HAVE to recommend this cookbook!

I recently received this cookbook in the mail. It is truly awesome for a few reasons if you ever plan to live out of your garden.

1) The recipes uses only one or 2 of anything:
   
I don't know about you, but since my yard is pretty tiny, I don't have 3 pounds of any one thing lying around. If a recipe calls for 2 carrots, 2 beets, and 2 rutabagas, that is more in line with what is ready to be picked at my place at any one time.

2) The recipes are more method than masterpiece:

Improvising. Improvising is exactly what you need to do when trying to eat what you grow. You might have an awesome recipe you just love, but unless you can adapt it to what you actually have on hand in a tasty way, it does you no good. The book talks about substitutions, and offers similar recipes using different veggies you might have on hand.

3) There are a lot of vegetarian recipes that are NOT COVERED IN CHEESE. 

This might not mean a lot to you, but it does to me. I LOVE the fact that there is a maple-balsamic vinegar root vegetable recipe, a coconut-jalapeno butternut squash recipe, and 100 more recipes that are flavorful and reasonable enough in calories and nutrition to use on a daily basis. The number of vegetarian recipes that are put out there that are 1000+ calories per serving are as offensive as they are uncreative and unoriginal. Anyone can take a piece of zucchini, slather it in cheese and spices, and make it taste good. To take vegetables and flavor them in a way that is different and interesting without taking the easy way out and covering them with fat, salt, and cheese shows a great amount of creative effort. I would like to give a big finger wag of shame to those of you (and you know who you are) who throw a cheese covered veggie casserole or lasagna into you cookbook or on to your website and think that is good enough to widen your audience.

The number of unhealthy pizza-tarians out there is offensive and insulting, not to mention confusing to the omnivore population when they are trying to make a suitable menu item for the "other people" tagging along in a group at a restaurant. And no, I am not claiming to be a vegetarian again. My previous dietary post is still accurate. However, subbing mass quantities of cheese in lieu of meat is unacceptable and unhealthy. If you don't want to eat animals that is fine. If you think food is unpalatable unless it is covered with butter and cheese, you shouldn't call yourself a vegetarian, because you don't actually like vegetables. You like cheese and butter. Pick a new title. 

Enough with that rant.

4) There are TONS of recipes. This isn't one of those cookbooks with a dozen or so recipes with stories, pictures, and anecdotes filling the rest of the pages. There are so many recipes, it is almost guaranteed that there will be more than a few you will want to immediately try.

I recommend this book to ANYONE AND EVERYONE who gardens, forages, eats seasonally or would just like to start paying less taxes into the machine by becoming more self sufficient or buying less processed foods.