It's that special time of the year when people everywhere will be gathering for holiday meals around the table to enjoy home cooked meals with friends and family from near and far. And the perfect addition to make these meals more interesting, or for your holiday gift giving, is the new hard cover publication, The American Lighthouse Cookbook by Becky Sue Epstein and Ed Jackson.
This new release is a treasure trove of dishes and lore from selected lighthouse across the country with the best recipes along with neat stories from America's shorelines. I was going to list my favorite recipes found in the book, but quite frankly there were just too many of them.
The American Lighthouse Cookbook is arranged by eight geographical regions and features 47 lighthouses chosen for their interesting backgrounds and stories. Following the story of each lighthouse is a menu for a modern day lighthouse meal. Each of the 300 recipes captures the essence of the local foods available to the lighthouse keepers and family members from the 1700s through the end of the era of lighthouse keeping, but continues with today's modern caretaker keepers.
Although some of the recipes were contributed by lighthouse groups, most were developed by the authors with a local theme to highlight regional styles of cooking with what would be found locally by the keeper's of yesteryear.
The book includes some really nice pen and ink artwork of the lighthouses that are featured with their recipes. However, I would have liked to see some actual photographs of the lighthouses themselves along with some photographs of the completed dishes; however this in no way diminishes the quality of this fine cookbook.
Think about it; you could plan a lighthouse themed get-together that includes real lighthouse meals, just like the lighthouse keepers would have experienced.
It is quite obvious that the authors spent a lot of time researching each region where the lighthouse is located to come up with the recipes, something they are to be commended for.
So, if you're looking for a neat new cookbook for yourself or for a gift for someone else, I'd highly recommend The American Lighthouse Cookbook. The hard cover book is available for $26.95 plus $3.00 shipping from www.LighthouseDigest.net. P.O. Box 250, East Machias, ME 04630.
This story appeared in the
November 2009 edition of Lighthouse Digest Magazine. The print edition contains more stories than our internet edition, and each story generally contains more photographs - often many more - in the print edition. For subscription information about the print edition, click here.
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