KITCHENER, Ont.—How do you update the holy grail of thrifty and thoughtful cooking? Doris Janzen Longacre’s More-with-Less cookbook, compiled from hundreds of recipes submitted by Mennonite cooks around the world, has almost a million copies in print. But it’s four decades old.

The beginnings for the original cookbook were humble. Two families gathered around a picnic table and discussed global hunger and the world food crisis of 1974.

MCC had asked constituents to examine their food habits and challenged people to “eat and spend 10 percent less—both as an act of voluntary simplicity in solidarity with people who were poor, and as a practical move toward actually consuming less of the world’s limited resource” writes Longacre in the book’s original preface.

Rachel Marie Stone, who updated the book, writes of Longacre’s death from cancer at age 39, just three years after More-with-Less was first published. “She could not have known that eating locally and seasonally would become a mark of hipness, and that many people would begin to spend more time watching cooking shows than actually cooking,” reflects Stone. The book champions “simple food, well prepared from whole, fresh ingredients, eaten with gratitude,” she writes.

Filled with colourful pictures of people and food from around the world, as well as recipe photos, the volume still includes much of Longacre’s writings, including chapters on having less with more, making changes as an act of faith, tips on building a simpler diet, and eating with joy.

More-with-Less ($22.99 USD) and the entire World Community Cookbook series is commissioned by MCC. All royalties benefit MCC.