Book Review: This Organic Life

Have you ever read a book that changed the way you viewed the world?

For me, this past winter, one of those game-changers was This Organic Life by Joan Dye Gussow. The friend whose slow-food eating inspired me to start this blog had referenced the book a couple times, but I never got around to reading it. It's not new; I'm very much a Johnny Come-Lately to the table of Joan.

In short, the book chronicles Joan's 40-year-old garden, which moved to a new location when she and her husband moved from a large Victorian home to a funky house on the Hudson River in New York. The garden over the years had grown until Joan, a food advocate, was fairly insistent that she grow all the food she needed -- a huge and life-dominating undertaking. Through talking about the garden, sharing recipes, providing tips for better yield, and relating her noble battles with rodents, Joan also documents major life changes and how often the one constant in her life was the work to be done in the garden.

I was transfixed by this book; it should be on the shelf (or in my case, loaded on the Kindle) of anyone looking to learn more about modern food culture, ways we can take back the family farm, and how to cook a delicious potato and kale soup.

I had trouble envisioning the new space Joan and her husband moved to so I (and I'm not proud of this) cyberstalked her. I put her name into whitepages.com, then plugged the address into zillow.com to see an aerial view of the house. It's fascinating. The backyard, a not large suburban backyard, is plot after plot of garden beds that lead directly to the bank of the Hudson.

Since reading the book, I've read some criticism of Joan. Some disagree that she can be such a staunch food advocate and organic gardener and still unabashedly advocate meat eating. I have no skin in this game. At this point in my life I'm not a vegetarian, and to me, her arguments for eating meat made sense, so I had no issue.

Others have criticized her near-obsession with the garden and growing food, going so far as to contemplate integrating the ashes of a loved one into the garden to enhance the soil. Again, I have no criticism here. This is what she does. This is the constant she was able to come back to when everything around her felt like it was crumbling. Do ashes do more good in a vase on the mantle? Probably not.

I did think she might be a bit of a challenging neighbor; she's borderline strident in her beliefs. And I was a bit off-put by her relaying her anger at an obnoxious neighbor who "stole" four carrots and an onion, forcing her to harvest the onions before they were ready in order to save them from further pillage. I personally love the idea of having enough vegetables to get to share; would it be so bad if she ran low on onions and had to buy some from a local source?

That said, she's made me a firm believer in the power of kale, and the ability of regular folks on suburban plots to affect the food machine.

The book contains about 30 recipes for using the bounty; they are generous with the butter and meat -- my kind of dishes.

Now that the major gardening season is winding down, this would be a good read for starting to plot out next year's garden, or the next forty years of gardening.

Two green thumbs up!

Super Natural Cooking: A Book Review

For seven years now, I've said that if I were on a deserted island with only one cookbook (and a fully equipped kitchen), I couldn't live without The Barefoot Contessa Cookbook. This is such a delicious, basic collection of recipes, many of which are flexible enough to be made ahead and impressive enough to serve to guests. The other day Max the postman brought Super Natural Cooking, however, and I fear it's going to give Ina Garten a run for her money.

Super Natural Cooking is the latest offering from photographer and blogger Heidi Swanson, founder of two of my favorite food sites: http://www.101cookbooks.com/ and http://www.mightyfoods.com/. 101 Cookbooks was started when Heidi realized she had a million -- or at least 101 -- cookbooks and did more flagging of pages and looking at photos than actually cooking from them. In an attempt to use the books and learn new cooking skills and gain new confidence, she began cooking through her massive collection, "One recipe at a time," and chronicling her culinary adventures. She also does a lot of recipe writing of her own.

I'd made a couple of Heidi's recipes, like the Ravioli Pasta Salad posted on her blog; this salad is typical of her recipes -- pasta punctuating rather than overpowering a salad. I packed it for lunch four days in a row and never tired of it. So you can imagine that once I'd ordered Super Natural Cooking, I immediately started stalking the mail. This past Wednesday I had a one-day trip to New York that began with me leaving the house at 4:00 a.m. and returning near midnight. When I arrived home, the package from Amazon was waiting for me, and even though I was beat, I couldn't stand not to do a little thumbing, marking, and mental planning before hitting the hay. The book is beautiful and inspiring.

Let's be honest. You know how sometimes you can walk into a hard-core natural foods store and the whole thing smells like old curry, the bottles of medicinal herbs are covered in a layer of dust, and the books all sport curled paperback covers and amateurish designs that look like they were laid out in 1982? Not so enticing. Super Natural Cooking is the polar opposite: It makes cooking with whole and natural ingredients look luscious, enticing, and achievable. The photography is absolutely breathtaking -- food porn at its best -- and the recipes are vegetarian and whole-food based but don't look so prescribed and, well, good for you. They just look good.

This morning the boys slept in and I made Heidi's Wheat Berry Salad with Citrus, Toasted Pine Nuts, Feta, and Spinach. Rather than spend an hour cooking down the wheat berries, I put them in the pressure cooker for about 25 minutes. The rest of the salad -- including a delicious dressing of shallots, extra-virgin olive oil, and citrus juice and zest -- came together in about five minutes. I took this in my lunch today and ended up eating while finishing a conference call because I couldn't any longer hold off diving in.

I have at least half a dozen other recipes flagged: Espresso Banana Muffins (can you imagine?), Otsu (soba noodles in ginger-sesame dressing), Gnocchi alla Romana, Black Tea Spring Rolls, Hijiki and Edamame Salad, Thin Mint Cookies...

If you've been wanting to try natural ingredients but feel intimidated, check out this book. The recipes are quick, easy, and delicious, and the text explains what each ingredient is and how to use it without blathering on or condescending.

Watch your back, Barefoot Contessa.