This month Maida and I are teaching an interterm cooking class called "Reframing Sustainable Eating with your Farmers". It's something I'm really excited about. While I'm not expecting to pin down an exact definition of sustainable eating (spoiler - it's incredibly complicated and different for everyone!!) I am really looking forward to having some fruitful discussions and eating some delicious meals.
If you've been reading our newsletters for any length of time, or have ever met me in person, you know that I love food. I love talking about food, thinking about food, and most importantly I love growing and eating food. I read cookbooks like novels, cover to cover, marking recipes I want to try.
As a result of planning for this class, I've been poring over my favorite cookbooks. My desk is covered in stacks of cookbooks. Many from my personal collection, some from the library, all really exciting and packed with awesome vegetable-y recipes.
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I thought this would be a fun opportunity to share with you a few of my very favorites cookbooks. All of these cookbooks feature vegetables prominently, not just as sides. If you are looking to eat more vegetables I implore you to check these out. I'll be highlighting a winter-ish recipe from each of my top 3 favorites.
My commitment to local food and seasonal eating stops me from making a lot of the recipes in these cookbooks right now. However, amid meals of lentils and rice with roasted storage crops and frost sweetened spinach, I look through these cookbooks and dream about how awesome the dogeared recipes will taste when the vegetables are fresh and grown with my own two hands (as well as the many hands of all the students, Maida, and Julia!!)
For Book & Plow Farm,
Kaylee Brow
p.s. Do you have a favorite cookbook I should know about? Please let me know! :)
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Sweet Potato Soul - Jenne Claiborne
This is by far my most-cooked-from cookbook. The fried cauliflower-chicken, kale caesar salad with tempeh, and sweet potato-tahini cookies are my favorites from this book. I know I can flip to any page in this book and not only land on something that is truly satisfying and delicious, but also really healthy. I appreciate Jenne's ability to jam-pack recipes with healthful ingredients and still have them taste delicious!!
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Power Vegetables - Peter Meehan
This cookbook is a recent discovery for me, although it came out a few years ago. It is aimed at folks who struggle to enjoy eating mainly vegetarian meals. Every recipe I've made from this tome has been fabulous. Ranging from BBQ carrots w/ homemade ranch to French Onion Soup to Kung pao celeries, the scope of this cookbook is vast, but the focus is clear: FLAVOR. Some recipes sound a a little wild, but most are simple enough to make on a weeknight and the overall tone is truly hilarious. I enjoy the way Peter Meehan writes about food, and we have similar feelings about how to make vegetables taste yummy!
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SaltFatAcidHeat- Samin Nosrat
Did you think I was going to leave this one out? I don't actually own this cookbook, but I have a copy from the library and it's amazing. Obviously.
Everything Samin Nosrat does is earnest and smart and I just think she's great. She has done more for the everyday cook with her Netflix series/cookbook than anyone else since Julia Child.That is a bold statement to make a monthly farm newsletter, but I really do feel this way! There have been many times in my kitchen when I taste my food, think, "hmm, needs more acid!" and say a little thanks to Samin. I imagine folks all around the world doing the same and eating more delicious home-cooked meals because of her work.
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Upcoming Events with Book & Plow
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Lastly we want to let you all know about some upcoming events Book & Plow is participating in.
The first is a really interesting webinar entitled Radicalize the Hive- What Bees can teach us about Shaping Social Change
It will be on January 30, from 2 to 3
You can register by following the link below.
The second is the Campus Farmer Summit
It will be held at Stonehill College in Easton, MA on February 22 from 8:30 to 5. More information can be found at the link below. Do let us know if you're planning to go and are interested in a carpool!!
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