Cooking Like a Goddess: Bringing Seasonal Magic Into the Kitchen

Great recipes broken out by seasons and mid-seasons but in addition to the recipes, there are lots of stories, poems, ideas for celebration. I just love it - I read a little, cook a little. Good book for getting connected, food, body, spirit, earth.

This is the most favored and treasured cookbook in my kitchen. Not only does Cait have a way with her words, making you feel like a close friend and confidente, but she has some of the most delicious vegetarian recipes that I have ever tasted. She includes not only recipes for the main meals, but also ones for appetizers, soups, salads and desserts! There are whole menus for each season and earth-centered holiday! In addition, Cait gives poems, information, kitchen altar decoration, and rituals for each seasonal menu. There are herbal hints for cleaning and a great bibliography with wonderful "must read" books. I have always enjoyed Cait Johnson's books, but this is my favorite. It is a book that you would want to keep and pass down to your children and it gave me a love of cooking that I thought I lost. The recipes are healthy and delicious but filled with thought and spirit. I cannot urge you enough to check this cookbook out! Hope you enjoy it as much as I do!

Cait Johnson's "Cooking Like a Goddess" is a wonderful addition to many a cook's bookshelf. Not only is it a fine vegetarian cookbook, but it seeks to wrap a broader context around something most of us often think of as drudgery: cooking for ourselves and our families. Bringing back the wisdom of earth-based spiritual traditions and their inherent honoring of the feminine/nurturing role, she helps us redefine ourselves NOT as cook and chief bottle washer but as something very sacred, very vital, and very precious to society as a whole. Not since Laurel Robertson's preface to "Laurel's Kitchen" have I found a cookbook that celebrated the sacredness of the role of nurturing and cooking the way Cait's book does. I've had as much fun erecting my kitchen altar and following her suggestons for seasonal ritual as I have following and then eating her yummy recipes. Enjoy!

Cooking Like A Goddess allows us to see the sacredness in the everyday. By bringing spirituality into the kitchen, Johnson deepens our connection of home, hearth, and heart! Her book is full of suggestions for decorating, meditating, living and cooking in the kitchen (until now my least favorite room in the house!). Her recipes are delicious; they nurture the soul as well as the body! Reading and using this book is like a gift from a dear friend--deeply satisfying!

Cooking Like a Goddess brings spirituality into the heart of the home. In her unique way, Johnson shows us that our kitchens can become sacred space, both physically and emotionally. Her suggestions run the gamut from creating altars to designing aprons to transforming the mundane act of cooking into personal ritual. Her recipes reflect the moods of each season, blending seasonally available foods into meals that bring home to us the rebirth of Spring, the freshness and heat of Summer, the earthy abundance of Autumn and the hearth-centeredness of Winter. The recipes are simple and accessible, and absolutely delicious! In addition to recipes, Johnson offers a variety of ways to make the kitchen a place to work, play , pray & meditate. She provides an extensive list of resources to aid the individual in that goal. Throughout the book, the reader feels as if she is sitting in Johnson's kitchen, talking and sharing over a cup of tea. Her writing style is personal and simple, while her ideas are powerful, spirit-centered and sometimes playful. Cooking Like a Goddess is a wonderful companion book to her previous co-authored Celebrating the Great Mother. Read this book and you'll never see your kitchen, and your cooking, in the same way again.