To compile this cookbook Loomis has visited farms throughout the country, and the recipes come with notes on her encounters with the farmers. Since she writes well (allowing for the usual cookbook writer's effusion), this adds a nice dimension to your experience of the dish. The food is good, not necessarily low in fat (the heavy breakfasts seem particularly artery-clogging) but otherwise wholesome and often organic, and far from limited to standard American meat-and-potatoes, though there is much of that too. Loomis had Mexican posole and tamale pie on a farm in Iowa, a Finnish stuffed cabbage in Montana, a slow-cooked Basque leg of lamb in Idaho, curried catfish in Mississippi, and heaps of enticing cookies, cakes, pies, and baked fruit desserts everywhere. She visited an herb farm, a trout farm, an almond farm, and a garlic farm, and she describes operations on some of these and others in interesting two- or three-page profiles. Likely to have wide appeal.
