Library dishes up delicious ways to cook vegetables
Up to your neck in cucumbers, zucchini, beans and tomatoes? The recent rains have resulted in bumper crops for gardeners, but don’t despair if you can’t find one willing, much less enthusiastic recipient of your bounty. The library has a plethora of cookbooks to help you discover new ways to enjoy all the good stuff from your garden.
Despite its title you don’t have to be a farmer’s wife to enjoy all the practical planting and cooking tips in “The Farmer’s Wife Guide to Growing a Great Garden & Eating From it, Too!” For each vegetable author Barbara Doyen tells how to plant, what ongoing care is needed, popular varieties, how to harvest, store, and freeze many vegetables. Even though the recipes are not accompanied by mouth watering color photos they’re easy to prepare and sound delicious.
Can you believe that there are actually 225 recipes for squash! Check out “The Classic Zucchini Cookbook” which includes recipes for a wide variety of summer and winter squash.
Some people maintain that you never can have too many chiles, but in case you are overwhelmed this year you may want to consult “Too Many Chiles.” This compact little book by Dave DeWitt contains over 75 recipes for sauces, smoking, and pickling chiles. For information about the “heat scale” of the many varieties of chiles and recipes to enjoy them check out “The Whole Chile Pepper Book.”
“Too Many Tomatoes, Squash, Beans and Other Good Things” is a basic, no frills cookbook with lots of easy-to-make recipes.
Herbs can turn simple foods into culinary masterpieces. Check out the techniques in Jill Norman’s “The Classic Herb Cookbook.”
For comprehensive details about herbs – how to grow, store and use in cooking – the beautifully illustrated “Herbs and Spices” is as the subtitles states “The Cook’s Reference.”
The danger of looking at cookbooks, particularly well illustrated ones, is immediate hunger and yearning to try everything. I never knew there were so many ways to prepare so many vegetables until I opened “Garden Way’s Joy of Gardening Cookbook.”
Farmer’s markets are popping up all over the United States. Our own farmer’s market is a very popular place Saturday mornings. Take some produce home and try some of the recipes in the “Farmer’s Market Cookbook.”
Now that I’ve got you all enthused about cooking some delicious vegetables, I’ll go pick another basket of cucumbers.