com/widgets/q?ServiceVersion=20070822&OneJS=1&Operation=GetAdHtml&MarketPlace=US&source=ac&ref=tf_til&ad_type=product_link&tracking_id=mancatman-20&marketplace=amazon®ion=US&placement=0688174671&asins=0688174671&linkId=793f901d341e460f8ca8057799d7762b&show_border=false&link_opens_in_new_window=false&price_color=333333&title_color=0066c0&bg_color=ffffff">
</iframe>
</iframe>
The above are affiliate links. If you click through and buy something - anything- from Amazon, they will give me a few cents. This in no way influenced my reviews.
Posts
