Book Reviews

The American Horticultural Society (AHS) and the Junior Master Gardener Program (JMG program) in 2005 created national awards for excellence in children’s literature known as the Growing Good Kids Book Awards.  For the 18th year in a row, they have honored the best new children’s books about gardening, nature and the environment. The awards for 2023 were announced at the […]

There’s a received notion that American food is exemplified by the blandest of processed inventions, those rubbery slabs of “American” cheese being the epitome. By altering the standards by which the cuisine is judged – keeping the geography, but extending the history and re-coloring the inhabitants – we discover an impressive variety of foodstuffs and […]

Adam Alexander, whose curiosity prompted travel all over the world collecting endangered vegetable seeds to grow and share, writes that “Crammed into two fridges in the garage behind my study are jars and boxes filled with envelopes containing – at the time of writing – 499 varieties of vegetable seeds, sadly most no longer commercially […]

That bright pink fish became a centerpiece of our diet, its health benefits aggressively promoted, its resultant appeal so great that it even gave its name to a trendy color. You know what they say about All Good Things, and so it is with our favorite seafood. Turns out not only that farmed salmon is […]

Ever contemplated “chucking it all” and moving to a farm? Shrugging off the heavy mantle of living and working in the corporate world in order to get back to the earth sounds wonderfully noble and romantic, allowing you to glory in the knowledge that you’re providing healthy food for yourself and your neighbors. I know […]

So disgusting and pervasive is the odor of hog waste that a researcher who was hired to take measurements of particulate evidence in and around a number of massive hog barns is still exuding the noxious stink for many days after he returned home. He obsessively washes himself and his clothing, but even after two […]

Agriculture is now inextricably linked to climate change. The evidence is incontrovertible; the damage is already taking place. As Laura Lengnick observes in the opening pages of her updated and expanded second edition of Resilient Agriculture, (New Society Publishers, Gabriola Island, British Columbia, Canada, 2022). “Climate change is happening now. Climate change is changing everything.” The first version of […]

What Your Food Ate, How to Heal Our Land And Reclaim Our Health (W.W. Norton & Company, New York, N. Y. 2022) is the startlingly portentous title of a new study by the married team of David Montgomery and Anne Biklé, a book that takes a remarkably thorough look at how and why humans interact […]

Dumpling Day (Barefoot Books, Concord, MA, 2021), a children’s book described by its author Meera Sriram as “For little kitchen helpers everywhere,” is a book for a family to treasure, and to have handy, especially for a rainy day when the young ones need some positive “entertainment” by cooking up a delicious treat. Barefoot Books, […]

Stung with an attack of middle-class guilt, Stephen Henderson sought to expiate by helping to cook meals at a variety of soup kitchens around the world. Bringing a home-gourmet sensibility to these excursions, when placed in charge he designed menus not necessarily conducive to catering or soup-kitchen tastes, so his home-cooking-based efforts tended to throw […]

Alice Waters is the subject for a just published children’s picture book biography, which in 48 artful pages, captures the important message for young (and old) that fresh, local, and organic food is the delicious way to a better life in harmony with nature. Alice Waters Cooks Up A Food Revolution (Paula Wiseman/Simon & Schuster, […]

If I didn’t know better, I’d think that José Andrés is obsessed with vegetables. But I do know better: He’s obsessed with everything to do with food and food production. And I’m sure that hardly defines the limits of his interests. You likely know of Andrés because of his humanitarian visits to disaster areas where […]

In northern climes, the winter can seem much longer than the other three seasons.  On the latest Groundhog Day in 2022, we had a reminder of that feeling. Punxsutawney Phil, according to the Punxsutawney Groundhog Club, saw his shadow earlier this week, and the prediction is for six more weeks of winter. Still, by early […]

Many, if not most, of the stories you read here offer encouraging observations about people and places and the things they write and do that encourage or contribute to food safety. But sharing a look at André Leu’s book The Myths of Safe Pesticides (ACRES U.S.A., Austin, Texas 2014) is like making you watch a […]

James Rebanks sneaks up on you. His prose is colorful and decisive. He’s writing about nature, which encourages lavish description, and he’s writing about the indignities humans have imposed on nature, which encourages hand-wringing. But he does neither. Rather, Rebanks is a documentarian sharing a first-person farming experience in such a way that broader truths […]

“Norway became oil-rich in the 1970s, so our view of the country is as a prosperous place on the right side of human rights,” said Darra Goldstein, introducing a talk about Norwegian culinary practices. “But before that they were seen as poor, and the Swedes and Danes looked down on them.” We were assembled at […]

First there’s a small sense of betrayal. Mark Bittman’s cookbooks are reliable foundational items for any culinary collection, offering satisfying recipes described in a reassuring voice. His latest book, Animal, Vegetable, Junk, A History of Food, from Sustainable to Suicidal (Houghton Miflin Harcourt Publishing Co., New York, New York 2021), however, is almost an anti-cookbook […]

Over the past few years, we’ve enjoyed spotlighting the national awards for children’s literature created by the American Horticultural Society (AHS) and the Junior Master Gardener Program (JMG). This past November, AHS and JMG honored four children’s books with their Growing Good Kids-Excellence in Children’s Literature Awards for 2020. (A list of all winners over […]

As you make your way through this well-reasoned, well-researched, densely written book, you may hear the sound of a scream, a crescendo of pain that builds from introduction to index. In my case, it turned out to be coming from the inside of my own head. We know, or have intuited, some of the issues […]

Although she was born in Albany in upstate New York, Elizabeth Zunon (a multi-talented artist, jewelry maker, chocolate lover and author/illustrator of children’s books, spent her childhood in Abidjan, in the Ivory Coast (Cote d’Ivoire) in West Africa. Zunon’s first, of now three authored-illustrated picture books, was published only last year. Grandpa Cacao, A Tale […]

If you care about how your food is grown and distributed and you care about social justice, the one book you must read right now is Farming While Black: Soul Fire Farm’s Practical Guide to Liberation on the Land by Leah Penniman (Chelsea Green Publishing, White River Junction, VT, 2018).  Farming While Black was written […]

Nava Atlas’s beautifully produced cookbook, 5 Ingredient Vegan, 175 Simple, plant-based recipes for delicious, healthy meals in minutes (Sterling Epicure, New York, NY, 2019) could not have arrived at a better time. It was the beginning of our Covid-19 lockdown. We suddenly had more mouths to feed with few take-out options. Home cooking went from […]

Your view of the earth may be immediately subverted by this book: most of it takes place in Australia, where the seasons are inverted and the land is often desert. But this turns out to be an excellent location from which to contemplate the renewal of the land. Moreover, Call of the Reed Warbler, A […]

You’ve probably contemplated doing more shopping at your local food co-op for many reasons, among them that you’ll probably find healthier fare and you’ll be supporting the local economy. Once you finish reading John Steinman’s Grocery Story, The Promise of Food Co-ops in the Age of Grocery Giants (New Society Publishers, Gabriola Island, BC, Canada, […]

Holly Bellebuono is an internationally regarded herbalist, teacher, and author of books about herbal medicine, natural health, and women’s empowerment. The Healing Kitchen, Cooking with Nourishing Herbs for Health, Wellness, and Vitality (Roost Books, Boulder, 2016) is a sprightly introduction to the use of herbs to enjoy their flavors and reap their benefits. As befits […]

What’s most ironic about Gary Kleppel’s plea for sustainable agriculture is that he’s merely asking us to do what was done for thousands of years in the years before chemicals and industrialization dominated the fields: keep it natural, diverse, and local. Kleppel sees his essay collection The Emergent Agriculture, Farming, Sustainability and the Return of […]

Garden pests like aphids, cucumber beetles and spider mites can wreak havoc on a garden, leading to withered or weakened plants. But not all bugs are a menace to your yard. In Good Garden Bugs: Everything You Need to Know About Beneficial Predatory Insects (Quarry Books, Beverly, Massachusetts, 2015), entomologist Mary M. Gardiner, PhD, encourages […]

Good Husbandry: Growing Food, Love, and Family on Essex Farm by Kristin Kimball (Scribner, New York, New York, 2019) is a follow-up to Kimball’s first book, The Dirty Life: A Memoir of Farming, Food, and Love, which came out in 2011. The Dirty Life described how Kimball and her husband, Mark, fell in love with each […]

Making a living as a farmer isn’t easy. Small farms have so much work on their plates, adding marketing into the mix may seem like an impossible task. But taking the time to make a farm more visible to consumers and to grow the businesses is a vital task for economic health. In Cultivating Customers: […]

Many are the cookbooks that are underlain by themes or contain winsome backstories, but far less common is a cookbook in which the backstory holds its own with – and imparts meaning to – the recipes. The Sioux Chef’s Indigenous Kitchen by Sean Sherman with Beth Dooley (University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis, MN 2017) is […]

For brothers David and Dan Podoll, one of the solutions to the economic stresses of operating their North Dakota farm turned out to be heirloom seeds. The brothers’ farm has been in their family since 1953, with wheat and turkeys providing their main revenue stream. But their ability to continue farming in southeastern North Dakota […]

Like most everyone, I know how important pollinators are to the food chain. What I didn’t realize, until I read this book, was how artisanal honeys, like fine wines or single source coffees, have distinctive flavors rooted in terroir. To find a spot on my shelf these days a cookbook needs to be inspirational, have […]

 That’s Not Fair! Emma Tenayuca’s struggle for justice/ No Es Justo! La lucha de Emma Tenayuca por la justicia (Wings Press, San Antonio, Texas, 2008) by Carmen Tafolla and Sheryl Teneyuca (illustrated by Terry Ybañez) and Amelia’s Road (Lee & Low Books, Inc., New York, NY, 1993) by Linda Jacobs Altman (illustrated by Enrique O. Sanchez) are two […]

For half a century or so, our informal but most effective agricultural policy has been to eat as much, as effortlessly, as thoughtlessly, and as cheaply as we can, and to hell with whatever else may be involved. That’s from Wendell Berry’s 2009 essay The Necessity of Agriculture, an eloquent plea for a renascence of […]

Chef Ana Sortun graduated from La Varenne in Paris, but her interest in Middle Eastern food has taken her beyond that classical French foundation. She opened her first restaurant, Oleana, in Cambridge, Mass., in 2001; she now also owns Sarma, a Turkish-style tavern, and Sofra Bakery & Café, all in the same general area. And it doesn’t […]

Preaching precaution (caution employed beforehand or prudent foresight) isn’t the same as practicing it. And the ounce of prevention principle, seemingly instilled in us at birth, has long gone out the window where pesticide use is concerned. Touted as the farmer’s salvation before risks were revealed, pesticides spawned a massive and profitable industry that flourishes, like any drug […]

You’d think it has much to do with flavor, this diet of ours. It turns out we’re making choices based on an amazing range of factors, including the color and size of the plate on which our food is served and the volume and tempo of the music that might be coming at us. Rachel […]

The story of immigration to America is a familiar one: the poor, the huddled masses yearning to be free, escaping tyranny or seeking opportunity, crossing the vast ocean to start a new life. A less familiar narrative, however, is migration in the other direction, from the new world to the old. In recent years it […]

A celebrated organic farmer of peaches, grapes, and nectarines in California, David Mas Masumoto is also a gifted storyteller and chronicler of the considerable challenges and rewards of organic farming. Masumoto’s memoir, Wisdom of the Last Farmer, Harvesting Legacies From The Land (Free Press, A Division of Simon & Schuster, New York, NY 2009), is a tribute […]

Spring – planting season – isn’t a good time to read David R. Montgomery’s Growing a Revolution  (W.W. Norton & Co., New York, 2017). Not when you live, as I do, in farming country in upstate New York. The plows are at work everywhere, from large green motorized behemoths to the horse-drawn antiques of the Amish. And, […]

If you are an avid baker, wanting to take your bread baking to the next level or perhaps a locavore looking for the next food frontier in taste . . . or if you’re simply interested in learning more about the grains we take for granted, then Sara Pitzer’s Homegrown Whole Grains, Grow, Harvest & […]

I can remember the moment a fresh local ingredient changed my life as an omnivorous human, capable of eating all kinds of foods indiscriminately. It was an apple, sampled from the tree during an excursion to Indian Ladder Farms in Altamont, near Albany in upstate New York. Besides being crisp and juicy, the apple’s flavor exploded […]

Despite the best efforts of my elementary-school science teachers, the world of biology only really opened up for me as I thrilled to the exploits of Arthur Kennedy, Raquel Welch, and Donald Pleasance as they were shrunk to microbe size and sent into the bloodstream of a wounded scientist to effect a cure. Nothing brought […]

I’ll admit to skipping over the philosophy section when browsing bookstores. On the book buffet, philosophy sits there next to seitan or black-eyed peas – virtuous, yes, but surrounded by more enticing, tastier options. But Philosophers at Table, On Food and Being Human (Reaktion Books, London, UK, 2016) by two American professors of Philosophy, Raymond […]

Two years ago, just before Thanksgiving 2015, we shared Francesca Zambello’s delicious recipe for Pumpkin & Kale (or spinach) Lasagna, a perfect option for vegetarians as a Thanksgiving entrée (or for a hearty dish on a cold and snowy winter day). In preparing the recipe, the Berry Patch Farm in Stephentown (Rensselaer County, NY), which […]

The natural fermentation (or pickling) of real food, such as cabbage, cucumbers, carrots and beets has become a big part of the good food movement. And Tara Whitsitt’s Fermentation On Wheels is Exhibit A in proving that tasty food, sustainability and community building is the inspiriting consequence of spreading knowledge about pickling food. The fermentation […]

With the proliferation of cooking websites and blogs, a cookbook these days needs to be something special to justify the expenditure of one’s hard-earned cash. The Cook’s Table by Stephanie Alexander (Lantern, an imprint of Penguin Books Australia, May 2016, distributed by Independent Publishers Group in the United States) is one such book. Alexander is an Australian […]

One way to make sense of new/old foods at the farmers market is to find vintage cookbooks with recipes that predate industrial agriculture. Not quite vintage, Food of a Younger Land by Mark Kurlansky (Riverhead Books, member of Penguin Group (USA) Inc., New York, 2009) is a rollicking tour of American regional cuisine before World War […]

Sasha Martin tells us on page one that this is not the book she meant to write. Life from Scratch, a memoir of food, family, and forgiveness (National Geographic Society, Washington, D.C. 2015) is a beautifully written exploration of love, loss and redemption, but it started as a stunt memoir based on her popular blog Globaltableadventure.com. Between 2010 and 2013, Sasha […]

New demands from a dynamic global economy, continued decline in the quality and availability of natural resources, and the unprecedented challenges of climate change are just beginning to take their toll on the U.S. food system. That’s the starting point of Laura Lengnick’s book Resilient Agriculture, Cultivating Food Systems For A Changing Climate (New Society Publishers, […]

Chef Damon Baehrel names as his favorite food – an apple. I find a crisp, slightly tart, juicy apple absolutely irresistible, he writes in his new book Native Harvest: The Inspirational Cuisine of Damon Baehrel (Lightbulb Press, New York, NY, 2016). It’s a cookbook without many recipes and a picture book without many finished dishes, but it’s […]

One of North America’s gifts to the world is maple syrup. The earliest history of the process of boiling down maple sap to extract sugar is unknown but early European explorers and settlers observed native Americans do so and soon emulated them. By the early 18th century the conversion of sap to rock maple sugar […]

It’s not surprising that a cookbook from the Beekman Boys would be a classy, useful tome: everything they present they present with commendable style. The Beekman 1802 Heirloom Cookbook (Sterling Epicure, New York, NY 2011) collects over a hundred recipes, nicely described and beautifully photographed by Paulette Taormina arranged by season and encouraging you to make the […]

Dozens of men from Texas, with intellectual disabilities (guys with IQs of 60 and 70 in the words of their employer), wound up living for 30 plus years in virtual servitude in the small Iowa town of Atalissa (Muscatine County). They were there, a thousand miles from Texas, in order to provide grossly underpaid labor […]

You’d be hard pressed to find a more inviting and well-considered breakfast cookbook than Breakfast: Recipes to Wake Up For (Rizzoli, New York, NY, 2015), by George Weld and Evan Hanczor, the founder and chef, respectively, of Williamsburg, Brooklyn’s renowned farm-to-table restaurant, Egg. With a focus on classic southern staples (think grits, greens, bacon, eggs, and […]

Twenty-five years ago in 1991, a houndy looking lab, with some golden retriever thrown in, wandered into Ted Kerasote’s campground along the San Juan River in Utah, about 100 miles down the road from Moab. This 10 month old, half-wild mixed breed, named Merle by Kerasote, became his loving companion in a person-dog relationship that […]

Vermont may be a small state size-wise, both in area and population (sixth smallest in area with less than 10,000 square miles, and 49th in population with 626,042), but it looms large in the local, farm-to-table, good food movement.  This year, Vermont topped the Locavore Index (a measure of the strength of a state local food […]

Alice Waters hardly needs any introduction. For decades she has championed the cause of the organic food movement, strongly believing it is better for the environment and people’s health. A proponent of a food economy that is “good, clean and fair,” she has been in the forefront of the Slow Food Movement and since 2002 has […]

Every city must have them: vacant lots where nothing grows but weeds, where the detritus from a busy metropolis blows in and collects in corners. Some people drive by those lots and see eyesores, just one more sign of a forsaken neighborhood. Novella Carpenter looked at the weedy 4,500-square-foot vacant lot in her Oakland, California, neighborhood (a postcard of […]

Thirty pages into Rowan Jacobsen’s Apples of Uncommon Character, 123 Heirlooms, Modern Classics, & Little-Known Wonders, Plus 20 Sweet and Savory Recipes (Bloomsbury USA, New York, New York, 2014) and I was considering how I had misspent my apple-eating life. I purchased whatever was inexpensive at the grocery store, without thinking about the whole apple universe […]

Museums are rarely known for outstanding food. The often underwhelming and overpriced fare is usually best avoided, but the Mitsitam Native Foods Café  at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of the American Indian (NMAI) is the delicious exception to that rule. Since the museum’s opening in 2004, the Mitsitam Café has received great praise; according to The New York […]

The Dirty Life: A Memoir of Farming, Food, and Love by Kristin Kimball (Scribner, New York, New York, 2011). The Dirty Life is Kristin Kimball’s story of discovering the two loves of her life – the love for her future husband, Mark, who she meets while on a journalism assignment, and the love for organic farming, […]

The Ogallala Road: A Memoir of Love and Reckoning, by Julene Bair (Viking, New York, New York, 2014). The Ogallala Road is Julene Bair’s story of her family’s western Kansas farm, the impact of modern farming practices on the health and future of the Ogallala Aquifer and her search to define her connection with the land […]

30 Years at Ballymaloe, by Darina Allen (Kyle Books, London, UK, 2014, Distributed by National Book Network, Lanham, MD).  This beautiful book is not so much a cookbook (although it contains over 100 recipes) but more the story of a journey.  From a culinary wilderness to the heights of excellence, a family’s journey fueled by […]

The kitchen garden established by Michelle Obama on the South Lawn of the White House is the first full scale vegetable garden on the grounds of the White House since Teddy Roosevelt served as president in 1902 (when the United States was still a nation of farmers).  Mrs. Obama’s tells the story of how, with […]

Michael Pollan’s insightful and simply-stated Food Rules have become well-known, especially his easy-to-comprehend mantra: “Eat Food, Real Food, Not Too Much, Mostly Plants.”  One of his rules that comes to my mind, on nearly a daily basis, is a rule which helps me to avoid overeating: “If You’re Not Hungry Enough to Eat an Apple, […]

The original edition of Michael Pollan’s  Food Rules, An Eater’s Manual came out a little more than three years ago, in January 2009.  Its publication immediately inspired readers to send Mr. Pollan suggestions for additional “rules.”   Pollan notes in his introduction to the new illustrated edition of Food Rules (The Penguin Press, New York, 2011) […]

David Montgomery in his history of world agriculture, Dirt, the Erosion of Civilizations (University of California Press, Berkeley and Los Angeles, California, 2007) details the disappearance of various societies as the consequence of the abuse of the fertility of a civilization’s soil and the resulting inability to provide an adequate food supply.   Wendell Berry’s Jayber […]

Sitting in a coffee shop in an upstate New York town currently benefiting from a “buy local” main street revitalization, my senses are awakened by the intersection of two food plants from distant lands.  The barista, on day 23 of a Paleolithic diet, is peeling a grapefruit and the aromatic vapors are drifting across the […]

Carlo Petrini founded the Slow Food movement in 1989 as an outgrowth of  his campaign against the McDonald’s fast food chain opening near the Spanish Steps in Rome.  An international member-supported nonprofit association and a worldwide network of people, Slow Food is “committed to improving the way food is produced and distributed” [www.slowfood.com].  The organization […]

The sky may not be falling, but the earth’s soil is eroding faster than it is being replaced and modern civilization’s future is endangered.  Our earth in David R. Montgomery’s words “is an oasis in space rendered hospitable by a thin skin of soil that, once lost, rebuilds only over geologic time.”  Mr. Montgomery makes […]

This past fall’s food festival of the Slow Food movement in Turin, Italy showcased 910 small-scale food producers from around the world.  The only products from the U.S.A. on exhibit were beers at the American Craft Brewers Association exhibit.  Disappointment over the lack of participation by small-scale food producers from the U.S.A. at the festival […]

Maria Rodale’s grandfather, J.I. Rodale, founded the magazine, Organic Farming and Gardening in 1942, and her parents, Robert and Ardath Rodale, likewise championed organic agriculture.  In their footsteps, Maria Rodale, an organic food activist, now challenges her readers in Organic Manifesto (Rodale, Inc. [distributed to the trade by Macmillan], New York, New York, 2010) to […]

One small valley in California has become the center of vegetable production in the United States, with some remarkable production statistics. 99% of artichokes, 92% of broccoli, 94% of processing tomatoes, 94% of celery, 86% of garlic, 83% of cauliflower, 76% of head lettuce, 67% of carrots, and 58% of asparagus are grown in the […]