Two Cookbooks by Seacoast Authors

Good Food Simply Prepared, by Joan Styrna
Refined to Real Food, by Allison Anneser

The best advice I ever heard about nutrition was from a panelist on late night cable show. It all boils down to one thing, she said – eat food. In other words, if it doesn’t look and taste 100% real, don’t put it in your mouth. If we all did that, the panelist said, we would all grow healthy.

Of course, the world as we know it would come to an end. That’s because almost nothing we eat today is real. It it hasn’t been reconstituted, frozen, powdered or fiddled with in some secret way, it probably isn’t on the shelf. So we can only do our best to get to make sure that we eat as much food as we can find, and as little nonfood as possible. These two recent books by Seacoast, New Hampshire authors will help you get closer to simple good meals for you and your family.

Good Food Simply Prepared
A Collection of Recipes from 3 Generations of the Styrna Family
By Joan Styrna
Peter E. Randall Publisher
240 pages, paperback
$19.95
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From the Publisher
The simple and entertaining cookbook contains over 100 recipes passed down from Styrna’s Polish-Lithuanian grandparents and parents. These delightful recipes are now a part of Styrna’s own unique culinary repertoire. Styrna, who developed a culinary arts program at the Timberlane Regional School District in Plaistow, NH, resides in coastal New Hampshire, but her culinary roots go back to Old World ways and flavors, as well as to summers spent in coastal Maine.

Each recipe in this collection from three generations of one family has a story to tell about the home and culinary values and traditions that influence every modern cook. Each chapter contains not just easy and tempting recipes, but an entertaining history of how the dishes came to this country and how they were passed, and in some ways changed, from grandparent to parent to the author herself. This charming book is the perfect example of a culinary movement that is sweeping the nation—simple food made with fresh from the farm ingredients with a nod to our roots. Many of the easy-to-create recipes have been supplemented with a lively anecdote or story that will bring the reader into another time, place and flavor that shows how culinary traditions are made and kept.

About the Author
Joan Styrna, B.S., Keene State College, New Hampshire, studied at Madeleine Kamman's Modern Gourmet Boston, the San Francisco Culinary Academy, and the Culinary Institute of America.

Joan has been both a chef and a teacher. Through the Timberlane Regional School District in Plaistow, NH, Joan developed a culinary arts program, and wrote and taught an extensive curriculum for many years. She resides in coastal New Hampshire.

Refined to Real Food
By Akkison Anneser with Sara Thyr, ND
Moving your Family Toward Healthier, Wholesome Eating
196 pp., paperback
$15.95
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From the Publisher:
We all find ourselves frequently giving into the convenience of processed foods, in spite of the negative health effects. Many families today have become disconnected from real food and the nourishment it provides, but the prospect of shifting to whole foods is overwhelming, especially when children are involved.

Refined to Real Food tells us how to define, find, fix, and feed healthy foods to our families, using step-by-step measures that gradually shift these healthy foods into our daily diets. Also included are chapters on feeding healthy food to children, recipes, and an extensive resource section.

Refined to Real Foodis written especially for families committed to moving towards healthier foods and healthier lives.

About the Author
Allison Anneser is a certified elementary and special education teacher with 13 years of classroom experience. She received her BA in Psychology from Marist College in Poughkeepsie, NY and her MS in Reading from Central Connecticut State University. Her thesis, "The Place of Children’s Literature in the Classroom," rekindled a lifelong passion for children’s stories and she has been writing ever since. Ms. Anneser went on to complete a course of study at the Institute of Children’s Literature and became an active member of the National Association of Women Writers, Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators, and a founding member of the NACA (Nashua Area Children’s Authors).

Personal health issues prompted Ms. Anneser’s recent research and subsequent writing on nutrition. Refined to Real Food: Moving Your Family toward Healthier, Wholesome Eating, written with nutritional consultant Sara Thyr, ND, explores how to define, find, fix, and feed healthy food to your family. She incorporated information and successful strategies from her own life and those of health experts and like-minded colleagues into her book for people who want to shift to healthier foods and healthier lives. Ms. Anneser lives in southern New Hampshire with her husband, two children, and two rescued greyhounds.