Edible Reads a Year at Catbird Cottage
A Culinary Journey Through the Seasons
Author with Detroit Ties Delivers the Hudson Valley
IN A YEAR AT CATBIRD COTTAGE: Recipes for a Nourished Life (Ten Speed Press, May 2022), Melina Hammer takes the reader on a seasonal journey through nature, inviting home cooks into a more conscious world in their kitchen and home.
Along with impressive recipes, all based on naturally sourced ingredients, the book contains vibrant photographs taken by the author that look like you could taste the page. The best part is the way it shows how to use found and foraged products in the most effective and delicious ways.
The author’s journey to writing about food provides stories and anecdotes that make the food and process of cooking come alive. Hammer grew up in Metro Detroit and has many memories of visiting Eastern Market and of her mother’s home garden.
“As a young kid my mother kept a garden—in part to spend time outside to make sure my brother and I were safe, and in part to cultivate beauty in our immediate surroundings,” says Hammer, explaining that she went on to realize that photography was a better outlet for her imagination and time. She began trying her hand at food photography.
“It was through a coincidental relationship with Jon Rowley and Betty Fussell who mentored me—two greats in the world of food—that started me on a path of crucial discernment.”
This mentorship led Hammer to start writing a cookbook that contained her photography and recipes learned from foraging and from using what she found in her native surroundings. Because a major focus of the book is eating seasonally, its structure follows the seasons.
“When we eat seasonally, we are eating food that doesn’t have to be transported from someplace far away [such as California or Mexico, places that grow much of America’s food], which in truth means it has to be harvested before it is ripe in order to survive transport,” says Hammer. She demonstrates how to forage items locally and what to do with seasonal finds.
Hammer’s storytelling is imaginative throughout A Year at Catbird Cottage. Stories of walking through the woods— and even in New York City—to find and forage berries, make this book a worthwhile read for anyone, even if you choose not to use the recipes.
“I often consider the concept of the circle as it’s used in Native American culture—all things are of an interrelated whole. Nature in balance functions in a circle: There is no waste, nothing is extraneous.”
Less waste and more local ingredients drive the recipes in this book and the photography and stories create a picture in your mind of how exactly to get the results. A Year at Catbird Cottage is more than a cookbook; it’s a lesson on being present with what is around you and using what is at hand to create a more well-rounded and peaceful world.
