Seasonal

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

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)

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

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.

For twenty-five years, Alice Waters and her friends at Chez Panisse in Berkeley, California have dedicated themselves to the ideal of serving the finest, freshest foods with simplicity and style. From tender baby asparagus in early spring, to the colorful spectrum of peppers at the height of summer; crisp, leafy chicories in autumn, to sweet butternut squash in the dark of winter, much of the inspiration about what to put on the menu comes from the high quality produce Waters and her chefs seek out year-round.

Using the treasures from the earth, Chez Panisse Vegetables offers endless possibilities for any occasion. Try Grilled Radicchio Risotto with Balsamic Vinegar at your next dinner party, or Pizza with Red and Yellow Peppers for a summer evening at home. Why not forgo green-leaf lettuce, and opt for Artichoke and Grapefruit Salad drizzled with extra-virgin olive oil? Or serve Corn Cakes with fresh berries for breakfast instead of cereal?

Throughout Vegetables, Waters shares her energy and enthusiasm for what she describes as "living foods." When she first began in the restaurant business, the selection of good-quality vegetables was so limited that she found herself searching out farmers with whom she might do business. Luckily, today's explosion of markets and organic farms across the country ensures that any home cook can find freshly harvested produce to put on the table. And with the increased popularity of home gardening, more and more people are taking their vegetables straight from the earth and into the kitchen.

Cooks, gardeners, vegetarians and everyone who appreciates good food will find Chez Panisse Vegetables to be not only a cookbook, but a valuable resource for selecting and serving fine produce. From popular vegetables like corn, tomatoes and carrots, to more unusual selections like chard, amaranth greens and sorrel, Vegetables offers detailed information about the seasonal availability, proper look, flavor and preparation of each selection. Arranged alphabetically by vegetable, and filled with colorful linocut images, Chez Panisse Vegetables makes it easy for a cook to find a tempting recipe for whatever he or she has brought home from the market.

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

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

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

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

"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

The Summertime Anytime Cookbook: Recipes from Shutters on the Beach

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.

Farmer John's Cookbook: The Real Dirt on Vegetables

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.

Outstanding in the Field: A Farm to Table Cookbook

Instead of bringing food to guests in a traditional restaurant setting, Jim Denevan brings diners to their food, creating what Alice Waters has called “the restaurant I always imagined.” His innovative organization, Outstanding in the Field, sets up dinner tables in fields, ranches, dairies, vineyards, and community gardens across the country for alfresco meals that truly reconnect us with the land and people that produce our food.

In Outstanding in the Field, Denevan presents a cookbook full of seasonally inspired dishes from his farm-fresh dinners, sharing more than one hundred recipes with home cooks and food lovers everywhere. Celebrating local ingredients at their height of freshness, favorites include Haricot Vert and Early Girl Tomato Salad with Summer Savory; Burrata Cheese with Nectarines, Mâche, and Hazelnuts; Sea Scallops with Sugar Snap Peas and Chervil; Pure Maple Syrup–Braised Short Ribs; Green Tomato Marmalade; and Upside-Down Fresh Fig Cake. All of the recipes present opportunities to use the most flavorful produce, meats, and cheeses in the area where you live—and suggestions for substitutions when necessary.

America’s appetite for organic and local food has never been stronger and there is no better guide to this growing movement than Jim Denevan. With inspiring recipes, beautiful photographs throughout of farms and food across the country, and information on finding local ingredients and helping Community Supported Agriculture and community gardens, Outstanding in the Field is a cookbook that celebrates the pleasures of raising, preparing, and enjoying good food.

Full Moon Feast: Food and the Hunger for Connection

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 FallonÂ’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.