The world is changing, and along with it, so must our eating habits. Author and restaurateur Jesse Ziff Cool has compiled over 30 years of knowledge about organic, local, and sustainable food into one magnificent cookbook, including indispensable elements of her earlier cookbook, Your Organic Kitchen, which is now out of print. With 150 enticing recipes, Simply Organic encourages home cooks to embrace organics as a lifestyle rather than a fad. Cool organizes her chapters seasonally to ensure that the freshest, ripest ingredients enhance the flavors of dishes like Filet Mignon with Smashed Potatoes and Leek Sauce in early spring to Pumpkin Raisin Bread Pudding in autumn. Inspiring profiles on farmers and producers reveal how these individuals are working to create a sustainable future every day.

This book sets out to examine what really is going on in the organic sector socially and politically. In the process, it debunks a number of apparently common-sense beliefs: that organic consumers are wealthy environmental and health extremists; that growth in the industry will inevitablyundermine its environmental values; that mainstream media is antagonistic to organics; and that the industry is driven by consumer demand. This book seeks to make a practical contribution to the development of more sustainable food systems by articulating what it takes to get people involved inorganics at each stage of the food chain.

Organic foods occupy prominent shelf space in the produce and dairy aisles of most U.S. food retailers. Retail sales of organic foods increased to $21.1 billion in 2008 from $3.6 billion in 1997. This increase has been spearheaded by: an expanding number of retailers are selling a wider variety of foods, the development of private-label product lines by many supermarkets, and the widespread intro. of new products. Organic handlers, who purchase products from farmers and often supply them to retailers, sell more organic products to conventional retailers and club stores than ever before. But, organic farms have struggled at times to produce sufficient supply to keep up with the growth in demand, leading to periodic shortages of organic products. Illus.