"Recently, while moving into a new house, Elizabeth Gilbert unpacked
some boxes of family books that had been sitting in her mother's attic
for decades. She discovered a book called At Home on the Range (or, How to Make Friends with Your Stove)
by Gilbert's great-grandmother, Margaret Yardley Potter, and soon found
that she had stumbled upon a book far ahead of its time. In her
workaday cookbook, Potter espoused the importance of farmer's markets
and ethnic food (Italian, Jewish, and German), derided preservatives
and culinary shortcuts, and generally celebrated new epicurean
adventures. Potter takes car trips out to Pennsylvania Dutch country to
eat pickles and pork. She travels to the eastern shore of Maryland,
where she learns to catch and prepare eels so delicious they must be
"devoured in a silence almost devout." Part scholar, part crusader,
Potter reveals the source of Gilbert’s love of food, and her warm,
infectious prose."
)
by Gilbert's great-grandmother, Margaret Yardley Potter, and soon found
that she had stumbled upon a book far ahead of its time. In her
workaday cookbook, Potter espoused the importance of farmer's markets
and ethnic food (Italian, Jewish, and German), derided preservatives
and culinary shortcuts, and generally celebrated new epicurean
adventures. Potter takes car trips out to Pennsylvania Dutch country to
eat pickles and pork. She travels to the eastern shore of Maryland,
where she learns to catch and prepare eels so delicious they must be
"devoured in a silence almost devout." Part scholar, part crusader,
Potter reveals the source of Gilbert’s love of food, and her warm,
infectious prose."