Bless This Food: Four Seasons of Menus, Recipes, and Table Graces

by Julia M. Pitkin, Karen B Grant, George E. Grant

Bless This Food is a unique cookbook that combines wonderful menus and recipes with table prayers, food customs, and religious and cultural traditions. The menus are for a wide variety of occasions—traditional national holidays, family gatherings, religious celebrations, ethnic festivals, life passages, and get-togethers with friends. Organized by seasons, Bless This Food is eclectic in its choice of cuisines—from French, Italian, English, American, Jewish, and Irish to Native American, African American, and Hispanic. The occasions celebrated are also eclectic and culturally diverse, celebrating the many traditions from which America’s citizens have originated. The main religious celebrations of the Christian and Jewish traditions are included. The authors’ own interests are reflected in their choices of such occasions as Sir Winston Churchill’s Birthday Breakfast, Claude Monet’s Birthday, A Jane Austen Holiday Lunch with Friends, Robert Burns Night, and Blessings in Deed, in which a meal is prepared for another person or family. Beautifully and elegantly designed, and illustrated with sketches by Tonya Young, Bless This Food acknowledges the sacred nature of the everyday pleasures of food and table.

Genres: Cookbooks, Cooking, Nonfiction

240 pages, Hardcover

First published October 1, 1996

Reviews

[Dray]

Great cookbook. Focused on seasons, sub focused on yearly celebrations, including Jewish holidays. Surprisingly robust recipes and while nothing astonishing there are some wonderful recipes.

[Laurie]

The book is absolutely beautiful, and I appreciate the inclusion of the not-so-typical occasions for celebration, such as Burns Night, Juneteenth, and a Jane Austen lunch.

However, the complete menu plans generally "gilded-the-lily." I would have combined prep-intensive or richer foods with simpler foods at the same meal. For example, a reunion brunch menu was Spiced Cream Coffee, Chocolate French Toast, Sugared Bacon, Strawberries Devonshire, and Cappuccino Cake. Each menu item sounded wonderful, but I probably would have picked one or two, in combination with more simply prepared items. To me, this would be more satisfactory from both a nutritional and an aesthetic standpoint.

Having said that, the book is a keeper, and I do recommend it.

[Wendy]

One of my favorite cookbooks. Several prayers, poems, songs, and ideas to help with traditions during the christian year.