Good food and good company are signposts for the good life in northern Wisconsin. A course taught by Dottie Reeder of Eagle River could help her students provide both.

Reeder will offer Comforting, Healthy Soups and Fresh Bread at the 50th Anniversary School of the Arts at Rhinelander July 20 to 24. She brings extensive cooking and teaching experience to the class, including classes in food preparation and baking taught in several Eastern European countries. She is also the author of From Blueberries to Wild Roses, a popular cookbook that highlights the use of wild foods native to northern Wisconsin.

Reeder currently teaches cooking for Nicolet College Community Education and North Lakeland and in her own studio (iNgReDiEnTs School of Cooking). She formerly participated off-site as a faculty member of the University of Wisconsin-Extension Expanded Food and Nutrition Education program.

Her choice of soup and bread as subjects for her School of the Arts offering goes back to her experience of learning to cook from her grandmother. “My grandmother, Kate, taught me to make bread, and she also taught me to love the process of bread-baking,” she said. “She was also a fantastic soup-maker, and from her I learned the simple process of delivering delicious soup with few ingredients.

“Kate said that if you could make a delicious loaf of bread and some good soup, you would be able to live in the world. I think she was right,” Reeder added.
The course will also point out that putting together a soup and bread meal from scratch is not necessarily a difficult process. “Probably the most common mistake cooks make when preparing bread is to believe that it is a difficult process. In fact, it is simple, and the results are so wonderful,” she said.

“I have to say the same for soup. It is so easy and doesn’t take much time, either.”

Reeder’s course is one of four in the Culinary Arts and Nutrition curriculum for School of the Arts 2013. Bernard Rosen will offer From Head to Toe: What Your Body is Telling You, Meet Your Hormones, and What the Heck Should I Eat and Why. Reeder’s class, Comforting, Healthy Soups and Bread, will be offered Saturday, July 20, through Wednesday, July 24, from 8:30 to 11:45 a.m.

Registration information for School of the Arts at Rhinelander 2013 is available online at soawisconsin.org. A special 50th anniversary T-shirt is being offered for early registration prior to June 1.