Lucy Horton has done more than collect exotic recipes... she has assembled the crucial artifacts of a movement within The Movement - RAYMOND A. SOKOLOV

A fascinating culinary odyssey through the kitchens of America's flourishing country communes, here is an original and vastly entertaining cook-book-plus "an organic cookbook with lapses" that combines more than 150 superb and distinctly different recipes with a wealth of communal lore encompassing cameo sketches of hip cooks from Vermont to California and informal, informative raps on every-thing from growing and preserving your own vegetables to hosting a communal feast.
Gathered from forty-three communes in twelve states and Canada and exotically named for their exuberant young inventors or the spirit in which they were created (Total Loss Spinach Blintzes, T.A.'s Potato Volcano, Omelet Outrageous), the recipes range from variations on familiar American staples like pizza and cheeseburgers and traditional ethnic concoctions to wholly unique creations that reflect the astonishing variety of tastes and dietary theories that Lucy Horton discovered on her year-long quest through the often primitive but always prodigiously productive kitchens of country communes.
She discovered, too, that group cooking (not group sex) is the central fact and preoccupation of communal life. A vital and formative part of Consciousness III is Food Consciousness, and it is from the awakening palates and enthusiastic experiments with organic foods-wholesome natural grains, a cornucopia of lovingly tended fruits and vegetables, exotic herbs and aromatic spices of young people cooking on wood-burning stoves that Lucy has gleaned a treasury of recipes as innovative as they are delicious.

Try: Bear Cheese Soup (Crow Farm, Oregon), Suzy's Soybean Casserole (Pride Family, California), Millet Loaf (Penitentes, New Mexico), Chile con Carne (The Furry Freak Brothers of New Mexico), Torgerson'a Mexican-Italian Blintzes (Crow Farm, Oregon), Goat Stew (Marjory of Sunflower Farm in Ontario), Ron's Motherfucker Beans (Robert Houriet, author of Getting Back Together), Cucumbers with Mint (Lines, Dulusum Farm in Oregon), Robert Welch's Avocado Salad (Morningstar Ranch, California), Brush Brook Crunchy Granola (Brush Brook Family, Oregon), Carrot Cake (Mona, The Motherlode, Oregon), Honey Ice Cream (Steve Diamond's commune, Massachusetts), etc.

About the illustrator: Judith St. Soleil, member of a commune in Oregon whom Lucy met on her travels, produced the lyrical line drawings for the book at a drawing table tucked away in the canning storage room, where I sat and sweated all summer, visiting with people when they came in to put stuff in the freezer. She is also a contributor to Lucy's collection.

About the author: She might have been the heroine to one of those youth movies, a girl with long blonde hair, granny glasses and a spare pair of jeans thumbing her way from commune to commune in search of some obscure countercultural goal, said Raymond A. Sokolov in a recent interview with her. But in fact, Lucy Horton spent most of a year on the road hunting for the recipes for Country Commune Cooking. A twenty-seven-year-old food person who likes to talk about food the way bikers like to talk about motorcycles or astrology freaks about rising signs, Lucy has worked as a waitress in Max's Kansas City, a famous New York restaurant, and as a cook for a rich "Park Avenue lady." New York City bred and Bryn Mawr educated with a major in classical archaeology, she now lives in Derby, Vermont, where she is a member of a newly formed community.

Horton acquired this recipe for Fish Almondine from the Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers of New Mexico: