"Susan Herrman Loomis" news and stories

Back in January, when I first started this project to revive the Cookbook of the Day feature, one of the very first books I featured was the Farmhouse Cookbook, by Susan Herrmann Loomis. I had picked it up at a thrift store and fallen in love with the way that the author had captured local, fresh, direct-from-the-farm cooking. Commenters on that post mentioned that she had written other cookbooks and that Loomis also had her own cooking school in France. Intrigued, I started looking around for copies of her other work, picking up the Italian Farmhouse Cookbook (surely to be featured here someday) and her memoir, On Rue Tatin.

It's On Rue Tatin that I want to spotlight here today. It took me several months after buying my copy before I actually found the time to read it, but once I started I became totally engrossed. It combines many of my favorite things: stories of exploring new places, old houses and the challenges of making them livable and lots and lots of food and cooking. Each chapter is followed by three or four or five recipes that were previously mentioned in the text. Reading them is nearly as good as reading the rest of the book, as she always includes a description of where the recipe came from and the situations during which her family has eaten that meal.

As someone who lives in a modern apartment building, in the middle of a big city, where farmers markets don't start until May, and the clerks at the corner convenience market are surly and decidedly unhelpful, I loved the opportunity for interior travel that reading this book allowed me. If you long to exist in a food world different from the one you know, this book will give you a chance to do that, even if it's only for a brief while.

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Published in 1991, the Farmhouse Cookbook by Susan Herrman Loomis is a hefty paperback filled with recipes that Loomis spent two years collecting. She traveled the country, visiting family farms and small towns, eating amazing food and compiling those dishes into this book. I picked my copy up at a local thrift store about a year ago for $.89 and it has become one of my favorite cookbooks to read novel-style. Loomis is an engaging writer and never presents a recipe without giving a little history about it the people who shared it with her.

Another thing I find interesting about this cookbook is that Loomis writes it with an eye to local and sustainable farming, shopping and cooking. That wouldn't be surprising if she had written it in the last five years, but being that it is nearly 20 years old, I look at her perspective as something akin to visionary.

This is a cookbook I recommend for people who want a good read and inspiration for fairly easy, tasty dishes that take into account issues of local and seasonal eating.