It is not necessary to have an extravagant food budget in order to serve things with variety and tastefully cooked. It is not necessary to have expensive food on the plates before they can enter the dining room as things of beauty in colour and texture. Food should be served with real care as to the colour and texture on the plates, as well as with imaginative taste. This is where artistic talent and aesthetic expression and fulfillment come in.

Schaeffer's husband Francis died in 1984 but Edith Schaeffer continued to be associated with the L'Abri organisation which Edith Schaeffer and her husband founded. In 1955 they began L'Abri a community that welcomed people who were seeking intellectually honest and culturally informed answers to questions about God and the meaning of life. It was there that Edith Schaeffer met Francis Schaeffer and they were married in 1935.

Her What is a Family? (1975) compared the extended family to a mobile. In 1955 they began L'Abri a community that welcomed people who were seeking intellectually honest and culturally informed answers to questions about God and the meaning of life. It won a Gold Medallion Award from the Evangelical Christian PubliEdith Schaefferrs Association (ECPA) in 1979.