The Foundation of Food

As you probably know by now if you have been reading my posts for a while, I have a love of food. I manage my local farmers market during the summer, I bake for friends and family, and Emily has been cooking with me since she was four. I can pears and peaches, make apple butter, and Emily and I attend Cook Book Club at our local library. You could say, food is one of the foundations of our life.

Food brings people together, brings comfort on sad occasions, brings joy at celebrations, and allows our creativity to spring forth. Food is a tie that binds people the world over, and so I thought it would be nice this week to review some books about cooking and food.

The first book I read was a short but fun book titled Baking With Dad. The story shows a young girl sharing a glorious morning in the kitchen making a masterpiece and a mess, and the masterpiece turns out to be a birthday cake for the girl's brother. I like this book for several reasons, the first being that I love any book that positively displays a dad interacting with his children. Secondly, I love that a parent is passing on a passion for cooking. I also love the colorful illustrations that effectively show joy on every page.

The second book I read was Blue Corn Soup. The story  has a definite Spanish flavor as the main character is a Abuelita (grandma) mouse making blue corn sopa (soup). Several of her forest friends small the lovely aroma of Abuelita's soup and make their way to her house. But Abuelita's soup pot is too small to share, that is until she has the wonderful idea of everyone contributing something to the meal. The story reminds me a lot of one of my favorite childhood stories, Stone Soup.

And since we are on a cooking/food roll (no pun intended) why stop at two books? Some other great books I've read in the past that are related to cooking or food are:

And of course there is my very own Cooking In Fern Valley.

Well, that about wraps it up for this week. Join me next week for another exciting episode, same crazy time, same crazy channel. Also be sure to drop by Literacy Musings Mondays for more great blogs as well as my personal website Fun With Aileen where you will find more on reading, writing, and my very own chapter and picture books. And finally, you can find me on twitter  @AileenWStewart if you want an extremely brief glimpse into my days.