How to Use This Cookbook
The Peace Cookbook, written by cultural envoy Wheeler del Torro in collaboration with the Foundation for Post Conflict Development (FPCD), can be used the way any cookbook is used: as a practical guide to preparing food. The recipes are designed to be accessible, the ingredients largely available, and the techniques clear enough to follow in any well-equipped home kitchen.
But del Torro and FPCD hope it will also be used in other ways.
As a Dinner Party Framework
One of the most natural uses of The Peace Cookbook is as the foundation for a themed gathering. Choose a country. Prepare two or three dishes from that chapter. Invite people who may know little about that place and let the food open the conversation. The cookbook’s narrative sections provide context, history, and cultural background that can guide discussion without making the evening feel like a lecture.
This is, in miniature, what FPCD does in its more formal programming: create environments where genuine cultural exchange can happen, structured enough to feel intentional, relaxed enough to feel real.
As an Educational Resource
The Peace Cookbook is well suited for use in classrooms, university seminars, community organizations, and professional development settings. Each chapter combines cultural narrative, historical context, and practical recipes in a way that supports learning at multiple levels. Facilitators can use it to introduce post-conflict contexts, explore questions of cultural resilience
As a Fundraising and Awareness Tool
Organizations working in or on behalf of post-conflict communities have used food events as fundraising and awareness tools for decades. The Peace Cookbook provides a ready-made framework for these events, one with institutional credibility, cultural depth, and the kind of storytelling that moves people to act.
As a Personal Practice
Perhaps most simply, The Peace Cookbook can be used as an invitation to curiosity. To pick up a chapter on Sierra Leone or Burundi or Afghanistan and spend an afternoon cooking from it is to spend an afternoon in genuine relationship with a part of the world that deserves more than the attention it typically receives.
However it is used, the intention is the same: to build the kind of understanding that makes peace not just a political goal, but a human one.
The Peace Cookbook is not yet available for purchase. Register on its official website to be notified of its launch, and to express interest in securing a limited signed edition or attending the exclusive New York City launch event. All proceeds benefit FPCD.