Book Review: Eating Local: The Cookbook Inspired by America's Farmers

Eating Local: The Cookbook Inspired by America's Farmers by Janet Fletcher certainly applies to the vegetable gardener gathering their fresh produce right from their kitchen garden outside the back door. This beautiful book packed with 150 recipes and profiles of 10 farm families offering shares of food to consumers is filled with ideas for people who want to cook fresh food for their families. Luckily the recipes include familiar and unfamiliar vegetables to help the cook learn how to prepare various new dishes.
Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) is a community coming together to support the local farmer by purchasing shares of food and sometimes volunteering to work for the farmer in growing, harvesting, and delivering the produce. The shares include seasonal produce such as herbs and fresh vegetables during the local growing season. This idea dates back to the 1880's but has had a re-birth with the interest in purchasing local and organic food at farmers' markets and local farms.

I recommend Eating Local: The Cookbook Inspired by America's Farmers for you, my dear readers, because the variety of veggies are amazing and the recipes will be fun to prepare and to test for your family's taste.

Old Farmer's Almanac Information for Month of May

                                                                                                                  

The Old Farmer's Almanac has been around forever and is packed with information for gardeners. This link provides ideas for improving your gardens for the month of May. The publication makes a great Christmas gift...Of course you can jump online to read many articles.

EARTH DAY GARDENERS

Earth Day is all about taking care of our Earth. Isn't that what all of us gardeners are doing? Whether you are gardening an acre full of vegetables, a small, sunny patch, or have tubs of veggies on your deck or patio, you are helping. Gardeners enrich the soil adding nutrients by composting which saves garbage build-up. Growing vegetables cuts down on the enormous fuel consumption needed to move food from miles away to our grocery stores. Even buying locally at farm markets and farms helps reduce this wasteful practice of energy.

If you haven't read Animal, Vegetable, Miracle by Barbara Kingsolver, please do. It is eye-opening information about our food supply and waste of energy. It is also a journal of her family's adventure in growing their own food or buying locally. Her narrative of the year's experiment in planting and harvesting, new recipes, and "laying by" their foodstuffs is written in a humorous and informative way.

As gardeners we recognize Earth Day everyday, not just one day out of the year.