The Harvest Eating Cookbook

October 15, 2009
To promote seasonal cooking, chef Snow, a respected authority on seasonal and local foods, launched a social networking site, www.harvesteating.com, in 2006. Featuring 325 videos and over 800 recipes, the site now attracts over 35,000 monthly visitors. This fall his TV show debuts on PBS. Snow's recipes, simple enough for the beginning cook, note when the ingredients are in season and cooking time. Seasoned cooks will find new versions of old favorites like Harvest Eating Lasagna, which incorporates kale, leeks, sweet potatoes, and Gruy]re cheese. Mary Beth Lind's "Simply in Season: Recipes That Celebrate Fresh, Local Foods in the Spirit of More-with-Less" is another user-friendly cookbook, but its comb binding is less library-friendly. Strongly recommended for home cooks and fans of his web site and cooking show.

Copyright 2009 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

November 1, 2009
Seasonality is the watchword of the moment. Cooks demand fresh ingredients just arrived from farms in full abundance and at the peak of flavor. Snow puts forward a catalog of recipes designed to steer cooks in the direction of menus and meal preparation that take full advantage of such bounty. Although Snow sympathizes with the locavore movement, he is not strict about it, and his recipes call for items such as avocados, which must be trucked from southern climes to less-tropical regions. Snows recipes are all very simple, applying the least adornment to what are already superior ingredients. Symbols heading each recipe indicate the time of year most appropriate for them. Nevertheless, some of the recipes confusing instructions may puzzle cooks. Full-color photographs illustrate the book. Snow is about to launch a cooking series on PBS, so libraries may finds unusual demand for this title.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2009, American Library Association.)