We all have our favorite cookbooks — books we actually cook from, books with stained, dog-eared pages and good recipes that come out the way they’re supposed to and make our families happy. Years ago I bought such a book, “Once a Month Cooking.” The authors’ premise is that by carefully planning, shopping and preparing, you can make a month’s worth of meals in one day — saving a significant amount of time and money in the process.
While I’m still working my way up to the all-day cooking marathons the book promotes, I often do mini-marathons and stock our freezer with a week’s worth of great meals. So you can imagine my excitement when I was at an event for the Colorado Authors League a few years ago and ran into one of the book’s co-authors Mary Beth Lagerborg. Right then and there I became one of her biggest fans and groupies.
Mary Beth generously agreed to guest post for us today, and I think you’ll enjoy her thoughts about how thriftiness and a generous heart can co-exist in the kitchen:
The Joy of Giving from the Frugal Kitchen
Frugality gives us a heady sense of accomplishment. We’re creatively using our resources. We’re realizing that we really can spend leaner and cleaner.
But frugality takes a hard edge if we pull back from giving.
When we visited my husband’s grandmother in her vigorous years, she always had spritz cookies on hand for us, to serve with coffee. Later, in a retirement home, she invariably saved cookies off her meal tray, wrapped them in a napkin and stored them in her bedside table so she would have something to give visitors. When I unwrapped that cookie I wanted to slip it discreetly into the trashcan – but I knew that it was important to her to know she still had something to give.
A meal is a simple, valuable gift – whether it’s
About Eliza Cross
Eliza Cross is a full-time writer and the author of 15 books about food and home design. She has been blogging about simplicity and sustainable living since 2006.
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