How cookbooks can help build resilience

I am an eternal optimist: no matter how bleak things look I always look for the silver lining or imagine a way the situation can turn out for the better. With all of the negative news out these days, this philosophy is becoming more difficult to maintain. Today’s article from The Independent doesn’t help; it provides another pessimistic forecast for food prices and availability in the UK. The story paints a bleak picture with events such as weather disasters, tariffs, and Brexit combining to render produce shelves bare and cause stiff price increases on items that do make it into the market.

Despite the doom and gloom outlook, there are pockets of hope. Building local resilience can help offset some of the problems inherent in large scale industrial farming. While it is not possible to grow everything you eat, having a small garden can allow you to enjoy items that may be in short supply. Helping local farmers expand their plantings to include more adaptable crops can also help. For instance, here in Minnesota farmers are turning to a special variety of hazelnut that can be part of a regenerative agriculture practice.

When grocery stores are struggling to keep items on the shelves, being flexible about what you cook is another form of resilience. That is where cookbooks and EYB come into the picture. Having books that span a wide variety of cuisines and cooking styles allows you to make better use of available supermarket produce. You can plug the ingredients into EYB to find recipes that take full advantage of items that are in stock. Necessity may be the mother of invention, but having EYB at your fingertips is like having a fairy godmother, allowing you to find wonderful combinations you might not have dreamed of on your own.

Cookbooks may only play a small role in the overall production of resilience, but even a small role can be vital. I imagine cookbooks being rather like the King George part in Hamilton – an entertaining and memorable interlude between weighty acts. My cookbook collection helps me maintain my optimistic nature because I know that no matter what I can find in the grocery store, I will be able to make something delicious from it.