Simple Food for the Good Life

Helen Nearing

Chelsea Green Publishing, 1999 - Cookery (Natural foods) - 309 pages

Fifty years before the phrase "simple living" became fashionable, Helen and Scott Nearing were living their celebrated "Good Life" on homesteads first in Vermont, then in Maine. All the way to their ninth decades, the Nearings grew their own food, built their own buildings, and fought an eloquent combat against the silliness of America's infatuation with consumer goods and refined foods. They also wrote or co-wrote more than thirty books, many of which are now being brought back into print by the Good Life Center and Chelsea Green.

Simple Food for the Good Life is a jovial collection of "quips, quotes, and one-of-a-kind recipes meant to amuse and intrigue all of those who find themselves in the kitchen, willingly or otherwise." Recipes such as Horse Chow, Scott's Emulsion, Crusty Carrot Croakers, Raw Beet Borscht, Creamy Blueberry Soup, and Super Salad for a Crowd should improve the mood as well as whet the appetite of any guest.

Here is an antidote for the whole foods enthusiast who is "fed up" with the anxieties and drudgeries of preparing fancy meals with stylish, expensive, hard-to-find ingredients. This celebration of salads, leftovers, raw foods, and homegrown fruits and vegetables takes the straightest imaginable route from their stem or vine to your table.

"The funniest, crankiest, most ambivalent cookbook you'll ever read," said Food & Wine magazine. "This is more than a mere cookbook," said Health Science magazine: "It belongs to the category of classics, destined to be remembered through the ages."

Among Helen Nearing's numerous books is Chelsea Green's Loving and Leaving the Good Life, a memoir of her fifty-year marriage to Scott Nearing and the story of Scott's deliberate death at the age of one hundred. Helen and Scott Nearing's final homestead in Harborside, Maine, has been established in perpetuity as an educational progam under the name of The Good Life Center.

What people are saying

LibraryThing Review

User Review  - jennybeast - LibraryThing

I see what she's getting at, but I don't think I want to adopt the philosophy that if it doesn't taste that good, well then you won't overeat, will you? Funny.

LibraryThing Review

User Review  - scentednights2002 - LibraryThing

I’ve loved Scott and Helen Nearing’s books for years so I was very excited to find a copy of Simple Food for the Good Life by Helen Nearing. Scott and Helen Nearing moved from New York City to a ...

Contents

• Processed Versus Fresh Foods: 57
• On Recipes in General: 71
• Soups Soups Soups: 97
• Salads for Health: 127
• Vegetables for Vigor: 149
• Herbs Other Seasonings: 191
• Baked Goods OverStarching: 225
• Desserts Other Delicious Delights: 243
• Water Other Beverages: 267
• Index: 293

About the author

Helen Nearing left city life with her husband, Scott, nearly sixty years ago to move first to Vermont and then to their farm in Harborside, Maine. The Nearings' food and living philosophies have provided the guidelines for many who seek a simpler way of life. Helen is the author of Wise Words for the Good Life: A Homesteader's Personal Collection, Loving and Leaving the Good Life, Simple Food for the Good Life, and co-author (with Scott Nearing) of The Maple Sugar Book.

Bibliographic information

• Title: Simple Food for the Good Life; Good Life Series
• Author: Helen Nearing
• Edition: illustrated, reprint
• Publisher: Chelsea Green Publishing, 1999
• ISBN: 1890132292, 9781890132293
• Length: 309 pages