@article{2123, keywords = {Mennonites, Mennonite cooking, Food}, author = {Melanie Zuercher}, title = {Eating like a Mennonite}, abstract = {
[Marlene Epp] began her third lecture, "Eating across borders: Mennonite missions and migrations," by showing several photos of "food fusion," restaurants and grocery stores in southern Ontario that feature what she dubbed "MennoMex" foods and cuisine. "The people who run these [businesses] are part of the Mexican Mennonite phenomenon, descended from 1870s immigrants from south Russia who keep going back and forth between Canada and Mexico." "The recipe book, ubiquitous in Mennonite homes, solidified the internal and external aspects of community," she explained. "Cookbooks say a lot about Mennonite women's lives, but also about Mennonites generally. They have told the world more about Mennonites than any other written work." As a case in point, she referred to the best-selling "Mennonite" book of all time-Doris Janzen Longacre's More-with-Less Cookbook-as well as the more recent Mennonite Girls Can Cook. "Cookbooks [are] signposts of an era, reflecting the changes," Epp said, adding, "Mennonites often follow the ideological bandwagon, but it can be said that with their cookbooks, they more often lead it." "Cookbooks can be understood in terms of their wider goals and impact," she said. "Cookbooks [project] a female voice amid all the male ones. They have shaped Mennonites' self-understanding as well as external views of Mennonites."
}, year = {2014}, journal = {Canadian Mennonite (Waterloo)}, volume = {18}, isbn = {1480-042X}, language = {eng}, }