Kitchen Table Stories 2022: Sharing Our Lives in Food

In celebration of our 25th year of supporting women by encouraging them to share their stories and validating their significance, Story Circle Network has created a new edition of their popular Kitchen Table Stories collection. This anthology of stories and recipes is an important way to show the unique part of women's lives that revolves around food and the time we spend making and enjoying it with family and friends.As Judy Alter, award-winning author of western American historical fiction, contemporary mysteries, and unique cookbooks, tells us in her foreword:"The recipes in this collection are intriguing - who knew that you could make communion bread at home, or that cold borscht should be accompanied by a bowl of hot mashed potatoes? But it is the stories that fascinate. A simple recipe for bread - flour, oil, salt, and water - becomes magic when wrapped in the story of the Church of the Brethren. So does sangria when it is an essential element of a healing circle. Many of the stories recall childhood memories, grandmothers who cooked treasured recipes from other lands, mothers who invented frugal dishes, and mothers who didn't cook at all. As Gretchen Staebler writes, 'We pass on what we know. From one generation to the other, we want to share the best of what we knew growing up.'"Here are 80 recipes by 45 authors of widely varied backgrounds and life experiences. Each of these writers is a member of Story Circle Network and, along with Judy Alter, offers you this opportunity to explore lives and tastes different than your own, or possibly very much the same as your own:"Here we invite you to sit at our kitchen table, reminisce with us, explore new recipes, and lose yourself in these stories of warm kitchens and happy people. Nothing bonds us together like breaking bread."