A collection of recipes special enough for entertaining yet easy to prepare, accompanied by party plans, menus, and tips on table settings.

Based on the James Beard Award–winning blog The One-Block Diet, this all-in-one home gardening, do-it-yourself guide and cookbook shows you how to transform a backyard or garden into a self-sufficient locavore’s paradise. When Margo True and her fellow staffers at Northern California–based Sunset magazine walked around the grounds of their Menlo Park office, they saw more than just a lawn and some gardens. Instead, they saw a fresh, bountiful food source, the makings for intrepid edible projects, and a series of seasonal feasts—all just waiting to happen. The One-Block Feast is the story of how True and her team took an inspired idea and transformed it into an ambitious commitment: to create four feasts over the course of a year, using only what could be grown or raised in their backyard-sized plot. She candidly shares the group’s many successes and often humorous setbacks as they try their hands at chicken farming, cheese making, olive pressing, home brewing, bee keeping, winemaking, and more. Grouped into gardening, project, and recipe guides for each season, The One-Block Feast is a complete resource for planning an eco-friendly kitchen garden; making your own pantry staples for year-round cooking and gifts; raising bees, chickens, and even a cow; and creating made-from-scratch meals from ingredients you’ve grown yourself. Chapters are organized by season, each featuring a planting plan and crop-by-crop instructions, an account of how that season’s projects played out for the Sunset team, and a multicourse dinner menu composed of imaginative, appealing, and ultra-resourceful vegetarian recipes, such as: Butternut Squash Gnocchi with Chard and Sage Brown Butter • Egg and Gouda Crepes • Whole Wheat Pizzas with Roasted Vegetables and Homemade Cheeses • Fresh Corn Soup with Zucchini Blossoms • Braised Winter Greens with Preserved Lemons and Red Chile • Summer Lemongrass Custards • Honey Ice Cream Generously illustrated and easy to follow, this ultimate resource for today’s urban homesteader will inspire you to take “eating local” to a whole new level.

The Sunset Cookbook is the first masterwork collection of recipes selected from the extensive archives of Sunset magazine. With over 1,000 recipes from the more than 110 years of the magazine's history, this book represents the best of American cooking, both its traditional cookery and its culinary inventiveness. Fueled by local ingredients, the creativity of its cooks, and diverse ethnic influences, from Native American to Mexican to Polynesian to Asian, American cooking has come into its own, and Sunset has been there from the beginning. The Sunset Cookbook covers everything from appetizers to preserves and pickles as well as Sunset's unique approach to fresh eating, which can be found in dishes like vegetarian main courses-such as stews, salads, pastas, stir-fries, and casseroles. Included are more than 100 recipes for the grill, like Grilled Oysters with Chipotle Glaze, Hoppin' Wine-Smoked Turkey, and classic Santa Maria Barbecue, made with beef tri-tip; recipes based on fresh local ingredients such as Pan-fried Trout with Smoked Salmon, Baby Artichoke Antipasto, Soy Mustard-Glazed Buffalo; and favorite dishes that found their start in the West such as Cedar-Planked Salmon, Baja Fish Tacos, and Baked Chiles Rellenos, just to name a few. Long-awaited by Sunset readers and packed with signature recipes, The Sunset Cookbook is sure to take its place among the classics and appeal to the new generation of home cooks across the country who have grown up on fresh flavors that are the hallmark of new American cooking.

The 14 menus in this colorful cookbook capture the very essence of the statement, "Life is good." And how can it not be with fresh Kumamoto oysters from Puget Sound, or Copper River salmon from Alaska, or herbed and grilled leg of lamb? Each special menu consists of five to seven recipes that, served together, comprise a memorable culinary event. For example, Atkinson's menu for a romantic summer dinner includes "Matisse Bread" or Fougasse, Three Shellfish with Three Citrus Fruits, Provençale Chicken with Tomato and Orange, and Chocolate Marquis with Saffron Cream.