Family Food for Feast and Feria

There's a new thread entitled Catholic Cookbooks at the 4RealLearning Forums. Liturgical Year reading and cooking is one of my favorite things to do. I admit my focus has changed somewhat since ds' food allergy diagnosis, but I still love reading the traditions and foods connected to the liturgical feasts and seasons.

While I have a series of posts planned on why liturgical cooking, I wrote this summary a while back:

Why do I do liturgical cooking? Because through food I can use symbolism, culture, history, and catechesis in all different varieties through the foods I serve at the table. Meals are natural conversation starters. They are the perfect place to start discussing the saint or feast of the day, the connections with the food, etc.

This has been done through the centuries. I'm not having an original thought. I like being I'm in touch with Catholics centuries before me in cooking for the feasts. It's follows the definition of Catholic -- it's universal, spanning the globe and time.

Some of my favorite liturgical cookbooks:

• OOP Cooking for Christ: Your Liturgical Cookbook by Florence Berger, my first and favorite. A revised version is available from NCRLC, although I'm partial to the original. Why is it my favorite cookbook? I haven't done many of the recipes, but I LOVE her discussions. She writes like you are sitting at her kitchen table enjoying some coffee together.



• OOP Catholic Traditions in Cooking by Ann Ball.



• Feast Day Cookbook by Helmut Ripperger reprinted. You can view the .pdf file.



• OOP Catholic Cookbook by William Kaufman



• OOP The Cook's Blessings by Demetria Taylor



• OOP Helen McLoughlin's My Nameday -- Come for Dessert, Liturgical Press, 1962. She also wrote 3 pamphlets, which are also out of print, but my some of my favorite references:
  
  Family Advent Customs (.pdf file), Liturgical Press, 1954, 1979.
  
  Christmas to Candlemas in a Catholic Home (.pdf file), Liturgical Press, 1954.
  
  Family Customs: Easter to Pentecost, Liturgical Press, 1956, 1979. Her Easter pamphlet is not online in entirety. If you Google the title and author, and ask to show omitted results, CatholicCulture.org has much of her book online.

These cookbooks aren't Catholic in origin, but really cover many feast days:

• Festa: Recipes and Recollections of Italian Holidays by Helen Barolini. I love reading her descriptions of Italian feasts. And the recipes are quite good.
  
  
• Celebration Breads: Recipes, Tales, and Traditions by Betsy Oppenneer. Bread recipes from all over the world for different feasts. Great variety, terrific detailed instructions.



• Feasting for Festivals by Jan Wilson is OOP, but there are very cheap copies available from Amazon. I think this is Anglican, but there are wonderful recipes and crafts from a British viewpoint.



• I am happy to see Festive Food of Ireland by Darina Allen back in print. I bought a copy when I was in Ireland 10 years ago. It's a beautiful little book, decorated with Celtic illustrations and great photos and the recipes all have accompanying descriptions of the Irish customs.

The following have recipes, but are not dedicated cookbooks:

• OOP Around the Year with the Trapp Family: Keeping the Feasts and Seasons of the Liturgical Year by Maria Von Trapp, a classic for the family liturgical living. I have uploaded the text and some graphics in this Around the Year with the Trapp Family blog and this is the text version.



• OOP Catholic Parent Book of Feasts by Michaelann Martin



• OOP The Year and Our Children by Mary Reed Newland (only a few recipes).



• Book of Feasts and Seasons by Joanna Bogle (she also blogs).



• Women for Faith and Family has some Sourcebooks with recipes



• Celebrating the Faith in the Home Series by Teresa Zepeda and Laurie Navar Gill from Emmanuel Books.

I have many others, but this post is already overwhelming. I enjoy all of Brother Victor-Antopine d'Avila-Latourrette's cookbooks. Ethel Marbach (Pochocki) had a few pamphlets and Holy Housewife Cookbook that are extremely enjoyable to read. And there are two cookbooks, The Lenten Kitchen and The Advent Kitchen by Barbara Benjamin and Alexandria Damascus Vali that contain some healthy and tasty recipes for the fasting seasons.

If you put on the "Liturgical Year Mindset" almost any cookbook can become your helper for Liturgical cooking. I love thumbing through different ethnic cookbooks to find recipes named after saints, or made especially for the feast days. So many countries the saints and feasts were tightly woven into daily, secular life, and the cookbooks reflect this pattern.

What's on your shelf? Any ones that you can recommend?