October 08, 2004
Learning through your Ass: The Return of Laurel's Kitchen
When I became a vegetarian at the tender age of 13, my parents, fearing that I would stunt my own growth gave me what was considered at the time to be a good introduction to vegetarian nutrition, amino acid chains and global food politics. It was my first cookbook ever and its pictureless recipes for soy-milk, cashew cheese and other 'technically advanced' foodstuffs threw me completely for a loop.
It was California in the 70's but my Mom wasn't about to go foodshopping in a store filled with goat-knitting long-hairs smelling like garbanzo farts, and I didn't know that you could simply go to an Asian supermarket and BUY a ready-made block of tempeh. So when one of Laurel's recipes called for say, soy milk and said, (see recipe page 138) I would actually make the soy milk - often with unsavoury results.
Due to a series of 'intrusive kitchen disasters' my mother decided that I could only do the big preparations for the week's food on Sunday. (Not the fresh things, just the... legume-rich things.) Considering that I had turned the family kitchen into a soybean laboratory it wasn't entirely the cruel thing to do. I would prepare my vegetarian food for the week ahead and microwave it warm each day. For an experienced cook, preparing food in advance wouldn't have posed much of a problem but I had very little PRACTICAL cooking experience. I couldn't tell beforehand if a recipe was difficult and mistakes I made on Sunday were the grits on the table the livelong week. This educational technique is known in some cultures as 'learning through your ass'.
I was cooking outside the repetoire of my family and Laurel wasn't helping. Laurel's Kitchen, although an amazing source of 1970's California anthropology was absolutely a crap book for an inexperienced cook.
But yesterday when I brought home Roxanne Klein and Charlie Trotter's R A W, the first thing I did was pull Laurel from my shelf for one more read.
This is the text on the inside flap:
"An original and, to me, irresistible presentation, as useful as it is inviting."
-The New York Times Book Review
Ten years ago, Laurel Robertson, Carol Flinders, and Bronwen Godfrey decided to raise their families on natural foods. They had discovered that good eating habits lead to good health and made people feel stronger, happier, more alert, and more alive.
Laurel and her friends wrote this book because they wanted to share their unique kitchen experiences and pass on a solid collection of tempting, inexpensive vegetarian dishes. But Laurel's Kitchen is not just a cookbook. It is a handbook of vegetarian nutrition. Filled with practical information on viatmines and minerals, the four food groups for a meatless diet, weight control, and ways to preserve nutrients in your cooking, Laurel's Kitchen is the book Laurel and her friends wished they'd had when they took their first tentative steps into the world of vegetarian cookery.
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