More With Less Cookbook Review

We received this review from our friend Jen. We think it'll make you want to own the More With Less Cookbook just as much as we do! Enjoy!

When I got married and moved overseas to do mission work in a third world country, I was in for a bit of a shock. You see up until then, my idea of cooking involved cold cereal and toast for breakfast, sandwiches and chips for lunch, and a piece of meat for every person at the dinner table. Many of these and other convenience products I had always taken for granted were unavailable in our new home, and even if they were, they were often prohibitively expensive. If I was going to learn to survive and thrive in this new place, I was going to have to learn to cook from scratch.

It was during this learning time that I stumbled across the More With Less Cookbook by Doris Janzen Longacre. Originally published in the 1970’s, it is not a book about cutting back, but rather “about living joyfully, richly, and creatively” (from the introduction, p. 12). Far more than just a cookbook, the book also contains a lengthy introduction about reducing our reliance on processed foods and sugar, seeking out alternate sources of protein (complete with comparison charts of various protein sources), and encouraging a sense of joy and creativity about how we look at food. The recipes are divided up into chapters on breads; cereals; beans and lentils; main dishes and casseroles; eggs, milk, and cheese; meats and fish; soups; vegetables; salads; desserts, cakes, and cookies; gardening and preserving; and snacks and miscellaneous.  

In addition to recipes, each chapter includes valuable information about each topic: the bean chapter talks about how to prepare dried beans, and the bread chapter talks about the basic process of making bread, the milk chapter even talks about how to make your own yogurt and cottage cheese! It was really just what I needed to ‘hold my hand’ as I was starting out on our scratch-cooking journey. It also changed my idea of what constituted a meal: beans and rice could be just as nutritious and tasty as the chicken dinners I grew up on, but much easier on the pocketbook. A hearty soup with warm bread could make a wonderful meal as well–but stretched out our meat much, much farther. Once I got more comfortable with this kind of thinking about food, it opened up a whole lot of new, creative options for me. In the past six years, I have gone from not knowing how to cook without a packaged mix of some sort to finding great joy in what interesting things I can do with the fresh, local foods that are available to us here.

You may not live overseas, and you may still have that Walmart right down the road from you. But if you are looking for ways to cut down on your grocery bill by cooking from scratch rather than relying on processed foods, I can heartily recommend this book as a great starting place. It is a simple, non-threatening way to begin a whole new way of looking at food. I wish you great joy on your journey!

written by Jen