At Home on the Range

A cookbook far ahead of its time, Margaret Yardley Potter's "At Home on the Range," originally published in 1947, was rediscovered by the author Elizabeth Gilbert--who just so happens to be the author's great-granddaughter. Gilbert's "Gima" was no ordinary housewife: at a time when the American dinner table was hurtling towards homogeny, Potter espoused the importance of farmers' markets and ethnic food (when pizza was considered ethnic), derided preservatives and culinary shortcuts, and lustily celebrated her epicurean adventures. Part scholar, part crusader, and always throwing parties, Potter could not but be a source of Gilbert's own love of food, and her warm, infectious prose.