If you have been wondering which Nourishing Traditions books belong on your traditional foods bookshelf, I’m so glad you’re here, sweet friend! In my video, I walk through the original cookbook and several related books to help you decide where to begin and which titles might be useful for your particular interests.
And what do I recommend? It’s simple: Start with Nourishing Traditions. After that, I’ll show you how to choose the companion books that speak to your season of life and where you are on your traditional foods journey. You do not need to buy an entire bookshelf of books to begin cooking nourishing meals!
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Table of Contents
- A Quick Glance: The Nourishing Traditions Series
- Start With Nourishing Traditions
- Nourishing Broth
- Nourishing Fats
- Nourishing Diets
- Diet Recipes and Posts
- The Nourishing Traditions Book of Baby & Child Care
- The Nourishing Traditions Cookbook for Children
- The Fourfold Path to Healing
- Dr. Weston A. Price and His Work
- Learn More About the Nourishing Traditions Philosophy
- Choose the Book That Fits Your Life Today
- One Additional Book: Honoring Our Cycles
- More Book Posts
- Subscribe to the Free Mary’s Nest Newsletter
- Backwoods Home and Self-Reliance
- Mother Earth News
- Guideposts
- The Modern Pioneer Cookbook
- The Modern Pioneer Pantry
- Start Your Traditional Foods Journey
- Download Your Free 36-Page Pantry List
- Join the Traditional Foods Kitchen Academy
- Kitchen Academy Videos
- Shop for My Favorite Items
A Quick Glance: The Nourishing Traditions Series
- Start with the original Nourishing Traditions for a broad introduction to traditional foods and their preparation.
- Then choose a companion book based on your interests: broth making, traditional fats, food history, nourishing a growing family, cooking with children, or exploring the authors’ broader health philosophy.
- At the end of this post, I also share Honoring Our Cycles, a natural family planning workbook that I did not cover in the video.
Start With Nourishing Traditions
- Nourishing Traditions: The Cookbook that Challenges Politically Correct Nutrition and the Diet Dictocrats By Sally Fallon with Mary G. Enig, PhD
If you are choosing just one book, this is the one I recommend for your traditional foods bookshelf. Nourishing Traditions provides the foundation that helps put the more specialized books into context.
It combines recipes with discussions of the authors’ approach to food and nutrition. You’ll encounter bone broths, cultured dairy, fermented foods, sourdough, and traditional methods of preparing grains and other ingredients.
I first discovered this book around 1999, and it reaffirmed so much of what I value about real food and the traditional cooking techniques that my mother Gloria taught me. There is something reassuring about returning to the kitchen skills that helped home cooks feed their families for generations.
Who Is This Book For?
This is my starting recommendation for anyone interested in creating a traditional foods kitchen. Beginners can use it to become familiar with ingredients and techniques, while experienced home cooks can turn to it for recipes and further reading.
Take your time with it. Choose one recipe or one skill that interests you, and begin there. A pot of broth or a simple ferment is a wonderful first step!
Nourishing Broth
- Nourishing Broth: An Old-Fashioned Remedy for the Modern World By Sally Fallon Morell and Kaayla T. Daniel, PhD, CCN
If broth making is an area you would like to explore more deeply, Nourishing Broth is a natural companion to the original cookbook.
This book gives bone broth its own extended discussion, combining the authors’ views on its nutritional role with practical cooking techniques. It covers preparations ranging from chicken broth to consommé and shrimp-shell stock, along with recipes that put broth, stock, and bone broth to use in meals.
For the home cook, that practical focus is especially appealing. Once you have homemade broth, stock, or bone broth on hand, you have a flavorful starting point for so many dishes.
Who Is This Book For?
Consider this book if you enjoy making broth and the like and want to expand beyond your usual recipes, or if you would like more ideas for cooking with these nutritious liquids.
I would choose this book for its attention to detail and recipe suggestions.
The authors also make therapeutic claims. However, I would approach those as claims to discuss with a qualified healthcare professional rather than promises that broth, stock, or bone broth can treat an illness.
Disclaimer
Note: I am not a doctor or medical professional. This information is provided for informational purposes only and is not intended to treat or diagnose any type of illness. If you are not feeling well, please seek professional medical attention and medicine. And if you are thinking of supplementing your treatment with home remedies, be sure to talk to your medical professional about them. It’s important that you get the medicine and treatments you need to get back to good health.
Bone Broth Recipes and Posts
The Best Bones for Making Beef Bone Broth—Plus a Giveaway!
Learn which bones make rich, gelatinous beef bone broth, and enter to win $150 in US Wellness Meats products and two signed cookbooks!
Can You Make the Best Homemade Bone Broth?
Learn how to make rich, gelatinous, homemade bone broth, save money by reusing bones, and enjoy a flavorful Keto variation.
Frequently Asked Questions About Homemade Bone Broth
Get answers to common bone broth questions, including reusing bones, achieving a good gel, saving money, and choosing the best cooking method.
Nourishing Fats
- Nourishing Fats: Why We Need Animal Fats for Health and Happiness By Sally Fallon Morell
Nourishing Fats takes one part of the traditional foods philosophy and gives it a closer look: animal fats.
Sally Fallon Morell presents her case for including these fats in the diet and discusses how foods such as butter and egg yolks fit into her approach. This is a more focused book for readers who want to understand her reasoning beyond the recipes in Nourishing Traditions.
Who Is This Book For?
This book may interest you if you have questions about the role of traditional fats or want a fuller explanation of Sally’s perspective.
It is a book to read thoughtfully, one that may prompt you to reconsider your attitude toward animal fats if you have been a longtime opponent of using traditional saturated fats in your cooking.
Animal Fats Recipes and Posts
How to Make Lard – The Right Way!
With these essential tips, your lard will come out perfect every time!
How to Make Beef Tallow
Learn how to turn suet into nutritious tallow.
How to Make Schmaltz – Rendered Chicken Fat
Learn to render chicken fat and how to use it.
Nourishing Diets
- Nourishing Diets: What Our Paleo, Ancestral, and Traditional Ancestors Really Ate By Sally Fallon Morell
If you love learning about food history and how people ate in different parts of the world, Nourishing Diets may be the companion book that catches your attention.
Sally Fallon Morell explores ancestral and traditional diets across cultures and questions popular assumptions about what it means to eat like our ancestors. She also includes recipes to help readers bring some of these ideas into the modern kitchen.
What makes this subject so interesting is the variety. Traditional foodways grew out of local ingredients, climate, customs, and the resources available to each community.
Who Is This Book For?
I suggest taking a look at this book if you enjoy the history behind the food on your plate. It may also appeal to readers who want to explore the broader ideas behind traditional eating after becoming familiar with the original cookbook.
This is the title to consider when your question has moved from “How do I make this?” to “What can I learn from the way other traditional cultures prepared and enjoyed their food?”
Diet Recipes and Posts
How to Eat a Mediterranean Diet with a Keto Twist
Explore a Mediterranean-Keto twist with a full sample menu focused on healthy fats, quality proteins, and low-carb veggies.
Are Traditional Foods Better Than a Tummy Tuck?
You might be surprised by the answer in this recent magazine article.
What Are Traditional Foods Diets and How to Get Started
All traditional foods diets share principles we can apply to our home cooking.
The Nourishing Traditions Book of Baby & Child Care
- The Nourishing Traditions Book of Baby & Child Care By Sally Fallon Morell and Thomas S. Cowan
The Nourishing Traditions Book of Baby & Child Care book turns its attention to a particular season of life: preparing for and raising a family.
The authors apply their traditional nutrition philosophy to the period before conception, pregnancy, breastfeeding, and childhood growth. Its focus is broader than preparing family meals, extending into caring for mothers, babies, and children.
Who Is This Book For?
This book may interest prospective parents or parents who want to learn the importance of proper nutrition during the early years of family life.
Because it includes medical and child-care advice, I would read it alongside guidance from your choice of a qualified maternity and pediatric professional.
The Nourishing Traditions Cookbook for Children
- The Nourishing Traditions Cookbook for Children: Teaching Children to Cook the Nourishing Traditions Way By Suzanne Gross and Sally Fallon Morell
This book brings the conversation right back to the kitchen—with children joining in!
The Nourishing Traditions Cookbook for Children introduces traditional foods through illustrated, step-by-step cooking instruction. Recipes include breakfasts, lunches, snacks, baked goods, and desserts, giving families opportunities to practice a variety of kitchen skills together.
Unlike the baby and child-care book, this one focuses on teaching children to prepare food.
Who Is This Book For?
I recommend this book to parents, grandparents, and others who want to cook with children. It provides wonderful inspiration for hands-on learning at home.
Cooking together gives us such lovely opportunities to teach measuring, following directions, and caring for others. With an adult providing supervision and choosing suitable tasks, even a simple recipe can become a happy shared experience.
Free Cookbook Curriculums for Students K-12
For more curriculums to make it fun to teach cooking skills to students in grades K-12, be sure to download the free The Modern Pioneer Cookbook Curriculum and The Modern Pioneer Celebrates America Curriculum. Together with The Nourishing Traditions Cookbook for Children, you’ll have a comprehensive set of curriculums to teach children how to make and enjoy traditional foods for lifetime.
The Modern Pioneer Cookbook Curriculum
The Modern Pioneer Cookbook Curriculum is a free, comprehensive educational companion to The Modern Pioneer Cookbook with lesson plans for students in grades K-12. Each lesson features a different recipe from the cookbook, discussion questions, engaging activities, and cross-curricular connections to math, science, history, and more.
Children and adults of all ages will enjoy digging deeper into the topics of The Modern Pioneer Cookbook, becoming experts in traditional cooking methods and their health benefits.
The Modern Pioneer Celebrates America Curriculum
The Modern Pioneer Celebrates America Curriculum provides comprehensive lesson plans to teach traditional food recipes and celebrate America’s 250th anniversary with students in grades K–12. This free curriculum brings together American history, civics, geography, literature, kitchen math, and hands-on cooking activities.
Through traditional recipes and meaningful lessons, students will step back in time and learn how home cooks helped nourish families through the founding of our nation, westward expansion, wartime sacrifice, the Great Depression, and more.
Education and Homeschool Posts and Downloads
Free K–12 American History Curriculum With Traditional Recipes
Celebrate America’s 250th with free K–12 American History lessons, recipes, and hands-on activities through traditional American foods.
Teaching Traditional Foods Cooking at The University of Austin (UATX)
I loved sharing traditional recipes with UATX students as we cooked, learned, and celebrated wholesome food together.
Shaking up Homemade Butter at a Homeschool Shindig in Central Texas
Homeschool students enjoyed making homemade butter at the Lake Travis Community Library.
The Fourfold Path to Healing
- The Fourfold Path to Healing: Working with the Laws of Nutrition, Therapeutics, Movement and Meditation in the Art of Medicine By Thomas S. Cowan with Sally Fallon and Jaimen McMillan
The Fourfold Path to Healing moves beyond cooking into a broader discussion of the authors’ approach to health. Its four areas of focus are nutrition, therapeutics, movement, and meditation.
It draws on traditional nutrition as well as alternative/integrative healing approaches, which gives it a different character from the cookbooks discussed above.
Who Is This Book For?
This may interest readers who want to explore the wider philosophy associated with these books and who enjoy considering different approaches to wellbeing.
I would choose it as further reading on the authors’ ideas, with its treatment recommendations evaluated separately with a qualified health care provider.
If your main goal is learning to cook traditional foods, begin with Nourishing Traditions and add this book if its broader subject interests you.
Dr. Weston A. Price and His Work
As I mention in today’s video, Dr. Weston A. Price (1870–1948) was a Canadian-born dentist who practiced in Cleveland, Ohio, and became deeply interested in the relationship between food and dental health. During the 1930s, he traveled with his wife, Florence, to study communities around the world, from villages in the Swiss Alps to Indigenous communities in North America and the South Pacific. He examined teeth, photographed facial and jaw development, and documented local foods. A central question guided his work: How did the dental health of people eating their traditional foods compare with that of people in the same communities who had begun eating more commercially refined foods?
Price reported substantially less tooth decay among many of the groups maintaining their traditional diets. Although their foods varied greatly according to climate and geography, he emphasized their supplies of minerals and vitamins. He believed that replacing these foods with products such as white flour and refined sugar contributed to declining dental health and problems with physical development. These were his observations and interpretations, rather than findings from controlled clinical trials.
About Nutrition and Physical Degeneration
First published in 1939, Nutrition and Physical Degeneration brings together Price’s travels, photographs, dietary comparisons, and conclusions. It begins with his interest in tooth decay and expands into his theories about the relationship between nutrition, facial development, and health across generations. Rather than describing one universal traditional diet, the book documents the very different ways communities nourished themselves with the foods available to them.
For those of us interested in a traditional foods kitchen, the book offers a historical exploration of ancestral foodways and the value Price placed on nourishing foods.
Learn more:
Learn More About the Nourishing Traditions Philosophy
If you would like more background before choosing your next book, I invite you to visit my earlier blog post and accompanying video, What Is Nourishing Traditions?
There, I share how I discovered the original cookbook and discuss its place in my traditional foods journey. It is a helpful companion to this book overview, especially if you are new to this way of cooking.
Choose the Book That Fits Your Life Today
My recommendation is to begin with the original Nourishing Traditions, then let your interests guide your next choice.
Perhaps you want to become more confident making broth. Maybe food history fascinates you, or you would love to invite a child or grandchild into the kitchen. Each of those interests points toward a different companion book.
There is no need to learn everything at once. Build your bookshelf as you build your skills, one useful addition at a time. 🤗
One Additional Book: Honoring Our Cycles
Honoring Our Cycles: A Natural Family Planning Workbook By Katie Singer
Although I did not discuss this book in my video, I wanted to include it here for readers interested in this particular subject.
Honoring Our Cycles explains the menstrual cycle and introduces charting the body’s fertility signs. It discusses using that information in natural family planning, including when to seek or avoid pregnancy, and includes the author’s dietary advice.
Who Is This Book For?
This workbook may interest women and couples who want to learn more about fertility awareness and natural family planning. It is a specialized addition to this reading list, rather than a general traditional foods cookbook.
If you plan to use this book for fertility awareness and family planning, consider pairing your reading with a class or private instruction from a qualified teacher of natural family planning.
More Book Posts
Cozy Fall Evenings: Homemade Soups, Favorite Books, and Classic Movies
Make French pumpkin soup and Italian chickpea and pork rib soup, then unwind with favorite books, classic movies, and cozy TV shows.
Monasteries, Cookbooks, and the Beauty of Small Things
Reflect on monasteries, cookbooks, and the quiet wisdom of tending to life’s small things with love.
A Cheerful Gathering of Traditional Skills at the San Antonio Book Festival
In the last stop of The Modern Pioneer Pantry book, we celebrated our shared love of nourishing, homemade foods
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For an extensive list of the traditional foods you can make and purchase to stock your pantry, be sure to download my free 36-page Traditional Foods Pantry List. This comprehensive eBook is full of links to recipe videos, helpful articles, and more!
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Kitchen Academy Videos
A Cozy Fall Kitchen: Cooking, Books, and Cherished Memories
Join me for a cozy fall visit filled with oven cooking, favorite books, and memories of my mother’s winter pantry preparations.
How to Mix Whole Grains for a Warm and Nourishing Porridge
Learn to mix oat groats, barley, and other whole grains for a warm, nourishing porridge with easy make-ahead tips and tasty toppings.
How Much of Each Natural Remedy Should You Make?
Use your family’s needs, past experience, and seasonal habits to decide how much to prepare for your Healing Pantry.
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Recommended Reading
- The Modern Pioneer Cookbook
- The Modern Pioneer Pantry
- Nourishing Traditions (Part of today’s Amazon’s 50% sale on 1 when you buy 2.)
- Nourishing Broth: An Old-Fashioned Remedy for the Modern World
- Nourishing Diets: How Paleo, Ancestral and Traditional Peoples Really Ate
- Nourishing Fats: Why We Need Animal Fats for Health and Happiness
- The Nourishing Traditions Book of Baby & Child Care (Part of today’s Amazon’s 50% sale on 1 when you buy 2.)
- The Nourishing Traditions Cookbook for Children
- The Fourfold Path to Healing
- Honoring Our Cycles: A Natural Family Planning Workbook (Part of today’s Amazon’s 50% sale on 1 when you buy 2.)
- Nutrition and Physical Degeneration
Disclaimer:I am not a medical doctor, a medical professional, a dietician, or a nutritionist. All content found on the MarysNest.com website, including text, images, videos, eBooks or eGuides, social media, or other formats, were created solely for informational purposes only. The content is not intended to be a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. Always seek the advice of your physician or other qualified healthcare provider with any questions you may have regarding a medical condition or proper nutritional advice. Never disregard professional medical advice or delay in seeking it because of something you have watched in a video or read on this website. Use caution when following the recipe in this video. The creator and publisher of this video and website will not be held responsible for any adverse effects that may arise from the use of this recipe and method or any other recipe and method on this website or corresponding video channel.
