The Moriah Pie Cookbook

“With few exceptions we who live in Western culture are beset by dualisms on every front: body/soul, materialism/idealism, rich/poor, haves/have-nots, conservative/liberal, capitalism/socialism, etc. etc. These various dualisms disrupt our public conversations, and impinge in powerful ways on our self-understanding. And then we get a wake-up call in the form of this gentle, unwavering book. In its patient, grounded way this book bears powerful witness to a different way to be in the world, a way of reconciling, forgiving, grateful living. It is a way of generous, grateful humility that is easily situated in the day-to-day reality of our common earthly life. It becomes clear through this witness that we are indeed meant “to be eucharistic beings holding the world back to God in gratitude for all that is life.” I found reading this book and pondering its claims to be itself a sacramental act, a sacrament of grace made concrete in the photos of real people and the recipes for real food. We can watch the process whereby “scarcity is turned to abundance!” It is my hope that many readers will be on the receiving end of this gracious offer.”


—Walter Brueggemann, Columbia Seminary





“If I could wave a magic wand over swaths of the North American Church, I would have it embrace creaturely dependence. This book might be my wand. It looks for God in rubble, crabapple, and coyote scat. It renders the matter-spirit divide unintelligible with a God who embraces dependence on things like wheelbarrows, and submission to things like seasons or sleeping. This cookbook alights like liturgy—each word matters theologically and thus, ecologically. Beyond words Moriah Pie sneaks in through the senses with drawings that make me want to get inside them, and photos that like stain glass filter a scene that helps me know hope in my body. Moriah Pie’s recipes, like bread and wine can put the story of an earthen God in your mouth, to taste a world bursting with love made into pie.”


—Aminah Al-Attas Bradford, Department of Ecology, North Carolina State University





“All cookbooks are ‘religious,’ but they usually hide that fact. Re-lig-ion is related to lig-ament, what holds things together. So we all have religion, like we all have ligaments, though we usually don’t think about them. The Moriah Pie Cookbook is the story—made up of many stories—of the way food—growing it, cooking it, eating it, sharing it—holds us together. It shows us the links—between trees, bees, soil, weather, meals, neighbors, and marriage—through the stories of one unlikely restaurant in one small community in Norwood, Ohio. The stories range from funny to sad. But by the end of the book (as Erin’s great picture on the cover shows) we know that what holds us together, in food, faith and friendship, is costly Love—which ‘bids us welcome.’”


—Loren and Mary Ruth Wilkinson, Regent College, Vancouver, BC