Eating Like A Mennonite

Mennonites are often associated with food, both by outsiders and by Mennonites themselves. Eating in abundance, eating together, preserving food, and preparing so-called traditional foods are just some of the connections mentioned in cookbooks, food advertising, memoirs, and everyday food talk. Yet since Mennonites are found around the world – from Europe to Canada to Mexico, from Paraguay to India to the Democratic Republic of the Congo – what can it mean to eat like one? In Eating Like a Mennonite Marlene Epp finds that the answer depends on the eater: on their ancestral history, current home, gender, socio-economic position, family traditions, and personal tastes. Originating in central Europe in the sixteenth century, Mennonites migrated around the world even as their religious teachings historically emphasized their separateness from others. The idea of Mennonite food became a way of maintaining community identity, even as unfamiliar environments obliged Mennonites to borrow and learn from their neighbours. Looking at Mennonites past and present, Epp shows that foodstuffs (cuisine) and foodways (practices) depend on historical and cultural context. She explores how diets have evolved as a result of migration, settlement, and mission; how food and gender identities relate to both power and fear; how cookbooks and recipes are full of social meaning; how experiences and memories of food scarcity shape identity; and how food is an expression of religious beliefs – as a symbol, in ritual, and in acts of charity. From zwieback to tamales and from sauerkraut to spring rolls, Eating Like a Mennonite reveals food as a complex ingredient in ethnic, religious, and personal identities, with the ability to create both bonds and boundaries between people.

This is a new edition of Herald Press's all-time best-selling cookbook, helping thousands of families establish a climate of joy and concern for others at mealtime. The late author's introductory chapters have been edited and revised for today's cooks. Statistics and nutritional information have been updated to reflect current American and Canadian eating habits, health issues, and diet guidelines. The new U.S. food chart "My Plate" was slipped in at the last minute and placed alongside Canada's Food Guide. But the message has changed little from the one that Doris Janzen Longacre promoted in 1976, when the first edition of this cookbook was released. In many ways she was ahead of her time in advocating for people to eat more whole grains and more vegetables and fruits, with less meat, saturated fat, and sugars. This book is part of the World Community Cookbook series that is published in cooperation with Mennonite Central Committee, a worldwide ministry of relief, development, and peace. "Mennonites are widely recognized as good cooks. But Mennonites are also a people who care about the world’s hungry."—Doris Janzen Longacre

This “grandmother of all Mennonite cookbooks” brings a touch of Mennonite culture and hospitality to any home that relishes great cooking. Mary Emma Showalter compiled favorite recipes from hundreds of Mennonite women across the United States and Canada noted for their excellent cooking into this book of more than 1,100 recipes. These tantalizing dishes came to this country directly from Dutch, German, Swiss, and Russian kitchens. Old-fashioned cooking and traditional Mennonite values are woven throughout. Original directions like “a dab of cinnamon” or “ten blubs of molasses” have been standardized to help you get the same wonderful individuality and flavor. Showalter introduces each chapter with her own nostalgic recollection of cookery in grandma’s day—the pie shelf in the springhouse, outdoor bake ovens, the summer kitchen. First published in 1950, Mennonite Community Cookbook has become a treasured part of many family kitchens. Parents who received the cookbook when they were first married make sure to purchase it for their own sons and daughters when they wed. This 65th anniversary edition adds all new color photography and a brief history while retaining all of the original recipes and traditional Fraktur drawings. Check out the cookbook blog at mennonitecommunitycookbook.com

A 2012 New York Times Notable Book A 2013 Los Angeles Times Book Award Winner in the Science & Technology category An engaging narrative about an incredible, life-giving organ and its imperiled modern fate. Did you know that breast milk contains substances similar to cannabis? Or that it’s sold on the Internet for 262 times the price of oil? Feted and fetishized, the breast is an evolutionary masterpiece. But in the modern world, the breast is changing. Breasts are getting bigger, arriving earlier, and attracting newfangled chemicals. Increasingly, the odds are stacked against us in the struggle with breast cancer, even among men. What makes breasts so mercurial—and so vulnerable? In this informative and highly entertaining account, intrepid science reporter Florence Williams sets out to uncover the latest scientific findings from the fields of anthropology, biology, and medicine. Her investigation follows the life cycle of the breast from puberty to pregnancy to menopause, taking her from a plastic surgeon’s office where she learns about the importance of cup size in Texas to the laboratory where she discovers the presence of environmental toxins in her own breast milk. The result is a fascinating exploration of where breasts came from, where they have ended up, and what we can do to save them.

A satirical cocktail book featuring seventy-seven cocktail recipes accompanied by arcane trivia on Mennonite history, faith, and cultural practices. At last, you think, a book of cocktails that pairs punny drinks with Mennonite history! Yes, cocktail enthusiast and author of the popular Drunken Mennonite blog Sherri Klassen is here to bring some Low German love to your bar cart. Drinks like Brandy Anabaptist, Migratarita, Thrift Store Sour, and Pimm’s Cape Dress are served up with arcane trivia on Mennonite history, faith, and cultural practices. Arranged by theme, the book opens with drinks inspired by the Anabaptists of sixteenth-century Europe (Bloody Martyr, anyone?), before moving on to religious beliefs and practices (a little like going to a bar after class in Seminary, but without actually going to class). The third chapter toasts the Mennonite history of migration (Old Piña Colony), and the fourth is all about the trappings of Mennonite cultural identity (Singalong Sling). With seventy-seven recipes, ripping satire, comical illustrations, a cocktails-to-mocktails chapter for the teetotallers, and instructions on scaling up for barn-raisings and funerals, it’s just the thing for the Mennonite, Menno-adjacent, or merely Menno-curious home mixologist.

The Mennonites of Russia had a particular story and history, as well as a particular food tradition. A Russian Mennonite herself, Normal Jost Voth interviewed persons whose lives spanned from Chortitza in south Russia to Newton, Kansas, and from the Molotschna to Winnipeg, Manitoba. Their memories of orchards and gardens, Faspa and weddings, food preservation and wheat harvest fill this volume. In addition, there are more than 100 recipes (different from those in Volume I/, as well as typical menus and menus for special occasions. "Meticulously researched chronicle of the Russian Mennonite." -- Publishers Weekly

Full of longing and melancholy, the stories in What you get at home find comfort and understanding in the unlikeliest of places. In "The Rocking Chair," a piece of furniture simultaneously divides a family and heals old wounds. In a small pool of light and her favourite book the narrator in the title story finds a sense of belonging and purpose. In "Chopsticks," a piano in a personal care home reminds a woman of the sense of wonder and admiration she had for her father as a child. With the power of memory the characters that inhabit What you get at home find the strength to carry on when life is at its most challenging.

This volume pays tribute to Luisa Passerini, whose scholarship has had a major impact on feminist and other scholars around the world. First known internationally for developing new conceptual approaches to oral history and memory studies based on the recognition of the subjective nature of memory, Passerini has more recently written about autobiography, the history of emotions and concepts of belonging in Europe, and reimagining a more inclusive Europe. In this book, scholars from North America, South America and Europe engage Passerini’s groundbreaking insights into the nature of subjectivity, intersubjectivity, autobiography, and love in relation to the themes of borders, emotions, and memory. The contributions deal with topics including Mennonite refugee women's food memories; the testimonies of far-left Chilean women who survived brutal sexualized violence; and memories of the war between East and West Pakistan, and India and Pakistan. Other contributions to the volume situate and reflect on Passerini’s career-encompassing scholarship. Passerini speaks with the editors of her latest work on oral and visual memories of human movement, and also offers a thoughtful response to the essays, whose authors represent a transnational and multi-generational group of scholars. This book was originally published as a special issue of Women’s History Review.