Our cooking club met this past Sunday, and as usual, a great time and great dishes were had by all. Each month, the host of that month's gathering chooses a theme. My sister-in-law hosted this month's club, and she chose the following theme:

The theme for next cooking club will be bringing forth recipes that in one way or another came about to overcome hardship. Whether the hardship was due to war, poverty, dietary restrictions, I'd like to know and be inspired by what you guys have come across.

I am not sure if this is totally clear, so I will rely on Tamar Adler's intro to her book

An Everlasting Meal

, lent to me by Liz to make a better point. In

An Everlasting Meal,

Adler pays homage to one of my favorite books,

How to Cook A Wolf

by M.F.K. Fisher.

"[How to Cook A Wolf] is a book about cooking defiantly, amid the mess of war and the pains of bare pantries... The essays it contains make it seem practical to consider one's appetite. It advocated cooking with gusto not only for vanquishing hardship with pleasure but for ' weeding out what you yourself like best to do, so that you can live most agreeably in a world full of an increasing number of disagreeable surprises.'"

She also shared one of her favorite old cooking shows that she grew up watching in Philly:

I love the show. I can't get enough of watching old cooking shows on youtube. I'm amazed by the differences between now and then; different productions values, different styles of plating, different types of ingredients, and different cooking techniques.

I was a big fan of the theme. Some of the greatest dishes of all time were born out of hardship. Aside from the obvious types of economic hardships, it also got me thinking about what other types of hardships might bring about interesting dishes.

Here's a recap of what the ladies made this month: