Serving Up the Harvest: Celebrating the Goodness of Fresh Vegetables: 175 Simple Recipes

This cookbook follows the seasonal availability of vegetables, so is tremendously helpful for Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) subscribers. The CSA provides loads of seasonal vegetables every week and I would not have known what to do with most of them without this cookbook. In addition, the recipes have been very easy to make and quite delicious. I have since purchased two more cookbooks by Andrea Chessman because Serving up the Harvest is so good. There are some recipes that include meat, but not many - most are vegetables only or provide a vegetarian option.

I selected this book for many reasons. I am interested in cooking fresh, healthy, vegetables grown locally or at home, in the natural growing season. This book not only provides recipes, it also covers the type of growing requirements for each major vegetable. It divides the year into seasons, covers when to sow, cultivate and harvest the vegetables. It also outlines the best cooking procedures for each vegetable. It helps the reader identify many uses for the vegetable of choice. This is a great resource book for the kitchen.

Even within a short span of time, this book has been a lifesaver for our household; it's intelligently sorted, easily scannable, written in a straightforward, easy-to-follow manner, and provides delicious, simple recipes. It's the best friend of any cook that is either part of a CSA share (especially for all the greens!) or has their own vegetable garden. Keep it as your close companion for those days you just do not know what in the world to do with that extra kale or chard (tip: the braising recipe). Highly recommended.

Somebody gave me this cookbook as a retirement gift, after I told her about my experience with buying a CSA (community-supported agriculture) share. The share meant I had tons of kale, more peppers than I knew what to do with, beets which I never really liked much, and tatsoi, which I knew nothing about -- a lot of veggies, in other words. This cookbook has given me lots of ideas on how to cook unusual things, fennel for instance, things I don't normally eat, like swiss chard. Things that I get every week in my CSA share. Sprinkled throughout are little stories about gardening, tips on how to select and prepare vegetables. Why, I even like beets now (roasted beets sauteed with butter and orange juice concentrate -- yummy!) So if you have a CSA share and don't know what to do with all that strange stuff, get this book for lots of tasty suggestions.

If you're like me you love the idea of growing vegetables and herbs and promptly went out and created a backyard garden. However, whereas you decided to grow a few tomatoes and they were great for awhile, you found yourself with a dozen tomatoes, loads of zucchini and herbs that grew taller than you thought they would - and you don't know what to do with them. Fortunately, this book is the solution to those of you who don't know what to do with all of your home grown vegetables; It is specifically designed for that purpose. A friend of mine gave me this book and after glancing through it I was completely blown away at the contents. By subject, it starts with the vegetable that matures first in a normal harvest year and gives information on it, maybe a bit of history and then several recipes. Don't know what to do with all your tomatoes? This will give you some ideas rather than letting them rot in the compost. Not only that it also talks about basic sauces, herbs and mixtures that you could pay a fortune for but you could make with everything in your yard! Pesto is a good start as basil grows like a wonderful weed and I was able to create four pints with all of my remaining basil of the season. Or, the very expensive Herbes de Provence is actually a mix of 8 herbs that you can mix yourself, store and even give to friends. Helps you save a buck! Or try making herbed croûtons from scratch. It's easier than you think. This goes over every vegetable you can think of and is simply loaded with easy recipes and even seemingly complicated gourmet dishes. A few examples: colcannon, lamb-stuffed eggplant, cheese and vegetable crepes, ratatouille, creamed spinach, latkes, hummus, kung pao chicken, snapper on a bed of leeks, baked tomatoes with goat cheese... the list is endless. It even tells you what to do with celery outside of spreading peanut butter on them. If you grow your own vegetables this is a must-have! I believe every summer I'll be perusing this on a weekly basis. Five stars - hands down. PS. The cheesy zucchini puffs are a MUST! Great way to get rid of too much zucchini, kids gobble them up and I've had nothing but rave reviews of this recipe and four requests for it already. Again, a great buy!