An impeccably produced gastronomic feast for the senses and a pleasure to read.
A cookbook offers a cornucopia of organic farming information, stories, recipes, tips, and culinary methods.
Seattle-based book editor and designer Lipe (Tastes From Valley to Bluff, 2008) always considered herself “a far more dedicated eater than a cook of any merit.” But this revised and expanded version of her debut cookbook virtually doubles the amount of food items profiled and delivers more than 300 recipes organized around the four seasons and tailored to please an assortment of palates. She notes that part of the purpose of the work is to present “more than a passing glimpse into what it actually takes to get food from seed to plate” through community-supported agriculture initiatives, a model whereby consumers buy local seasonal items directly from farmers, typically through a subscription. These CSA farms, Lipe writes, supply much more than just food for the communities they serve; they inspire educational, outreach, employment, and fellowship opportunities as well. Fronting each season in the volume is a beautifully written featurette detailing the history, function, and the resourceful, dynamic people of a farm selected by the author for its sustainability and success in the organic arena. Sprinkled throughout are many gray sidebars dispensing practical particulars on topics like nutrition, food politics, organic farming rituals, gardening (for example, “The Journey of an Asparagus Stalk” by Sarah Stone), and many more. Each is written by experienced cultivators who are eager to steer consumers toward achieving the best outcomes when visiting farms for organic produce. Lipe is also well aware that CSAs are not ideal arrangements for everyone and is happy to extoll their usefulness within communities and how they operate. One sidebar weighs the pros and cons of CSAs, particularly when factoring in the issues of cost, availability, and, perhaps most importantly, what percentage of produce obtained through the food subscription will become stale and discarded before it can be enjoyed. Other useful tidbits include how to cool the burn of peppers, how to safely employ organic pesticides in one’s own garden, how to reduce food waste, and the wonder and increasing popularity of “agrihoods.” Black-and-white photographs and illustrations from various sources; intriguing recipes; and graphics enhance this comprehensive volume and provide easily accessible dinner menus for both classic Americana dishes and those with a more international flair. In addition, the cookbook presents complementary side dishes featuring an endless variety and combination of herbs, spices, and preparatory options. Unusual ingredients like edible flowers (77 varieties) dazzle as much as the sweet recipes for Real Basil Cheesecake, gluten- and dairy-free Dark Chocolate Avocado Cookies, and Cantaloupe Pie. Alongside these delights are more common items like artichokes, mushroom varieties, strawberries, and kale. Lipe has crafted an essential resource for anyone concerned with the origins of their food and how sustainable the items are. Readers simply eager to test fresh cooking techniques, new ideas, and unique ingredients and learn captivating pieces of agricultural trivia should treasure this inspiring guide as well.
An impeccably produced gastronomic feast for the senses and a pleasure to read.Pub Date: Oct. 13, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-9905011-0-7
Page Count: 712
Publisher: Twisted Carrot Publishing LLC
Review Posted Online: April 18, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2019
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
From the national correspondent for PBS's MacNeil-Lehrer Newshour: a moving memoir of her youth in the Deep South and her role in desegregating the Univ. of Georgia. The eldest daughter of an army chaplain, Hunter-Gault was born in what she calls the ``first of many places that I would call `my place' ''—the small village of Due West, tucked away in a remote little corner of South Carolina. While her father served in Korea, Hunter-Gault and her mother moved first to Covington, Georgia, and then to Atlanta. In ``L.A.'' (lovely Atlanta), surrounded by her loving family and a close-knit black community, the author enjoyed a happy childhood participating in activities at church and at school, where her intellectual and leadership abilities soon were noticed by both faculty and peers. In high school, Hunter-Gault found herself studying the ``comic-strip character Brenda Starr as I might have studied a journalism textbook, had there been one.'' Determined to be a journalist, she applied to several colleges—all outside of Georgia, for ``to discourage the possibility that a black student would even think of applying to one of those white schools, the state provided money for black students'' to study out of state. Accepted at Michigan's Wayne State, the author was encouraged by local civil-rights leaders to apply, along with another classmate, to the Univ. of Georgia as well. Her application became a test of changing racial attitudes, as well as of the growing strength of the civil-rights movement in the South, and Gault became a national figure as she braved an onslaught of hostilities and harassment to become the first black woman to attend the university. A remarkably generous, fair-minded account of overcoming some of the biggest, and most intractable, obstacles ever deployed by southern racists. (Photographs—not seen.)
Pub Date: Nov. 1, 1992
ISBN: 0-374-17563-2
Page Count: 192
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1992
Necessarily swift and adumbrative as well as inclusive, focused, and graceful.
A light-speed tour of (mostly) Western poetry, from the 4,000-year-old Gilgamesh to the work of Australian poet Les Murray, who died in 2019.
In the latest entry in the publisher’s Little Histories series, Carey, an emeritus professor at Oxford whose books include What Good Are the Arts? and The Unexpected Professor: An Oxford Life in Books, offers a quick definition of poetry—“relates to language as music relates to noise. It is language made special”—before diving in to poetry’s vast history. In most chapters, the author deals with only a few writers, but as the narrative progresses, he finds himself forced to deal with far more than a handful. In his chapter on 20th-century political poets, for example, he talks about 14 writers in seven pages. Carey displays a determination to inform us about who the best poets were—and what their best poems were. The word “greatest” appears continually; Chaucer was “the greatest medieval English poet,” and Langston Hughes was “the greatest male poet” of the Harlem Renaissance. For readers who need a refresher—or suggestions for the nightstand—Carey provides the best-known names and the most celebrated poems, including Paradise Lost (about which the author has written extensively), “Kubla Khan,” “Ozymandias,” “The Charge of the Light Brigade,” Wordsworth and Coleridge’s Lyrical Ballads, which “changed the course of English poetry.” Carey explains some poetic technique (Hopkins’ “sprung rhythm”) and pauses occasionally to provide autobiographical tidbits—e.g., John Masefield, who wrote the famous “Sea Fever,” “hated the sea.” We learn, as well, about the sexuality of some poets (Auden was bisexual), and, especially later on, Carey discusses the demons that drove some of them, Robert Lowell and Sylvia Plath among them. Refreshingly, he includes many women in the volume—all the way back to Sappho—and has especially kind words for Marianne Moore and Elizabeth Bishop, who share a chapter.
Necessarily swift and adumbrative as well as inclusive, focused, and graceful.Pub Date: April 21, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-300-23222-6
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Yale Univ.
Review Posted Online: Feb. 8, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
© Copyright 2024 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
bookshelf
