Lost Recipes: Meals to Share with Friends and Family

We need to lure our families, friends, and neighbors back to the table, to sit down and eat together. It is important that we be in charge again of our cooking, working with fresh, unadulterated ingredients. Enclosed you will find many simple-to-make, good-tasting, inexpensive dishes from the past that taste better than ever today. I urge you to try them.

• Good soups?satisfying one-dish meals that can be made ahead
• Dishes that can be made with what?s on hand?First-Prize Onion Casserole, Shepherd?s Pie, Salmon or Tuna Loaf
• Vegetables baked and ready for the table
• Real salads, substantial enough for lunch or supper, with snappy dressings
• Breads and cookies, puddings and cakes that you loved as a child

PS: There is nothing like the satisfaction of sharing with others something you have cooked yourself

From:Marion Cunningham

To:The American home cook

Subject (URGENT):The family table

We need to lure our families, friends, and neighbors back to the table, to sit down and eat together. It is important that we be in charge again of our cooking, working with fresh, unadulterated ingredients. Enclosed you will find many simple-to-make, good-tasting, inexpensive dishes from the past that taste better than ever today. I urge you to try them.

· Good soupssatisfying one-dish meals that can be made ahead

· Dishes that can be made with whats on handFirst-Prize Onion Casserole, Shepherds Pie, Salmon or Tuna Loaf

· Vegetables baked and ready for the table

· Real salads, substantial enough for lunch or supper, with snappy dressings

· Breads and cookies, puddings and cakes that you loved as a child

PS: There is nothing like the satisfaction of sharing with others something you have cooked yourself

Today's Fannie Farmer and the 2003 winner of the James Beard Lifetime Achievement Award dedicates her new cookbook to getting America back to the family table. Includes an accordion-fold envelope for holding one's personal recipes.

Marion Cunningham was born in Southern California and now lives in Walnut Creek. She was responsible for the complete revision of The Fannie Farmer Cookbook and is the author of The Fannie Farmer Baking Book, The Breakfast Book, The Supper Book, and Cooking with Children. She travels frequently throughout the country giving cooking demonstrations, has contributed articles to Bon Appetit, Food & Wine, and Gourmet magazines, and writes a column for the San Francisco Chronicle and the Los Angeles Times.