Spoonriver Cookbook($33.20Value)

Description

For nearly forty years, Brenda Langton has been one of the most recognizable guiding lights of Twin Cities organic dining, from the earliest days at the Commonplace Cooperative Restaurant to her award-winning establishments Cafe Kardamena and the beloved Cafe Brenda. Always ahead of the curve when it comes to serving local, organic, and vegetarian cuisine, in 2006 she opened the acclaimed Spoonriver restaurant in downtown Minneapolis while at the same time founding the Mill City Farmers Market, a unique urban market offering local, sustainable, and organic produce along with pasture-raised meats, eggs, and farmstead cheeses. Spoonriver and the Mill City Farmers Market have from the very beginning been entwined—Brenda and her restaurants have always relied on the finest, freshest local produce as the foundation for her seasonal menus. The Spoonriver Cookbook is a tribute to these two landmark institutions as well as a presentation of the vision and philosophy behind Spoonriver’s delicious creations and their remarkable chef. With her longtime friend and coauthor Margaret Stuart, Brenda has compiled a flavorful variety of Spoonriver’s offerings from quick-cooking one-pot dishes to simple and scrumptious vegetable sides, legume recipes, and whole-grain preparations. Spoonriver appeals to a broad palate, and its cookbook includes tantalizing recipes for grass-fed beef, lamb, and naturally raised pork from area farms along with fresh seafood and organic free-range chicken. Connecting the table back to the market and ultimately to the land itself, The Spoonriver Cookbook provides unique recipes and fascinating short stories and profiles from the market’s farmers and vendors. Brenda Langton’s philosophy is built on the simple premise that a healthy diet is one of the best paths toward a long and happy life. It just so happens that Brenda’s recipes are for some of the most delectable food that people in the Twin Cities have enjoyed for decades, and T he Spoonriver Cookbook is a celebration of her rich legacy that is at once local, healthy, and yes, supremely delicious. "I adore Brenda Langton for her commitment, her principled unwavering vision, her social agenda, and most of all her scrumptious food."―Andrew Zimmern "Buy this book if you want to live longer! No one in the world can better combine ingredients than food guru Brenda Langton. She not only makes us healthier but eating her way makes us better people."―Dan Buettner, author of Blue Zone: Lessons for Living Longer From the People Who’ve Lived the Longest "Brenda is a remarkably talented chef who makes extraordinarily delicious foods which also happen to be healthy, affordable, and relatively easy to make.  That she has willingly shared her recipes is a gift to us all.  Enjoy!"―David Eisenberg, M.D., Director of “Healthy Kitchens, Healthy Lives: Caring For Our Patients and Ourselves” "I applaud Brenda for her commitment to local, fresh, sustainable ingredients and for being a leading advocate for healthy eating. It is her passion, devotion, and spirit that has led the way to make a difference in how people eat."―Cindy Pawlcyn, Brassica Mediterranean Kitchen Wine Bar, Napa Valley, CA "Langton embraces the way real people live, eat, and cook. Though it is called The Spoonriver Cookbook , it’s really an ode to the bounty of our local food scene."― Mpls.St. Paul Magazine "Brenda Langton may have been the first chef to show the Twin Cities that "organic" can be elegant. She's bringing her message home in The Spoonriver Cookbook, which she wrote with Margaret Stuart. The book shares recipes for the bright, flavorful dishes from the award-winning restaurant and the authors give a serious nod to the local growers and producers who provide its food."― Star Tribune "Brenda Langton’s passion for healthy food bubbles over like an unattended pot on a hot burner. Langton has long been ahead of the food curve, embracing vegetarianism and farm-to-table trends long before the general populus."― Chanhassen Villager "From appetizers through entrees and ending with desserts, The Spoonriver Cookbook is filled with recipes one wants to taste."― Lillie Suburban News "One of the many attractive features of this book is the wide range of complexity. This is a perfect gift for the novice cook who has an interest in expanding their repertoire--there are numerous simple recipes with short ingredient lists, and when it's time to try something more ambitious, those recipes are here too. It's a lovely book to just page through as well, with beautiful (and hunger-inducing) photography by Mette Nielsen."― Flyoverland blog Brenda Langton has been a presence in Twin Cities dining since 1972. She started her first restaurant, Cafe Kardamena, in St. Paul in 1978, and then moved it to Minneapolis and renamed it Cafe Brenda in 1986. Cafe Brenda operated until 2009. In 2006, Brenda opened Spoonriver and founded the Mill City Farmers Market. She is a senior fellow at the Center for S