An Everlasting Meal can help you figure out what to do with all of the vegetables you get in our CSA or at the Farmers Market. Photo by Scott David Gordon

Review by Meredith Bethune

Cooking by the Book: An Everlasting Meal by Tamar Adler

Anyone who cooks regularly understands that the kitchen assumes a tide-like quality. Food is purchased for a particular recipe, and anything leftover is pulled into the next meal. This concept is the crux of Tamar Adler's book An Everlasting Meal: Cooking with Economy and Grace. This modern day tribute to M.F.K. Fisher’s How to Cook a Wolf is not a cookbook although her poetic prose is sprinkled liberally with a few simple recipes.

Adler’s lyrical writing makes cooking seem beautiful and graceful. Unfortunately, this tone also has a grating quality-- describing the eggplant the repeatedly ate in China one summer because it was the only word she could say perfectly in tonal Mandarin. She also forgets that most people today barely have enough time to make mayonnaise in the food processor, let alone whisk it together in a bowl by hand.

Yet most of Adler’s cooking advice is common sense yet inspiring, reminding us that regularly cooking something fresh and delicious is not actually that difficult. For instance, she instructs the reader to always make more rice than you need, because the leftovers can easily become another healthful meal. Some of her most useful advice, however, is for CSA subscribers and farmers’ market customers. She encourages them to prepare vegetables right away--- roasting beets and washing salad greens in advance, calling this “How to Stride Ahead” She describes her book as “not a cookbook or a memoir or a story about one person or one thing. It is about eating affordably, responsibly, and well, and because doing so relies on cooking, it is mostly about that.”

Check out this video of Tamar Adler demonstrating how to, "Stride Ahead", as she cleans, cuts, and roasts all of the vegetables she brought back from the farmers market: http://vimeo.com/30106710