Serving Fire: Food for Thought, Body, and Soul

by Anne Scott

"When we lived closer to fire, when our lives depended upon the careful tending of the hearth, we had before us a symbol of the need for nourishment that lay deep in our souls."

So begins Serving Fire, and enchanting -- and perhaps enchanted -- offering of hearth lore and earth culture by Anne Scott. Food, family, mythology, history, and nature come together in a glowing hymn to hearth and home, sung with the quietly powerful voice of her own experiences. This is a feast for the eye as well as the heart.

Genres: Nonfiction, Spirituality

160 pages, Paperback

First published October 1, 1994

About the author

For Sir Walter Scott's, daughter, see Anne Scott

Anne Scott lectures in literature and has also been a BBC Scotland broadcaster and occasional writer for The Scotsman and The Herald in the 1990s. She studied at Edinburgh and married there, and her son, Mike, is a successful song-writer and musician.

When she was nine a bookseller folded a bookmark with a red cord into her newly-purchased book and that was the beginning of her love affair with books and bookshops. Working visits to Ann Arbour and Kansas in the 1980s, and later to New York City, Dublin and Galway, helped define her professional work as an extended study of Irish and American writing. There were so many writers in Ireland and America, so many bookshops in the world, together they turned her into a searcher.

She lives in the West of Scotland.

Reviews

[Chris Brimmer]

Started as a book about Buddhist practice and then became disjointedly pantheistic. I would have enjoyed a treatise on mindful kitchen practice and its possible that my disappointment effected my outlook.

[Ellen]

An excellent book on the philosophy of Zen and how to apply it to daily life.

[Karen]

I was excited when I finally managed to track down this book and purchase a copy. A descriptor I’d read promised it was about the Greek goddess Hestia and other fire goddesses. And yes, it’s true that they are in there, but just for a few pages. The author is a nutritional counsellor and the book is mostly about food as soul nourishment from Buddhist, Chinese and Native American perspectives. There’s a lot about nourishing children. All well done and the woodcuts introducing each section are gorgeous. Unfortunately, it’s just not the book I thought it was going to be.

[Elizabeth]

This is inspirational. I loved it.

[tonia peckover]

A revisit to this lovely little book about women, the hearth, our spiritual and emotional relationships to food and making. Inspiring.