Seasonal Books

Summer on a Plate: More than 120 delicious, no-fuss recipes for memorable meals from Loaves and Fishes

Anna Pump, Gen Leroy

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Editorial Review:

Wherever you are, summer is a time to savor longer days and lazy weekends. Fresh produce abounds, and life moves at a more relaxed pace. Anna Pump, proprietor of the iconic Loaves & Fishes store on Long Island, has catered to a devoted clientele of Hamptons weekenders for more than twenty-five years and understands summer's rhythms. She knows that while you may want to enjoy a picnic on the beach or a late supper on the porch, you don't want to spend the entire day in the kitchen, painstakingly preparing elaborate dishes. In Summer on a Plate she shares more than 120 recipes for delicious, no-fuss, memorable meals that celebrate the bounty of summer.

Anna never confuses simple with ordinary. A distinctive first course of Avocado Mousse and Shrimp on Tortilla Chips comes together in a flash. Chilled Tomato and Cucumber Soup with Seasoned Croutons makes a light and refreshing midday meal, and Spicy Corn Fritters with Salmon Caviar Dip are just the thing to set out for your weekend guests when a sunny Saturday on the beach turns into breezy evening on the deck.

Many dishes can go straight from the grill to the table, like Grilled Tenderloin of Beef with Fresh Herb Sauce or Perfect Whole Grilled Chicken with Plum Chutney. In the mood for seafood? Halibut Baked with Olives, Lemons, and Fresh Basil is a snap to prepare and full of fresh flavors. And what would summer be without salads? Serve Black Mission Figs with Goat Cheese and Upland Cress to begin a dinner party, while the Magret of Duck and Wild Rice Salad or the Asian-Flavor Beef, Pepper, and Spinach Salad are meals in themselves.

If your favorite part of the meal is dessert (like Anna!) you won't be disappointed. Chocolate Chunk Orange Cake is a sweet ending to any meal (or even a sweet breakfast) and is just as satisfying with a cup of midafternoon coffee. Rhubarb Blueberry Pie or a Peach Tart with Almond Topping and a Cookie Crust take advantage of the best of summer fruits. The Coconut Lemon Layer Cake is a showstopper, or you can opt for a simple dish of dead-ripe berries lavished with a dollop of Crème Fraîche.

Put summer on your plate and enjoy everything the season has to offer.

Simply In Season (World Community Cookbook)

Mary Beth Lind, Cathleen Hockman-wert

Amazon Price: $11.19 List Price: $13.99 Usually ships in 24 hours By: Herald Press Amazon Marketplace: 30 new & used starting at $8.86

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 24 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

Not so long ago most fresh food on North American tables came from home gardens and local farmers markets. Today, the average item of food travels more than a thousand miles before it lands on our tables. It's a remarkable technological accomplishment, but has not proven to be healthy for our communities, our land or us.

Through stories and simple "whole foods" recipes, Mary Beth Lind and Cathleen Hockman-Wert explore how the food we put on our tables impacts our local and global neighbors. They show the importance of eating local, seasonal food—and fairly traded food—and invite readers to make choices that offer security and health for our communities, for the land, for body and spirit.

Simply in Season offers a starting point encouraging you to feed both your body and spirit with nutritious food and challenging ideas about the world around you. Woven throughout the recipe pages of each season are writings, tidbits of information to reflect upon while the onions saute, the soup boils, or the bread bakes.

Chez Panisse Vegetables

Alice Waters

Amazon Price: $23.10 List Price: $35.00 Usually ships in 24 hours By: William Morrow Cookbooks Amazon Marketplace: 53 new & used starting at $19.10

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 25 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

More for the market than the kitchen 4 out of 5 stars.
2 of 2 people found this review helpful.

Alice Waters made her mark on the culinary world more for her pioneering efforts in sourcing and championing high quality local and organic ingredients than for her culinary skill and imagination, and that's reflected in this book. It's really helped me pick out the best vegetables at the local grocery store or farmers market, and has encouraged me to try new vegetable with sometimes delicious results. Thanks to her, I appreciate the wonders of braised chard or baby garlic soup, things I never expected to explore.

While this book has helped me find the right vegetables at the market, it's had less of a positive effect in the kitchen. The recipes are simple, largely French and Italian inspired, and to my palate, a little too restrained. I prefer a little more lively seasoning or creative flavor combinations in my food. Water's doesn't provide a lot insight on how to use vegetables in cooking, or provide any insights as to the best way to prepare them. That's what I was hoping for here, and often get in other cook books. There's a solid group of recipes here, but I never found any great recipes in those I tried. I rate cook books by how they improve my cooking and this book has encouraged me to experiment with new vegetables and be a better vegetable shopper. Once I got back to the kitchen, it wasn't as helpful.

Editorial Review:

By now just about everybody whose interest in eating runs deeper than fast food knows about Alice Waters. The creator of Chez Panisse, the legendary restaurant in Berkeley, California, that helped create a modern American cuisine based on fresh ingredients, she is also equally well-known as a teacher and cookbook author. Chez Panisse Vegetables is one of the best new cookbooks of the season; it's as useful for its information about vegetables and how to use and handle them as it is for its irresistible recipes, which lead to complex and interesting dishes built from simple ingredients and simple techniques.

Simply Organic: A Cookbook for Sustainable, Seasonal, and Local Ingredients

Jesse Ziff Cool

Amazon Price: $16.47 List Price: $24.95 Usually ships in 24 hours By: Chronicle Books - Model: 0811860444 Amazon Marketplace: 50 new & used starting at $13.48

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 8 Average rating: 3.5 of 5

I think it's great 4 out of 5 stars.
2 of 2 people found this review helpful.

I received the book in the mail the other day. The book was bigger than I expected but that's cool. I found myself reading most of the introduction which is rare. The only thing I regret about this book is that there were not enough pictures. I found the recipes to be simple and interesting enough to want to try them. I have'n read anything else by this author but I can say I like this one and am excited about trying the recipes.

Very beautiful book 4 out of 5 stars.
2 of 2 people found this review helpful.

I received this book as a gift for my birthday and it has turned out to be a wonderful surprise. I love how the book is formatted by seasons. In general the book is beautiful. Almost too beautiful... I am afraid to have it in my kitchen while I cook! That aside, I just enjoy reading it. I agree with another review in that I wish it had more pictures.

Organic Quilted Car Seat Cover: Tan6" Knitted Fabric Dog Toy with Squeaker: Naru (monkey)Organic Earth Friendly Bumper Pet Bed (Small)Robbie Dawg Organic Dog Biscuits: Peanut Butter & CarrotRobbie Dawg Organic Dog Biscuits: Applewood Bacon & Cheddar Cheese6" Knitted Fabric Dog Toy with Squeaker: Percy (chicken)

Editorial Review:

Simply Organic: A Cookbook for Sustainable, Seasonal, and Local IngredientsBy Jesse Ziff Cool Photographs by France Ruffenach"The world is changing, and along with it, so must our eating habits. Author and restaurateur Jesse Ziff Cool has compiled over 3

The Summertime Anytime Cookbook: Recipes from Shutters on the Beach

Dana Slatkin

Amazon Price: $21.45 List Price: $32.50 Usually ships in 24 hours By: Clarkson Potter Amazon Marketplace: 31 new & used starting at $19.42

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 4 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

Nestled in the sand on the Santa Monica coast, Shutters On The Beach is everyone’s favorite luxury seaside resort, serving up fresh and delicious food with style year-round. In The Summertime Anytime Cookbook, Dana Slatkin shares 130 irresistible recipes from her family’s celebrated hotel for any day or night at the beach.

Whether it’s a scorching summer day or a foggy morning in early spring, Slatkin knows better than most that life at the beach truly revolves around the weather. So The Summertime Anytime Cookbook is cleverly divided into the chapters Sunny Days, Cloudy Days, Balmy Nights, Stormy Nights, Misty Mornings, and Beach Basics. Perfect rain or shine, the appealing, fuss-free dishes are Shutters favorites, including Plum Tomato Soup with Baby Grilled Cheese Sandwiches; Dungeness Crab Cakes with Avocado Tartar Sauce; Bull’s-Eye Eggs; and Yogurt Mousse with Honey-Poached Apricots.

Along with recipes for colorful entr?es and side dishes, fresh picnic fare, simple sauces, and fabulous desserts, The Summertime Anytime Cook-book offers inventive style and entertaining ideas for casually elegant beach living, such as Five Wonderful Ways to Spend a Cloudy Day at the Beach, How to Make the Perfect Smoothie, and Six Uses for a Bucket of Sand. Slatkin also shares expert tips on creating over-the-top hotel hospitality, decorating with relaxed sophistication, and preparing homemade spa treatments.

With simple, artful food for every day and night, and stunning color photographs, The Summertime Anytime Cookbook is your secret to bringing the best of the beach into your own home.

Christmas with Southern Living 2008: Great Recipes - Easy Entertaining - Festive Decorations - Gift Ideas (Christmas With Southern Living)

Amazon Price: $19.77 List Price: $29.95 Not yet published By: Oxmoor House

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Editorial Review:

The Christmas experts at Southern Living magazine continue the holiday tradition with this all-new 28th edition of Christmas with Southern Living, the cooking, entertaining, and decorating classic that's steeped in gracious Southern style.

One-hundred forty brand-new recipes—the most ever in this book series—include ultimate show-stopping desserts, innovative chocolate and vanilla treats, incredibly easy side dishes, and a Quick & Easy Christmas Dinner that features a freezer-to-oven turkey recipe with a two-ingredient glaze.

Entertaining friends and family is a breeze with the Simple Christmas chapter, a collection of two dozen quick recipe options that require little effort yet yield luscious results.

In addition, you'll also discover fresh decorating ideas that begin with the front door and take you all through the house. Whether you fancy a traditional look, whimsical style, or casual elegance, dozens of festive wreaths, garlands, and door and mantel decorations will stir your creativity.

Big, colorful photographs will inspire your holiday table settings with designs that are "see-and-do" simple. From a centerpiece that holds individual take-home bouquets to twig balls stuffed with glittery tinsel garland, you'll be amazed at how quickly your table transforms from everyday to holiday.

Whether you need help planning the perfect holiday menu, baking special treats for giving, or trimming your home with welcoming, seasonal flair—this filled-to-overflowing book from the Christmas cooking and entertaining editors at Southern Living magazine has everything on your wish list for the most wonderful time of the year.

Farmer John's Cookbook: The Real Dirt on Vegetables

John Peterson

Amazon Price: $19.77 List Price: $29.95 Usually ships in 24 hours By: Gibbs Smith Publishers Amazon Marketplace: 57 new & used starting at $9.99

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 9 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

The CSA's Primer/Cookbook 5 out of 5 stars.
13 of 13 people found this review helpful.

With the current spinach scare, modern industrial society has begun to reflect on exactly where their food originates. A DVD like Koons-Garcia's "The Future of Food" explores both the problems with our current genetically engineered food, while develing into the socio-economic issues conflicting farmers faced with the GE future; where seeds are patented or refuse to grow unless sprayed with Round-up.

Interestingly, when we enter a supermarket, rarely do we reflect on the fact that 70 percent of the produce we can purchase is, well, out of season. The distances produce travels to sate our society, to eat tomatoes in the dead of winter, provides carbon emission concerns, while again triggering the "now what kind of conditions were these vegetables produced under?" or more directly, "Are they safe to eat?"

Which is why a CSA, or community supported agriculture, has become viewed as a viable, intelligent option to our current predicament. Farmer's participate as a group, receiving a call every week to fill a specific number of orders. The farmer sees what they will have available, and only one day before being delivered, pick the said product. The farms net their produce together, fill a box with their various pickings(like figs, tomatoes, beets, squash, arugala, carrots, green onions, etc.) and then deliver them to a drop point where customers pick the boxes up. So week to week, the food the customer receives changes depending on availabilty and time of year.

Besides giving customers better produce, a CSA cuts carbon emissions because food travels on average 50 miles to 1500 miles, and obviates concerns of chemically laden, GE foods.

So the Farmer John's Cookbook's attitude, or arguably its underlying theme, becomes tied to this notion of seasonality, slow food, and CSAs; hence why the author mentions his own CSA and farm Angelic Organics(to dispel, again, an earlier review here). The recipes are quite good. They are family-style and feature enough twists to be worthwhile. More importantly, each recipe focuses on each chosen produce's strengths. Similar in many ways to Alice Waters' "Chez Pannise Vegetables."

But the true greatness of the book is in, again, its theme. It argues for seasonality, and shows the eater how much can be appreciated in the produce each season brings. The snippets of information, an amalgamation of the Farmer's Almanac and some esoteric dated Brillat-Savarin philosophizing, only further carries this notion of appreciation.
As a CSA primer, the text succeeds, becoming more of a handbook than a cookbook; place it firmly next to "One Straw Revolution."

Editorial Review:

Join the real food revolution with a true pioneer in the Community Supported Agriculture movement-Farmer John Peterson and his farm, Angelic Organics. Angelic Organics is a leader in community supported gardening and biodynamics, helping to connect people with their food, their farmers, and healthful living.

Forever Summer (Style Network's) (Style Network's)

Nigella Lawson

Amazon Price: $23.10 List Price: $35.00 Usually ships in 24 hours By: Hyperion Amazon Marketplace: 80 new & used starting at $1.96

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 31 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Nigella Rocks 5 out of 5 stars.
1 of 1 people found this review helpful.

My how Nigella has changed the way I Cook, Eat, think and feel about food. I first saw Nigella cooking on her TV show Nigella Bites and just loved the way she spoke about food with her passion coming through the TV screen. I purchased her books and now I'm such the Male Domestic God that I think I have missed my calling and should have been a Chef, but I do know that it's all thanks to Nigella.

Forever Summer 4 out of 5 stars.
1 of 1 people found this review helpful.

Not only do I use this cookbook often, I have given it as a gift twice. I have made numerous recipes, all have been excellent and easy to make. Several of the recipes are now staples, both for family meals and for entertaining. The crab with linguini and chiles is superb.

i love nigella 4 out of 5 stars.
0 of 0 people found this review helpful.

i made several recepes from this book some time ago, i cant wait to but another book, i just love nigella and her books, they are facinating!! and so entertaining!

Editorial Review:

"Hardcover: 256 pages Publisher: Hyperion; 1st edition (April 2, 2003) Language: English ISBN: 1401300162 Product Dimensions: 10.0 x 7.7 x 0.9 inches Setting the warm, relaxed tone befitting the season, U.K. food goddess Lawson (Nigella

Full Moon Feast: Food and the Hunger for Connection

Jessica Prentice

Amazon Price: $16.50 List Price: $25.00 Usually ships in 24 hours By: Chelsea Green Amazon Marketplace: 40 new & used starting at $14.66

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 12 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

Full Moon Feast invites us to a table brimming with locally grown foods, radical wisdom, and communal nourishment.
In Full Moon Feast, accomplished chef and passionate food activist Jessica Prentice champions locally grown, humanely raised, nutrient-rich foods and traditional cooking methods. The book follows the thirteen lunar cycles of an agrarian year, from the midwinter Hunger Moon and the springtime sweetness of the Sap Moon to the bounty of the Moon When Salmon Return to Earth in autumn. Each chapter includes recipes that display the richly satisfying flavors of foods tied to the ancient rhythm of the seasons.
Prentice decries our modern food culture: megafarms and factories, the chemically processed ghosts of real foods in our diets, and the suffering—physical, emotional, cultural, communal, and spiritual—born of a disconnect from our food sources. She laments the system that is poisoning our bodies and our communities.
But Full Moon Feast is a celebration, not a dirge. Prentice has emerged from her own early struggles with food to offer health, nourishment, and fulfillment to her readers. She recounts her relationships with local farmers alongside ancient harvest legends and methods of food preparation from indigenous cultures around the world.
Combining the radical nutrition of Sally Fallon’s Nourishing Traditions, keen agri-political acumen, and a spiritual sensibility that draws from indigenous as well as Western traditions, Full Moon Feast is a call to reconnect to our food, our land, and each other.

The Summer Book

Susan Branch

Amazon Price: $16.29 List Price: $23.95 Usually ships in 24 hours By: Little, Brown and Company Amazon Marketplace: 70 new & used starting at $2.22

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 18 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

A Great Escape! 5 out of 5 stars.
9 of 9 people found this review helpful.

This is my all-time favorite book by Susan Branch! The recipes, the ideas, the personal stories all bring it home. When the dog-days of summer hit I reach for my copy and escape ~ she has so many ideas that don't take a lot of pre-prep. Her recipes are great (try the potato salad or the pacific coast peelers). A great addition to anyones cooking library and a must for those soon-to-be-brides! I have even given this book as a hostess thank you. You won't be disappointed!

Captures the feeling of summer perfectly 4 out of 5 stars.
7 of 7 people found this review helpful.

Susan Branch is a talented woman. Her cookbooks are beautifully illustrated with her drawings throughout. Her stories convey a warm sense of family and fun and will make you daydream about summer even in August.

Her recipes are simple and fairly easy to make and she leans heavily towards family friendly comfort foods with a little bit of pizazz. In fact, it is her ideas for presentation that make some of the recipes so special (the Bowl of Vegetables comes to mind...a simple twist on crudite that is elegant and delicious).

Those with picky children may find this book to be a surprising source of ideas (Lemon Linguini, Corn Salad, Lemon Chicken, Sweet Potato Fries, Kiwi Cups and Tortilla Roll-ups to name a few).

Her recipe for Crab Cakes is very good as is the one for Fish Tacos. Her recipes for vegetables are among her best; very simple and often quick ways to make vegetables special without drowning them in anything.

The Profiteroles recipe is my husbands favorite; the shells are simple to make and freeze very well. I love to make the Crostini for parties, the recipe is very flexible and all of the variations are a treat.

I love that she is not afraid to mix ideas and food and drawings and inspirational sayings all together in one book. You might not think that a quote from Gandi and a recipe for Jell-o shots could co-exist, but they do, and it works.