The Swiss Guy Does It

Name your favorite cookbook, Ilva from Lucullian Delights said, and she went antiquarian. So instead of Claudia Roden or Harry's Bar or some chef, here's R.Müller, Gesund und leistungsfähig durch richtige Ernährung - Part I & II. Bern, Verlag "Sonnseitig leben", 1975. In the 1970s in Bern they didn't do catchy titles in alternative publishing houses yet.

After lecturing ominously about our need of vitamins and minerals and the suspicious lack thereof in refined foods, R.Müller serves complete meals in his opus Healthy and fit for activity through eating the right food, that take as a standard the foods and food preparation of a black-clad farmer family on a Swiss Alp, who live off their own vegetable and fruit garden. Meaning: benign cooking methods, unrefined foods, simplicity, wholesomeness. George Ohsawa would summarize as follows: "vivere parvo. And don't forget to chew!"

It's feasible, but it also requires us to be completely re-educated. It may require us to yield our own produce, if only on a patio. It's the kind of book that teaches one to think long and hard before filling the supermarket cart with the fine and shiny products of the food industry, to read labels, to become choosy over time, and to rethink cooking methods. And in these fast times that's quite a tour de force.