by Beth Cronk, Litchfield head librarian
The Litchfield Library is again offering a Food for Fines
program to support the local food shelf during Minnesota FoodShare month. Our program will run from March 15 to March
31. For each donated item you bring to
the library for the food shelf, we will waive $1 of your late fees, up to a
maximum of $5 per person. This can apply
only to late fees, not to replacement fees for lost or damaged items. Last year, Dassel, Grove City, and Litchfield
library patrons donated a total of 92 pounds of food to the Meeker County food
shelf through Food for Fines. It’s a
good way to help your community and yourself at the same time.
While we’re talking about food, if you’re fortunate enough
to be able to buy interesting groceries, you may want to know about some of our
new cookbooks. One that’s popular right
now is by Oprah Winfrey: Food, Health, and Happiness: 115 On-Point Recipes for Great Meals and a Better Life. While Oprah
discusses her relationship with food throughout the book, it is also a
cookbook. It lists Weight Watchers
points for all of the recipes and generally espouses the Weight Watchers
philosophy. The recipes have some fairly
complicated ingredient lists for the ordinary cook, but that’s often true of
cookbooks.
The London Cookbook: Recipes from the Restaurants, Cafes,and Hole-in-the-Wall Gems of a Modern City is a trendy new cookbook. Author Aleksandra Crapanzano got incredulous
responses when she told them she was writing a book about the food scene in
London; England doesn’t have a reputation for stellar food. However, she says things have changed so much
in the past twenty years, with chefs like Yotam Ottolenghi and Jamie Oliver
raising the bar in London restaurants.
The book blends travel information with recipes for the home cook.
Based in a very different part of the world, Deep Run Roots: Stories and Recipes from My Corner of the South is all about American
Southern cooking. Author Vivian Howard
is the star of PBS’s A Chef’s Life and the owner of Chef and Farmer
restaurant in Kinston, North Carolina.
She based her restaurant’s menu on what was available from local
farmers, even when that meant she needed to be creative with an overabundance
of sweet potatoes and blueberries. This
cookbook combines her recipes with stories of growing up in Deep Run, North
Carolina, and training as a chef in New York City.
Another PBS show, America’s Test Kitchen, has a new
cookbook out called Bread Illustrated: A Step-by-Step Guide to Achieving Bakery-Quality Results at Home. Baking bread can be intimidating, but this
cookbook breaks the process down into steps accompanied by six to sixteen color
photos per lesson. Recipes range from
easy to advanced.
Another one for the bakers, Art of the Pie: A Practical Guide to Homemade Crusts, Fillings, and Life teaches techniques that can
challenge beginners. Author Kate McDermott teaches Pie Camps across the
country. People describe her as a pie
guru who teaches life lessons like peace and forgiveness along with crust
techniques. Personally, I’ve been more
peaceful when making pies since I started using lard, and it sounds like some
of McDermott’s recipes go that way, too. This book is Overdrive's Big Library Read through March 30th, so you can check out the e-book no matter how many other people already have it checked out right now.
Food, glorious food!
Whether you cook it for your family or donate it to people in need in
our community, food is a great way to show you care.
