Iona Abbey Kitchen, run by two cooks and powered by volunteers, provides nourishing food for the Iona Community’s weekly guests. It aims to serve tasty, colourful, healthy, mainly vegetarian meals, many of which are reflected in this cookbook where Anja Jardine, Abbey Cook for over 17 years, has collected people’s favourites.

Easy to cook at home, these recipes won’t just fill a hole in your stomach, but will also nourish your soul.

Includes (often with vegan, gluten-free and dairy-free alternatives) soups, salads, numerous vegetarian main courses, fish and seafood, meat, sandwich spreads, bread, sweet treats, drinks and – as many Abbey guests will affirm – the best porridge ever.

‘What I can do here is draw attention to the way Anja writes about food, with a mixture of enjoyment and ethical discernment. She draws on her own childhood on the other side of the Iron Curtain, to remind us that food should never be taken for granted. In Britain now, an increasing number of people are living in poverty – with poor housing, low income, unaffordable fuel bills and more and more families going hungry. The cheapest food on offer in the supermarkets is often the least nutritious. But who can blame those who buy it? So, living with austerity that’s the result of government policies, one reaction is rage at unfairness – but another (which you will find here) is a celebration of simple nutritious food which is affordable.’
Jan Sutch Pickard from the introduction