‘Less’ is more
50-year-old cookbook is a recipe for life
Staff writer
More than 50 years ago, Judy Unruh of Goessel answered a call for recipes for a new church cookbook.
No one expected the cookbook to become a runaway hit. Published in 1976, “More-with-Less Cookbook” sold 850,000 copies and became the all-time bestseller of Herald Press, the Mennonite and Anabaptist publishing house. Unruh’s chicken and noodles recipe appeared on Page 47.
Subtitled “Recipes and suggestions by Mennonites on how to eat better and consume less of the world’s limited food resources,” the book appealed to readers with simple recipes and advice for cooking and eating more sustainably.
This year, Herald Press is marking the cookbook’s 50th anniversary with a new edition and events highlighting its many ties to south-central Kansas.
Readers are cooking through the cookbook, with volunteers preparing each recipe and posting photos on social media. Dozens of the recipes came from contributors in Hesston, Newton, Hillsboro, Goessel, and other Kansas communities.
At an anniversary service at Zion Mennonite Church in Elbing, friends and family members remembered the cookbook’s late author, Doris Janzen Longacre, who grew up in Elbing.
Preaching at the service, Mitch Stutzman, director of development and partner engagement for MennoMedia, said the book made
Longacre the “most widely read theologian” in the Mennonite and Anabaptist tradition, even though she died in 1979, just a few years after the book’s publication.
“Her theology did not come through dense biblical commentary … but came through this really practical theology that’s lived out at the table through attention to community, hospitality, and stewardship,” he said.
“More-with-Less” arose from anxieties of the early 1970s. Graphic news coverage of famines in Bangladesh and Ethiopia brought a world food crisis into American living rooms. At the time, U.S. food prices jumped roughly 35% from 1972 to 1974.
The American diet had changed, too, with consumers eating more processed and expensive foods.
From 1940 to 1972, beef consumption rose from an average of 55 pounds per person to 116 pounds. Sugar consumption had doubled since the turn of the century.
Concerned about the connection between North American consumption and world hunger, Mennonite Central Committee challenged Mennonite households to cut their food budgets by 10%.
“People were like, ‘Well, how on earth are we supposed to do that?’” said Malinda Elizabeth Berry, professor of peace theology at Anabaptist Mennonite Biblical Seminary in Elkhart, Indiana. “Doris got tagged with the job of creating a handbook to help people figure out how to reduce their food budgets.”
A call went out for money-saving ideas. Longacre’s mailbox was flooded with thousands of recipes and tips from around the U.S. and beyond.
Unruh’s submission offered both a recipe and a tip for buying chicken cheaply.
“In our community, the farmers who sell hatching eggs must clear their barns of 1-to-2-year-old fat hens,” Unruh wrote. “They could be bought for 40 cents this fall, so I bought 10 of them.”
The book also connected cooking and eating with tenets of the Mennonite faith.
Emphasizing simplicity and valuing community “are part of our spiritual DNA, and I think that created really fertile ground for the type of work that Doris did in creating this cookbook,” Stutzman said.
Longacre called on cooks to embrace cooking as a creative and joyful pursuit, but she didn’t shy away from challenging readers, either.
“As North Americans, most of us grew up believing that we were born into an era of abundance,” she wrote. “The ability to buy something has meant the right to have it. Christian discipleship now calls us to turn around.”
“More-with-Less” launched the World Community Cookbooks series, which later included “Extending the Table” and “Simply in Season.” Longacre’s companion book, “Living More with Less,” was published in 1980 and remains in print today.
All were published by Herald Press in partnership with Mennonite Central Committee. Since the beginning, proceeds have benefited the committee’s global relief, development. and peace-building work.
Growing up Mennonite, Berry found cookbooks were “in the air” in her home and in Mennonite culture. She didn’t appreciate the extent of their influence beyond that world until much later.
“Fast-forward however many years. I’m at Union Seminary in New York City,” she said. “I go to chapel, and I’m really surprised to discover that the worship was created by a professor who was visiting from Yale, who herself was from Ireland, and the service was all based on the ‘Extending the Table’ cookbook.”
The experience inspired Berry to delve into Longacre’s life and the origins of “More-with-Less” and to describe Longacre’s work as “organic theology.”
Longacre also drew on other Kansans as she assembled the cookbook.
June Suderman of Hillsboro was among the home economists who tested and evaluated recipes; she’s credited by name in the original edition.
Suderman remembers Longacre, who died of breast cancer at 39.
“We first met when we were working with refugees in Vietnam for MCC during the war,” she said. “She was very organized and always welcoming to everyone.”
Check the cookbook shelf in any Mennonite household, and chances are you’ll find a dog-eared copy of “More-with-Less.” Visit a Mennonite gathering, and chances are everyone will have a favorite recipe.
Jeannie Klaassen of Hillsboro plans to buy at least four copies of the new anniversary edition: one for herself and three for her grandchildren.
Her favorite recipe is Koinonia granola, a sweet mixture of oats, sesame, and sunflower seeds; chopped nuts; Grape-Nuts; wheat germ; and coconut.
“It makes for a very healthy breakfast,” she said.
Klaassen also remembers Longacre. Their paths crossed when Klaassen and her husband, a physician, were preparing to serve MCC in Kolkata.
(During the Vietnam era, Mennonites who qualified as conscientious objectors could fulfill their service obligation through civilian humanitarian work instead of military service.)
Later editions of “More-with-Less” updated the recipes as tastes changed.
Unruh’s recipe didn’t make the later editions. She no longer makes chicken and noodles from scratch herself — her shoulders aren’t up to it — and local farmers don’t sell the fat hens anymore.
Recipes for dishes made with soybeans or lard also were cut or updated.
“Our sensibilities and our culture are shifting,” Stutzman said, “but the spirit of the book remains the same.”