A Place at the Table: Food, Faith and Friendship at the Immaculate Heart Center for Spiritual Renewal

A unique gift about a unique place with 89 healthy and delicious recipes. A Place at the Table: Food, Faith and Friendship at the Immaculate Heart Center for Spiritual Renewal features the food and experience of an amazing retreat near Santa Barbara, California. The book makes a wonderful and unique gift, ensures a delightful read, provides a treasure source of delicious and healthy eating, and will take its place among the most cherished volumes in your library. Included in the book are 23 meal plans and 89 recipes from the retreat s renown chef, Teresa Fanucchi, a dramatic illustrated account of the Immaculate Heart Community history, personal retreatant experiences, prints and quotes of graphic artist Sister Corita Kent, and loads of beautiful color photographs of the food and the grounds at the retreat center.

All of the guests at the Immaculate Heart Center for Spiritual Renewal in Montecito come away well-fed, thanks to the highly lauded meals of Teresa Fanucchi.

Her recipes, and the dramatic history of the group that employs her, the Immaculate Heart Community, inspired A Place at the Table. This spiral-bound gem offers seasonal meal plans and some 90 recipes.

The book's introduction, by Glen Vecchione, tells the gripping story of the turmoil the Immaculate Heart sisters in Los Angeles experienced in the 1960s, which received world-wide media attention.

The group runs the Center for Spiritual Renewal on the grounds of the 26-acre La Casa de Maria retreat center in Montecito. Housed in a stone estate, it served as a novitiate residence until the split with the church.

The building has a quiet elegance, with hand-chiseled walls, carved teak ceilings, a beautiful library and a beckoning dining room. On the walls (and in the cookbook) are works by late artist Corita Kent. An Immaculate Heart nun and later a community member, Kent created iconic images, including the famous 1985 love stamp.

Fanucchi cooks and bakes in the large, homey kitchen, which looks like one your grandmother might have commanded.

"Here we have this wonderful setting," Vecchione says. "We have this delightful, delicious food, and we have these women who have carved out a little piece of the world and have shown incredible courage and fortitude in their quest.

"Since her days as a holistic culinary student at Bauman College in Northern California, Fanucchi has been interested in what she calls the spirituality of cooking. She is mindful of the labor and energy involved in growing ingredients before they reach her hands.

The daughter of a pistachio farmer, Fanucchi, grew up in Bakersfield, and meals often came from the family gardens. You could say she has returned to her roots, with produce growing just steps away from her current work kitchen.

"When it's that close and that fresh, there's such a beauty in the simplicity of the food,"she says.

A case in point is her watermelon salad, where three ingredients olive oil, lime juice and fresh mint enliven the fruit in a surprising way.

Some recipes echo her childhood meals, such as ratatouille over soft polenta. The eggplant and zucchini are roasted before being added to sautéed onions, bell peppers and fresh tomatoes. And here's a treat Fanucchi learned at her mother's side chill leftover polenta, then slice it and fry it in olive oil for breakfast.

In addition to her recipes, the book features cookie recipes by longtime baker Ann Chamberlin, who retired from the center this year. Fanucchi is continuing the tradition of welcoming guests with homemade cookies.

"The book really did become a labor of love for us,"Vecchione says.

"The more we became involved in the history of the center and how brave these women were, the more it became something that drove the project forward, as well as just our love for the food."- Los Angeles Times July 15, 2010 --Los Angeles Times