More-With-Less

My copy of the cookbook by that name, subtitled "Suggestions by Mennonites on how to eat better and consume less of the world's limited food resources", is held together with some tape. Several of the pages are splotched or covered in a fine film of flour after sessions of cookie baking with my kids, or rolling chapatis to accompany curried dhal.

A friend gave me the cookbook in 1992 as a farewell gift. I was leaving Seattle for the Bronx, where she happened to have an aunt and encouraged me to get in touch. The aunt was one of a few Bronx Mennonites who met each week to worship, potluck, quilt and share their way of life in an urban setting very different from the places where they had grown up. Although this was not my tradition, I learned from them--and from their cookbook--many of the same things about food that we are exploring through No Impact Week: buy local, reduce waste, reduce sugar, take only what you need, seasonal eating and serve meat only on the most special occasions.

What Mennonites know well is that coming together to break bread can be meaningful and instructive on any day, not just holidays. The recipes and advice in my book were collected from Mennonite families challenged long ago (there is no print date in my book, but the photos suggest 1970s) to think about the world's food crisis and share ways they were reducing their consumption. Missionaries who treasured moments sharing a simple meal with people who had far fewer resources than the US, also contributed experiences and wisdom. (The collected international recipes were augmented and compiled into a companion cookbook in 1991, titled Extending the Table.) I still remember reading the cookbook's introduction and proverbs or poems, peppered throughout the book, and feeling stunned by the obvious. It changed my young home making habits for good.

In her preface, Doris Janzenn Longacre, who conducted her own food information research and compiled the submissions from hundreds of Mennonites, writes:

"Although the book is finished, the holy frustration goes on. Do not approach this book as a set of answers for responsible change. At its best, it tells us that Mennonites--a people who care about the hungry--are on a search. We are looking for ways to live more simply and joyfully, ways that grow out of our tradition but take their shape from living faith and the demands of our hungry world. There is not just one way to respond, nor is there a single answer to the world's food problem. It may not be within our capacity to effect an answer. But it is within our capacity to search for a faithful response."

Doris's demure ending to the signing off of a great accomplishment is admirable, but perhaps too humble. Who's to say that her people couldn't effect an answer, and who's to say that 4500 people also entering this "holy frustration" for one week can't effect some answers? This was often my loud and too-proud response to my Mennonite friends. I'm grateful to them for their patience and for welcoming me as a student to their ways. I'm glad for the small kernels of wisdom I can always refer to in my battered-up cookbooks, like this Ugandan proverb:
"It is better to sleep with an empty stomach that with a troubled heart"
Or better, this Islamic saying my family tries to put into practice:
"Food for one person is enough for two. That for two is enough for four. That for four is enough for eight."