Four Season Farm Gardner’s Cookbook by Barbara Damrosch and Eliot Coleman

four season farmBarbara Damrosch and Eliot Coleman are America’s foremost organic gardeners and authorities. Barbara is the author of The Garden Primer, and Eliot wrote the bible for organic gardening, The New Organic Grower. Today they are the face of the locavore movement, working through their extraordinary Four Season Farm in Maine. And now they’ve written the book on how to grow what you eat, and cook what you grow.

The Four Season Farm Gardener’s Cookbook is two books in one. It’s a complete four-season cookbook with 120 recipes from Barbara, a master cook as well as master gardener, who shows how to maximize the fruits – and vegetables – of your labors, from Stuffed Squash Blossom Fritters to Red Thai Curry with Fall Vegetables to Hazelnut Torte with Summer Berries. And it’s a step-by-step garden guide that works no matter how big or small your plot, with easy-to-follow instructions and plans for different gardens. It covers size of the garden, nourishing the soil, planning ahead, and the importance of rotating crops. And, at the core, individual instructions on the crops, from the hardy and healthful cabbage family to fourteen essential culinary herbs.

Eating doesn’t get any more local than your own backyard. (description from publisher)

Girl Hunter by Georgia Pellegrini

What happens when a classically-trained New York chef and fearless omnivore heads out of the city and into the wild to track down the ingredients for her meals? After abandoning Wall Street to embrace her lifelong love of cooking, Georgia Pellegrini comes face to face with her first kill. Realizing that the only way we truly know where our meat comes from is if we hunt it ourselves, Pellegrini embarks on a wild ride into the real world of local, organic, and sustainable food in Girl Hunter: Revolutionizing the Way We Eat, One Hunt at a Time.

Teaming up with veteran hunters, she trav­els over field and stream in search of the main course-from quail to venison and wild boar, from elk to javelina and squirrel. Pellegrini’s road trip careens from the back of an ATV chasing wild hogs along the banks of the Mississippi to a dove hunt with beer and barbeque, to the birthplace of the Delta Blues. 

More than a hunting narrative, Girl Hunter also teaches you how to be a self-sufficient eater. Each chapter offers recipes for finger-licking dishes like: wild turkey and oyster stew stuffed quail pheasant tagine venison sausage, fundamental stocks, brines, sauces, and rubs suggestions for interchanging proteins within each recipe Each dish, like each story, is an adventure from begin­ning to end.  An inspiring, illuminating, and often funny jour­ney into unexplored territories of haute cuisine , Girl Hunter captures the joy of rolling up your sleeves and getting to the heart of where the food you eat comes from. (description from publisher)

Edible : a Celebration of Local Foods by Tracey Ryder and Carole Topalian

Much more than a collection of recipes (although a fine selection is included), Edible: a Celebration of Local Foods is just as much a love letter to the farmers, ranchers, fishers and cooks that produce and create with the bounty found in this country (and southern Canada). If this book doesn’t send you straight to the Farmer’s Market (or your own backyard garden), nothing will.

Divided into six regions (Northeast, Southeast, Southwest, California and the West, Pacific Northwest and Midwest) Edible starts with a series of thoughtful, often humorous, always enlightening articles and essays about the difficulties and rewards of producing local, organic sustainable food. Farmers, chefs and organizations are highlighted for each region including a listing at the end of each chapter of things that are unique to that area (Muscatine melons for Iowa for instance, or razor clams in Seattle) that make this worth checking out before your next road trip.