The Farmer's Kitchen: The Ultimate Guide to Enjoying Your CSA and Farmers' Market Foods

Eating seasonally can indeed be a challenge -- especially now that we can have anything we want anytime by heading to the supermarket. But making the effort to rise to that challenge can be a source of great satisfaction. Eating locally engages our powers of creativity, learning, and experimentation. Who would have guessed that fresh kohlrabi and okra could please so many grown-ups, that greens and sliced turnips right out of the fields could so easily draw kids away from packaged snacks?

The Farmer's Kitchen offers up a larder of over 300 professionally tested recipes, ranging from traditional Southern-inspired favorites (like Braised Collard Greens) to innovative preparations of unconventional plants (like sorrel and tomatillos). The Farmer's Kitchen is organized with the cook in mind, with indexes categorized by ingredient and by course. Full of practical insights from field to fork, this cookbook celebrates the small farmer's labor of love with recipes that showcase every crop at its best.

Julia Shanks and Brett Grohsgal share their combined 35 years of experience growing, cooking and eating a glorious range of seasonal specialties to this approachable cookbook, now fully revised with beautiful botanical sketches by Genevieve Goldleaf of produce and preparation. The Farmer's Kitchen is designed to help you understand each harvest's season, how to choose truly ripe produce, and the best ways to store a cornucopia of vegetables, fruits, roots, and rhizomes. Cited as a reference in Michelle Obama's, American Grown, The Farmer's Kitchen is indispensable for CSA members, farmer's market aficionados, and anyone who wants to appreciate fresh food at its best.

Julia Shanks- chef, entrepreneur and multi-engine instrument rated pilot - received her professional training as a chef at the California Culinary Academy in San Francisco. She earned her Bachelor of Arts degree from Hampshire College in Aviation Psychology, and MBA, Magna Cum Laude, from Babson College.

Julia's passion for cooking began when she was 12 - years old, cooking her way through the Time-Life Cookbooks. As a chef, Julia worked in restaurants around the country, developing a taste for fresh, local and seasonal foods.

Today, Julia consults with restaurants, farms and food producers, helping them maximize profits and streamline revenues. in her tiny, urban garden in Cambridge, MA, she harvests vegetables seven months out of the year.

Brett Grohsgal has been the chef in 8 establishments and cooked in seven others, from New England to Louisiana to California and at sea, and over a twenty year period. Brett earned a Bachelor's degree in Botany from Berkeley and a Master's in Soil Science from North Carolina State University. As Brett's passion for cooking great foods evolved he began growing his own produce and in 1996 he and his wife, Dr. Christine Bergmark, bought 100 acres of prime land in Lexington Park, Maryland.

Brett manages Even' Star Organic Farm for reliable harvests and for respectful environmental stewardship. Brett and his treasured crew harvest crops year-round for restaurants, grocery stores, universities, and farmers' markets. The driving force of the farm since 2004, however, has been its CSA, which serves over 200 families in the winter months and 300 families in the summer.

Even' Star remains committed to the ideal that life is too short, and farm life too arduous, to ever grow or eat boring foods.