Carol Lee Flinders is an author and former

vegetarian Vegetarianism is the practice of abstaining from the Eating, consumption of meat (red meat, poultry, seafood, insects as food, insects, and the flesh of any other animal). It may also include abstaining from eating all by-products of animal slau ...

food writer Food writing is a literary genre that focuses on the cultural and historical significance of food. It encompasses various forms, including recipes, journalism, memoirs, and travelogues, and can be found in both fiction and non-fiction works. Food ...

/syndicated columnist. She is best known as one of the three authors of the vegetarian cookbook '' Laurel's Kitchen'' along with Laurel Robertson and Bronwen Godfrey. She also wrote the syndicated news column "Laurel's Kitchen" based on the cookbook.

Early life and education

Flinders was born to Gilbert H. and Jeanne Lee Ramage, and grew up on a farm in Oregon's

Willamette Valley The Willamette Valley ( ) is a valley in Oregon, in the Pacific Northwest region of the United States. The Willamette River flows the entire length of the valley and is surrounded by mountains on three sides: the Cascade Range to the east, the ...

. In 1958 her family moved to

Spokane Spokane ( ) is the most populous city in eastern Washington and the county seat of Spokane County, Washington, United States. It lies along the Spokane River, adjacent to the Selkirk Mountains, and west of the Rocky Mountain foothills, south ...

. She graduated from North Central High School (Spokane, Washington) in 1961, later receiving a bachelor's degree from

Stanford University Leland Stanford Junior University, commonly referred to as Stanford University, is a Private university, private research university in Stanford, California, United States. It was founded in 1885 by railroad magnate Leland Stanford (the eighth ...

, and a PhD in

comparative literature Comparative literature studies is an academic field dealing with the study of literature and cultural expression across language, linguistic, national, geographic, and discipline, disciplinary boundaries. Comparative literature "performs a role ...

from the

University of California at Berkeley The University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley, Berkeley, Cal, or California), is a public land-grant research university in Berkeley, California, United States. Founded in 1868 and named after the Anglo-Irish philosopher George Berkele ...

Career

Flinders became nationally known in 1976 through her coauthorship of '' Laurel's Kitchen'', a widely acclaimed guide to vegetarian cookery that has been described as a "renowned countercultural cookbook,"Elizabeth Hearne & Robert D. Johnston (2009)
Raising the Roof: Science, Feminism, and Home Economics
''Reviews in American History'', v37 n3, pp413-419. . and as "the

Fannie Farmer Fannie Merritt Farmer (23 March 1857 – 16 January 1915) was an American culinary expert whose '' Boston Cooking-School Cook Book'' became a widely used culinary text. Education Fannie Farmer was born on 23 March 1857 in Boston, Massachusetts, ...

of vegetarian cooking."Mary Drake McFeely (2001)
Can She Bake a Cherry Pie?: American Women and the Kitchen in the Twentieth Century
Amherst, MA:

University of Massachusetts Press The University of Massachusetts Press is a university press that is part of the University of Massachusetts Amherst. The press was founded in 1963, publishing scholarly books and non-fiction. The press imprint is overseen by an interdisciplinar ...

. ISBN 1-55849-333-6 (NB: ''Laurel's Kitchen'' is discussed in pp. 141-145) Later, cultural historians contended that "''Laurel's Kitchen'' was as much a lifestyle guide as it was a cookbook."''Megan J. Elias (2008)
Stir it up: home economics in American culture
'. Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press. ISBN 0-8122-4079-0. (NB: ''Laurel's Kitchen'' and it impact on American culture is analyzed and discussed in pages 152-160) Flinders also wrote a weekly syndicated column called “Laurel’s Kitchen” for a number of years. Beginning in the late 1980s, Flinders published a series of books on spirituality. The first published in 1989,'' The Making of a Teacher'', (coauthored with her husband Timothy Flinders) provided an oral history of the life and work of

Eknath Easwaran Eknath Easwaran (December 17, 1910 October 26, 1999) was an Indian-born spiritual teacher, author and translator and interpreter of Indian religious texts such as the ''Bhagavad Gita'' and the Upanishads. Easwaran was a professor of English li ...

, who had helped inspire the creation of ''Laurel's Kitchen''. ISBN 0915132540 She was a lecturer in spirituality at Holy Names College in

Oakland Oakland is a city in the East Bay region of the San Francisco Bay Area in the U.S. state of California. It is the county seat and most populous city in Alameda County, with a population of 440,646 in 2020. A major West Coast port, Oakland is ...

California California () is a U.S. state, state in the Western United States that lies on the West Coast of the United States, Pacific Coast. It borders Oregon to the north, Nevada and Arizona to the east, and shares Mexico–United States border, an ...

Works

Laurel's Kitchen cookbooks

* Laurel Robertson, Carol Lee Flinders, and Bronwen Godfrey (1976). '' Laurel's Kitchen: a handbook for vegetarian cookery & nutrition''. Berkeley, CA: Nilgiri Press. * Laurel Robertson, Carol Lee Flinders, and Bronwen Godfrey (1978). ''Laurel's Kitchen: a handbook for vegetarian cookery & nutrition''. New York: Bantam Books. * Laurel Robertson, Carol Lee Flinders, and Bronwen Godfrey (1979). ''Laurel's Kitchen: a handbook for vegetarian cookery & nutrition''. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul Ltd. * Laurel Robertson, Carol Lee Flinders, Bronwen Godfrey (1984). ''The Laurel's Kitchen bread book: a guide to whole-grain breadmaking''. Random House. * Laurel Robertson, Carol Lee Flinders, and Brian Ruppenthal (1986). ''The New Laurel's Kitchen: a handbook for vegetarian cookery & nutrition''. Berkeley, CA: Ten Speed Press. * Laurel Robertson, Carol Lee Flinders, Brian Ruppenthal (1993, revised edition). ''Laurel's Kitchen recipes''. Berkeley, CA: Ten Speed Press. * Laurel Robertson, Carol Lee Flinders, Brian Ruppenthal (1997). ''Laurel's Kitchen caring: recipes for everyday home caregiving''. Berkeley, CA: Ten Speed Press.

Laurel's Kitchen syndicated column

Flinders published the syndicated newspaper column based on her cookbook, ''Laurel's Kitchen'' for many years. In 1987 it appeared in 20 newspapers. The column was published in a number of newspapers including ''

The Spokesman-Review ''The Spokesman-Review'' is a daily broadsheet newspaper based in Spokane, Washington, the city's sole remaining daily publication. It has the third-highest readership among daily newspapers in the state, with most of its readership base in ...

'' (Spokane, WA),Carol Flinders (March 5, 1980).
"Notes from Laurel's Kitchen" (March 5, 1980)
''

'' (accessed 24 October 2012) and ''

The Register-Guard ''The Register-Guard'' is a daily newspaper in the northwestern United States, published in Eugene, Oregon. It was formed in a 1930 merger of two Eugene papers, the ''Eugene Daily Guard'' and the ''Morning Register''. The paper serves the Eugene ...

'' (Eugene, OR).Carol Flinders (Sep. 30, 1980)
"Notes from Laurel's Kitchen" (Sep. 30, 1980)
''

'' (accessed 24 October 2012)

Additional works

* * * * *Flinders, Carol (1989).'' The Making of a Teacher: Conversations with Eknath Easwaran.''

References

External links

Biography
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Penguin Random House Penguin Random House Limited is a British-American multinational corporation, multinational conglomerate (company), conglomerate publishing company formed on July 1, 2013, with the merger of Penguin Books and Random House. Penguin Books was or ...

{{DEFAULTSORT:Flinders, Carol Lee Living people Year of birth missing (living people) American cookbook writers American food writers American vegetarianism activists Independent scholars Mysticism scholars Stanford University alumni Vegetarian cookbook writers University of California, Berkeley alumni