BOOK REVIEW: GO—A Culinary Community

Cookbook from the Canadian Plains ties food to people and place.

By Megan Michler

Buy it now!

It’s a familiar scene, and one that happens all too often. We come home from a long day at work—back aching, feet aching, mind aching. We kick off our shoes, throw our workbag aside, and turn on the T.V. Then, through the chatter of the 5 o’clock news, we hear it.

The stomach growl.

The moment when we realize that nothing is more crucial to sustain our being than food in our stomachs, pronto. Hands reach for the take-out menu. Cars pull up to the drive-in window at McDonalds. The plastic covers of frozen entrees crinkle into the trashcan. More and more, our society is falling away from the traditional home-cooked meal, which means we don’t really know what is on the plate—or in the bag—before us, and more importantly, where it comes from.

Maybe we just lack the tools to divert ourselves off this overly processed path, to connect us more to people, place and authentic process. If so, here’s a book that can help you take control of your food.

GO—A Culinary Community aims to bring good food back to the kitchen table—with an organic flair. The recipe book offers readers a compilation of 57 culinary creations while introducing members of Going Organic, a non-profit network of organic farmers and gardeners from Alberta and Saskatchewan, Canada. Editor and producer for the book was Pamela Irving.

Each recipe is coupled with a profile of the farmer or gardener who concocted it—many of whom used his or her own home-grown ingredients in their dishes. Over the book’s 71 pages, the producers share their hopes for the future of sustainable farming and their personal journeys towards the organic practices they so vehemently defend.

One featured farmer, Norbert Kratchmer, found an unyielding faith in organic farming after he accidentally missed fertilizing one of his fields, and noted the marked differences between his fertilized and unfertilized fields. “I never used synthetic fertilizer or harmful chemicals after this incident,” Kratchmer wrote, “nor will I ever again.”

These profiles--some in interview form, others written by the farmers themselves--give the book sincerity, a “from our home to yours” feel, and a comforting transparency.

Not only do the integrated recipes span from breakfast to dinner, but they also include novelty sherbet, chai tea, salsa, cocktails, a host of dessert items, and even fruit leathers. Readers are encouraged to use organic ingredients, and some instructions bear personal touches from the “chefs”, such as tips on how to vary the recipe, or the dishes that would best complement it.

Also included are an array photos, some black and white, of the families and farms from which the recipes originated. For the mathematically challenged (like this review’s author), there is a conversion table within the last two pages for easy reference—they even add what the words “very low” and “moderately low” mean in terms of oven temperature.

The book is arranged in alphabetical order by each farmer’s last name, so as, it seems, to familiarize readers with these organic cultivators. However, if you need a recipe in a hurry, they are alphabetically indexed in the back.

It’s up to the reader to choose whether to make their dish organic or locally bought, but this cookbook provides all the resources needed to put together a sustainable meal. Eat up!

Megan Michler is a communications intern at the Rodale Institute and a journalism major at Hofstra University.