tom hudgens

The Commonsense Kitchen: 500 Recipes + Lessons for a Hand-Crafted Life
by Tom Hudgens
CHRONICLE BOOKS, 2010

$35.00 - hardcover - 6 7/8" x 9 1/2" - 608 pages

Equally at home on the shelf of an urbanite or a rural housewife, The Commonsense Kitchen features amazing food as well as lessons in life skills, from the proper way to wash dishes to how to make homemade soap. The book's do-it-all spirit originates at Deep Springs, where the author lived as a student, chef, and teacher. Deep Springs is an organic farm, top-notch school, and working cattle ranch in the high desert of the Sierra Nevada, where students learn both liberal arts and self-reliance.

Tom Hudgens attended and cooked at Deep Springs Ranch, Chez Panisse, and Liberty Cafe in San Francisco. He teaches at College of Marin and lives in the Bay Area.

From the introduction:

"Not simply a catalog of the meals I served to the Deep Springs community of fifty people during my tenure as the chef there, this book was originally conceived to inspire the students' ongoing discovery of the vital craft of cooking as they embarked upon their adult lives.

If you are just beginning to cook for yourself and your family, I hope this book will spark your culinary imagination while introducing you, recipe by recipe, to many essential kitchen practices. If you are a seasoned cook, I hope it will inspire you to see a familiar ingredient, technique, or dish in a new light.

The Commonsense Kitchen is an eclectic, working repertoire of dishes and democratic culinary philosophies."