Review: More With Less Cookbook

I've decided to review a cookbook two or three times a month since I've tried out various kinds over the past ten years. I've decided to start with the More With Less cookbook because it doesn't get any more basic than what's inside this book.

Summary: Great cookbook for those just starting to cook from scratch and save money. Best for those with some experience cooking and/or baking. True beginners may want to try something like Better Homes and Gardens just to get their feet wet (Note: link is only there so you have an idea of what the cover looks like... my copy is about 20 years old and I got it free from a friend... I've found the older the copy the better the recipes but that could just be me).

Pros: Simple dishes with minimal use of processed items. Clear instructions. Good message regarding overconsumption and what we really need when it comes to food. Encourages using up what we eat and gives good suggestions for reducing cost. Menu "skeletons" for entertaining are not only thorough but also give a much needed freshness to entertaining others.

Cons: Old. Does not include information regarding soaking, sprouting, or souring grains to reduce phytate content. Relies heavily on soybeans in bean section; some research shows that soybeans are best eaten in a highly fermented state such as in tofu, tempeh, and miso to break down phytates which could otherwise rob the body of nutrients. Also, assumes overpopulation as an established fact when other research points toward poor agricultural practices and political games as the source for most food shortages.

The Review:

The More With Less cookbook by Doris Janzen Longacre is a collection of recipes from various Mennonite families, first collected about twenty years ago. The first part of the book describes why the book exists, including quite a bit of space devoted to overconsumption and overpopulation. Longacre makes some excellent points regarding how our diet has changed from our grandparents diet, though she doesn't mention that our grandparents ate parts of animals we would never even touch nowadays. She also makes an excellent point regarding the nature of cooking itself in a homemaking capacity: we've elevated it to a cumbersome art when it should be about good friends and family. After going over some suggestions for changing the way we approach food and meals in general, including basic nutrition, the protein question, how to transition into a "more with less" kind of menu structure for both everyday meals and entertaining, and eating with joy instead of just to fill our stomachs, we find ourselves in the recipe section.

There's a very important note at the beginning of the recipe section that I feel needs to be stressed in case someone picks up this book and tries a recipe that's "expensive". "Expensive" depends entirely on where you live. If you live near the shore or in a fishing town, seafood will likely cost much less than it would if you were further inland. I live in Texas and here beef is comparatively cheap. You can even find ground buffalo at the local Wal-Mart, something I doubt is easy to come by in a place like... Boston, for example.

Point? Use what's local to your area and you'll likely do better in your budget. Also, we've found eating regional dishes tends to help us acclimate better to our surroundings. Could just be us.

The recipes themselves are well-thought out, and there's a lot of them. A lot of time is spent on grains and beans, though obviously not with the latest information regarding soaking, sprouting, and souring. However, this is still a valuable book for those who want to cook from scratch and are overwhelmed by cookbooks that seem to have a multitude of ingredients for what sounds like a simple dish.

Most of the recipes will require some thought, especially regarding menu planning if you want to save the most money. Although there are a number of recipes that can be put together quickly, there are also a number that may take an hour or two at least -- though I have to admit that even those recipes don't require much hands-on work... just waiting, especially when it comes to making bread. There are also a number of recipes that use white flour as a default. Personally, I've found white flour to be very detrimental to my family's health. Although some recipes work if you substitute whole wheat, if you aren't used to working with whole grain flours chances are good they won't turn out the way you expect. I wasn't too impressed with many of the bread recipes for this reason. If you've never made bread before and are willing to use white flour, these recipes might be worth trying.

I also found myself disappointed by the inclusion of so many recipes calling for soybeans. I've boiled soybeans and made my own soymilk and the only thing I can say about it is that I've never been able to get over the way soybeans smell like plastic. Some people love the smell. I can't stand it. Tofu is the only soybean product I've had that I actually enjoyed.

I used to feel bad about this until I did more research and discovered that soy isn't being used the way it should be to get the maximum benefit from it. The high phytate content needs to be broken down, and has been traditionally broken down in Asian countries, through fermentation. Some miso soup bases are fermented for a couple of years at least. So, if you want to try these recipes, I would recommend looking into modifying them to take advantage of fermentation's benefits.

There are also many delicious recipes in this book for vegetables, especially greens like kale, and many ethnic dishes as well that use vegetables as a main component of the meal. The focus of the book is on meatless dishes, but there are also many recipes, including casserole recipes, that use meat. Dairy and eggs are also given a front and center treatment for those who love them. The dessert section is one of the best I've seen and fits with the other recipes in its focus on simplicity, taste, and health.

Perhaps my favorite part of the recipe section is a small column at the end of each food section entitled Gather Up the Fragments. It was here that I first started to realize how much food I wasted each time I cooked, not only in what I put into my food but also how to use what was leftover. An example is bread heels and stale bread: dice it up and put it in a blender to make your own bread crumbs. Never spend money on a can of bread crumbs again. :)

The last two sections of the book are worth mentioning separately from the rest: gardening and preserving, and snacks. Both are small, but I mention them separately for different reasons.

The gardening section has one of the best attitudes I've seen regarding this wonderful practice. Garden for the sake of joy, not out of duty. That and the tips regarding vegetables, preservation, and finding food in the wild make this a section that will whet the appetite for more information.

The snacks section is small on purpose. Most good snacks are either fruits or vegetables (we also use raw nuts). Anything more than that can be made in advance in bulk, like homemade popsicles, cookies or puddings. If your family is like mine, though, I stick with fruit and vegetables, maybe making a dip out of nuts they can use for extra flavor. If I didn't do this, they wouldn't get nearly the amount of fresh food they need for health. The recipes in this section seem to have the same philosophy because there are many "dips" and not many cracker recipes like I've seen in other cookbooks. If the information isn't enough, or lunch needs more help, I highly recommend Lunches and Snacks by Sue Gregg, who has the same philosophy in many ways as Longacre, but uses more recent data and has a stronger emphasis on kid participation in her book.