Reviv­ing the inspir­ing mes­sage of M. F. K. Fisher’s How to Cook a Wolf— writ­ten in 1942 dur­ing wartime short­ages—An Ever­last­ing Meal shows that cook­ing is the path to bet­ter eat­ing. Through the insight­ful essays in An Ever­last­ing Meal, Tamar Adler issues a ral­ly­ing cry to home cooks.

In this med­i­ta­tion on cook­ing and eat­ing, Tamar weaves phi­los­o­phy and instruc­tion into approach­able lessons on feed­ing our­selves well. With chap­ters on boil­ing water, cook­ing eggs and beans, and sum­mon­ing respectable meals from emp­ty cup­boards, Tamar demon­strates how to make the most of every­thing you buy and illus­trates what the world’s great chefs know: that the best meals rely upon the ends of the meals that came before them.

She explains how to smarten up sim­ple food and gives advice for fix­ing dish­es gone awry. She rec­om­mends turn­ing to neglect­ed onions, cel­ery, and pota­toes for inex­pen­sive meals that taste full of fresh veg­eta­bles, and cook­ing meat and fish resource­ful­ly.

By wrest­ing cook­ing from doc­trine and dol­drums, Tamar encour­ages read­ers to begin from wher­ev­er they are, with what­ev­er they have. An Ever­last­ing Meal is ele­gant tes­ti­mo­ny to the val­ue of cook­ing and an empow­er­ing, indis­pens­able tool for eaters today.