Includes over 800 recipes for using fresh vegetables, plus essential gardening information and ideas on how to use your harvest.

Devised by gourmet nutritionist Sarah Schlesinger according to the new recommendations set forth by the National Cancer Institute, The Garden Variety Cookbook offers an overall diet strategy to defend the entire family against disease. Includes a complete nutritional analysis of each recipe, and advice on how to buy and store fresh produce.

Chopped in salads, scooped up in salsa, slathered on pizza and pasta, squeezed onto burgers and fries, and filling aisles with roma, cherry, beefsteak, on-the-vine, and heirloom: where would American food, fast and slow, high and low, be without the tomato? The tomato represents the best and worst of American cuisine: though the plastic-looking corporate tomato is the hallmark of industrial agriculture, the tomato’s history also encompasses farmers’ markets and home gardens. Garden Variety illuminates American culinary culture from 1800 to the present, challenging a simple story of mass-produced homogeneity and demonstrating the persistence of diverse food cultures throughout modern America. John Hoenig explores the path by which, over the last two centuries, the tomato went from a rare seasonal crop to America’s favorite vegetable. He pays particular attention to the noncorporate tomato. During the twentieth century, as food production, processing, and distribution became increasingly centralized, the tomato remained king of the vegetable garden and, in recent years, has become the centerpiece of alternative food cultures. Reading seed catalogs, menus, and cookbooks, and following the efforts of cooks and housewives to find new ways to prepare and preserve tomatoes, Hoenig challenges the extent to which branding, advertising, and marketing dominated twentieth-century American life. He emphasizes the importance of tomatoes to numerous immigrant groups and their influence on the development of American food cultures. Garden Variety highlights the limits on corporations’ ability to shape what we eat, inviting us to rethink the history of our foodways and to take the opportunity to expand the palate of American cuisine.

In his cookbook debut, P. Allen Smith, America’s best-known gardener and garden designer, celebrates the bounty of each season with recipes of flavorful fruits, vegetables, and herbs at their garden-fresh best. P. Allen Smith’s Seasonal Recipes from the Garden features 120 recipes: 30 for each season. These are dishes that everyone loves to eat. Taking delicious advantage of ingredients as accessible as bell peppers and carrots and as beloved as fresh peaches and tomatoes, the recipes are Allen’s favorites, most from his own kitchen and some adapted from family and friends. They are perfect for those who garden as well as anyone who simply enjoys fresh food. They include: SPRING: Chilled Pea Soup with Bacon and Whipped Cream; Grilled Salmon Sandwich with Lemon-Dill Mayo; Salad of Asparagus, Edamame, Arugula, and Cheese; Radish Top Pasta; Speckled Strawberry Ice Cream SUMMER: Savory Grit Cakes with Oven-Smoked Tomatoes; Zucchini and Lemon Salad; Aunt Martha’s Corn Pudding; Rosemary-Garlic Smoked Pork Tenderloin; Peach Moon Tart FALL: Parmesan Pecan Crisps; Roasted Red Pepper Soup; Citrus-Glazed Turkey Breast; Goat Cheese and Leek Tart; Allen’s Favorite Sweet Potato Pie WINTER: Cranberry Spice Cocktail; Slow-Cooker Lamb Stew; Savory Rosemary Butternut Squash; Tiny Orange Muffins; Old-Fashioned Blackberry Jam Cake The recipes, many of which are Southern-inflected, include delightful personal stories, full of Allen’s much-loved wit and charm. All-American Blueberry Muffins evoke memories of him and his siblings roaming the woods searching for wild berries; Lady Peas with Red Tomato Relish reminds him of shelling peas with Ma Smith in his grandparents’ kitchen after supper; and Blue Cheese and Onion Cornbread conjures up the great sweet-versus-unsweet Southern cornbread debate. Allen offers cooking tips as well as advice on selecting fresh vegetables. There is also a how-to guide with basic gardening suggestions for growing the best varieties of produce. If you are new to gardening edibles, you’ll learn that you should consider starting with zucchini (the most “overachieving” of vegetables) and herbs (a windowsill gives you all the space you need). So, as Allen says of gardening and eating, those well-matched passions, “Dig in!”

America’s legendary Blue Ridge Mountain region is known for its rich history and culture and, not least, its traditional cuisine. But much of what’s cooking there is new—including a thriving Farm to Table movement and increasingly established Slow Food communities. Such movements’ philosophies—caring about where food comes from, how it is grown, and how it is prepared—have transformed the culinary scene for newcomers and old-timers alike. The region is thus ripe for The New Blue Ridge Cookbook, which takes a fresh look at local, seasonal foods and honors efforts of sustainability, as well as the area’s rich culinary history. With some 100 recipes showcasing such traditional foods as apples, candy roasters, and ramps, the book presents new approaches by chefs, farmers, and others in the know—while also sharing amusing anecdotes and culinary traditions, as well as information about the region’s artisanal food products and local beers and wines.