Eat Well Eat Local
If you’re hungry for hope,
cooking is a great place to start.
Beth Dooley is a James Beard Award-winning food writer who has authored and co-authored over a dozen books celebrating the bounty of America’s Northern Heartland. She writes for the Minneapolis Star-Tribune, appears regularly on local TV and radio, and helps people connect more deeply with food through Bare Bones Cooking with her middle son Kip.
Read more about my story in MSP Magazine. Photo by Caitlin Abrams.
Cooking Class
All-levels class with award-winning cookbook author Beth Dooley. Turn farmer’s market baskets into delicious meals that bring joy to your home and support local farmers.
Beth writes for the Taste section of the Minneapolis-St. Paul Star Tribune, and appears regularly on KARE 11 (NBC) television and MPR Appetites with Tom Crann. She co-authored The Sioux Chef's Indigenous Kitchen with Sean Sherman, winner of the James Beard Award for Best American Cookbook. Other titles include: Savory Sweet: Preserves from a Northern Kitchen, In Winter's Kitchen: Growing Roots and Breaking Bread in the Northern Heartland, Minnesota's Bounty: The Farmers Market Cookbook, The Northern Heartland Kitchen and coauthored Savoring the Seasons of the Northern Heartland with Lucia Watson, among other books.
In addition to writing about local food in the Northern Heartland, Beth guides local food trips for Wilderness Inquiry via Taste of the Apostles.
Beth currently serves as an endowed chair for the Minnesota Institute for Sustainable Agriculture at the University of Minnesota. Her most recent book, The Perennial Kitchen Cookbook, A Field Guide to Creating a Sustainable Kitchen, was published by University of Minnesota Press in 2021.
Beth Dooley and Sean Sherman celebrated their James Beard Award for their book “The Sioux Chef’s Indigenous Kitchen.” (University of Minnesota Press).
Now in stores:
THE PERENNIAL KITCHEN COOKBOOK
Simple recipes for a healthy future
In The Perennial Kitchen, Beth provides the context of food’s origins, along with delicious recipes, nutrition information, and tips for smart sourcing. More than a farm-to-table cookbook, this book expands the definition of “local food” to embrace regenerative agriculture, the method of growing small and large crops with ecological services.
Beth's natural ability for warm and descriptive food prose is such a joy to read and experience, and it shines in The Perennial Kitchen.
- Sean Sherman, The Sioux Chef
Photo by Mette Nielsen. University of Minnesota Press, 2021.
“Cooking is an act of showing up in the world, of caring for ourselves and for others. It’s a personal and intimate means of grappling with the climate crisis, our environment, and of supporting our rural communities, while nourishing our families. Cooking provides a focus and an outlet; it is relaxing and regenerative, and by creating meals with ingredients, grown with such care we too, become agents of change. ”
Shot and produced by Blue Earth Pictures
Some people follow the hottest chefs & restaurants.
Me? I love to cook.
As a kid, I’d trail my grandmother to the New Jersey farms stands gathering sun-split tomatoes and toothsome peaches whose juices dripped down my arm.
In high-school, I baked bread to sell at the gourmet shop in town and in grad school, I picked apples in a nearby orchard and baked pies for beer money. I'd devote Saturdays to whipping up Julia Child’s recipes making feasts for friends. When my husband and I moved to Minneapolis, the farmers market tomatoes took me right back to my grandmothers kitchen. And I began to understand how local organic food and best practices affect our health, our water, our land, the way animals are treated and the importance of acknowledging how tough farming is.
By getting to know the people who produce my food, and by sharing it with friends and family, I’ve come to know and love this place and call it home. And in raising three active sons, I quickly realized that the most delicious meals are crafted from the freshest, most seasonal ingredients, with very little effort from me. I invite you to take a look around my site or reach out personally!