In My Library – part 2
Many of you are avid readers, like me, you are probably interested in what other people have on their bookshelves. While I was looking for a book the other day, the thought hit me that you might be interested in seeing what books I have gracing the shelves in my home. This will be a series, every now and then I’ll feature a few of the books on my shelf and tell you about them, where I got them, if I love them, etc.
In part two, we’ll be looking at a section of my cookbooks. I love to cook, so naturally I have quite a collection of books pertaining to that topic. My cookbooks vary quite widely, here are a few from a small section of my bookshelf. This time around, each and every book was purchased after I had borrowed the copy from my local library. Not only was I inspired by the recipes I found in each of these books, I also appreciated all the other information contained within; also, being a photographer, I was especially inspired by the images in these books.
Afield: A Chef’s Guide to Preparing and Cooking Wild Game and Fish is one of the most recent additions to my bookshelf. Mr Chiots actually purchased this book for me last fall. As many of you know, Mr Chiots enjoys hunting and would like to start hunting fowl and other game now that we live in a more rural area. All of the recipes in the book look amazing, I haven’t tried any of the venison ones yet, but I will very, very soon. I’m all ready for Mr Chiots to bring home some delicious freshly caught fish or a bird or two as well.
Way back when I started transitioning to making more food from scratch and learning the art of making things by hand, I purchased Cooking by Hand by Paul Bertolli. I find this book to be very inspirational, not only does he cover topics like making your own pasta, he goes deeper than most cookbooks by discusses making pasta from alternative starches like chestnut flour. This is definitely a book for the hardcore made from scratch by hand cook. This book has it all, from preparing and grinding chestnuts to making the best polenta, there’s definitely an emphasis on the Italian/european artisanal cuisine. When we finally raise a pig here at Chiot’s Run, I’ll be following his directions to make my own proscuitto and fermented sausages. If you’re into serious DIY cooking or know someone that is, this is the book for you!
I’ve talked about Healing Spices many times before, both here and on our podcast. This is more of an herbal/spice reference guide with recipes. There’s a recipe for every spice, which teaches you how to best incorporate them into your diet. Every recipe I’ve tried has been fantastic. The Hungarian Goulash is particularly good, the addition of caraway to balance out the paprika was enlightening for me. If you’re trying to learn more about the health benefits of adding more herbs and spices to your diet, I highly recommend this book. It can be read little by little in small sections, perfect for enjoying with your afternoon coffee or tea!
Mr Chiots and I don’t eat a lot of sweets, at least we try not to. I don’t have a sweet tooth, but Mr Chiots sure does. Whenver he’s craving something sweet, I often make a fruit based dessert from Rustic Fruit Desserts. So far, every recipe I’ve tried from this book has been spot on. We are particularly fond of the pandowdy. I’ll tell you a little secret though, I generally cut the sugar in half when I make any of these recipes and usually swap maple syrup for whatever sweetener is included. If you are looking for sweets a book that focuses on fruit desserts this is a great buy. It’s even organized by season if you’re like me and prefer to eat seasonally.
Part gardening book, part cookbook, Tender: A Cook and His Vegetable Patch perfectly describes how I feel about my vegetable garden and my cooking. The reason I started my own little garden was to supply the best possible vegetables for my plate. Now I love the cultivation of vegetables as much as I love preparing and eating them. This book is the perfect bedtime reading for any gardener/cook. You’ll fall asleep dreaming about all the wonderful things you can grow in your garden and all the fabulous ways to prepare them for your table. It’s hefty too, large enough to keep you busy reading for months! I definitely have his fruit book Ripe: A Cook in the Orchard on my wishlist!
The River Cottage Preserves Handbook is one of my favorite preserving books. The recipes are so unique, you’ll find how to make sloe gin, roasted tomato passata (which is one of my favorites from this book), spiced brandy plums, and so many unique things that you won’t see in most American preserving books. If you enjoy preserving and want something out of the ordinary, give this book a look. No doubt you’ll be trying to figure out how to add quince trees to your garden, you’ll be searching for chestnuts to use, and you’ll no doubt be making roasted tomato passata each and every year!
I hope you’ve enjoyed this peek at what’s on my bookshelf. Stay tuned for more books in my library.
What are some of the books that inspire you in the kitchen?
The Series:
In My Library – part 1
In My Library – part 2
In My Library – Part 3
In My Library – Birding Books
In My Library: the Edible Garden Edition
If you do want to purchase any of these books or anything else from Amazon, use my Amazon Link, I’ll earn a few pennies to help pay for my now outrageous hosting bill for this blog!
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In My Library
Many of you are avid readers, like me, you are probably interested in what other people have on their bookshelves. While I was looking for a book the other day, the thought hit me that you might be interested in seeing what books I have gracing the shelves in my home.
This will be a series, every now and then I’ll feature a few of the books on my shelf and tell you about them, where I got them, if I love them, etc. First off, here’s a section of my gardening books (yes my books are categorized by topic).
We’ll kick it off with Perennial Combinations which transitioned from my mom’s library to mine about 10 years ago. She purchased this book about 20 years ago when they built a new home. It’s a fantastic resource, especially if you’re planning on expanding your gardens. Inside you’ll find many stunning combinations of perennials that work together, they’re even categorized by zone and soil type. You don’t have to worry whether all the plants will do well together, if they’re grouped in this book they will. This book was a valuable resource when I gardened in Ohio, it gave me so many great ideas of plant combinations for all the soil zones in my garden: clay, sandy, dry, etc. If you enjoy perennials or have problem areas in your garden, this is a valuable book to have in your library!
This companion planting book also came to me by way of my mom. I’m not sure if it alway works in every garden, but it can’t hurt! Carrots Love Tomatoes: Secrets of Companion Planting for Successful Gardening is a fascinating read and will give you some great ideas on companion planting options for you garden.
If you want to learn more about companion planting but don’t want the in depth read of the book above, Soil Mates is the book for you. In this sweet little book, you’ll find companion planting simplified and portrayed beautifully. This book would be especially fitting for that younger gardener in your life, they’ll be drawn in with the beautiful layout and captivated by the writing.
I won’t talk too in depth about Companion Planting: Successful Gardening the Organic Way, since I have a blog post dedicated to this book. If permaculture is something you’re interested in, this book is for you. Gertrude Franck was way ahead of her time. The garden planting philosophy she puts forth in this book is fascinating. This spring I might plant a garden using her unique methods because I think she was on to something!
Elements of Garden Design is the book for you if design is as important as plants in your garden. This book leans towards garden geekery, but in a very understandable way. I love Joe’s writing style, so this was the garden design book I chose when I wanted to read up on the subject. It’s on my reread list as I plan out the overall design to my new garden. If you struggle with design and want to understand more about it, this is the book for you! You’ll find a lot of valuable information in this book.
I found this obscure old gardening book while reading Onward and Upward in the Garden. There’s not much I can say about it, as I haven’t read it yet. Paperback Swap was the source of this book, so I didn’t pay a dime for it. One of these nights I’ll have time to crack it open and see if it’s good.
If you’ve been reading here long, you know I’m an advocate of soil building. I believe that gardeners grow soil and not plants. Start with the Soil is the book for you if you’d like to learn more about building the soil in your garden. Even with it’s slim size, it’s packed with tons of information. I was lucky enough to score this book for a few dollars at a used bookstore in Virginia on our way to visit Monticello.
Classic cottage gardens are among the things I love, especially those that include vegetables, herbs and fruit. Naturally, I LOVE Cottage Garden (DK Living). This book made it’s way into my library many years ago, in fact it was one of the first books I purchased when I fell in love with edible gardening. There’s something captivating about traditional cottage gardens. This book is filled with beautiful imaged and wonderful ideas on how to make your garden like the stunning cottage gardens of England. I love pulling this book out on cold winter evenings and dreaming of my future cottage garden!
My favorite garden book of all time is Living Seasonally: The Kitchen Garden and the Table at North Hill by Joe Eck & Wayne Winterrowd. Naturally their other books also hold places of honor on my bookshelf and Our Life in Gardens is among them. This is a small book filled with short chapters, perfect for a few minutes of peaceful reading before bed. If you love the personal side of gardening you will certainly enjoy this book.
There’s a look into a small portion of books in my library. Stay tuned, I’ll keep adding to this series whenever I have time.
Have you read any of the books mentioned above? Any recommendations on books I should add to my library?
The Series:
In My Library – part 1
In My Library – part 2
In My Library – Part 3
In My Library – Birding Books
In My Library: the Edible Garden Edition
If you do want to purchase any of these books or anything else from Amazon, use my Amazon Link, I’ll earn a few pennies to help pay for my now outrageous hosting bill for this blog!
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Book Review: The Small Scale Poultry Flock
If you don’t listen to the podcast, you didn’t hear my review of The Small-Scale Poultry Flock: An All-Natural Approach to Raising Chickens and Other Fowl for Home and Market Growers. Since I love this book so much, I wanted to make sure to sing it’s praises here in case you didn’t hear my glowing reviews on Cultivate Simple.
Just about every chicken related book in print has come across my coffee table, many of them were good, this is the best overall. Most other chicken books I’ve read are what I would call “fluffy” full of useful information, but to a lot of meat. With this book it’s chocked full of just about everything you want to know. There’s definitely a lot more substance to this book making it well worth it’s cost.
How good is this book? Good enough for me to buy for my library. No other chicken book has received a place on my bookshelf. If you’re at all interested in raising chickens, ducks, or geese I cannot recommend this book enough. It covers everything too, from rearing chicks the all natural way and mixing your own chicken feed, to how to use chickens to till your garden and how to butcher them when the time comes. This book has it all!
The funny thing about this book – I purchased a copy right after we moved and accidentally forgot to change my address at Amazon. Since I was so keen on getting the book and didn’t want to wait the month until I headed back to Ohio, I purchased a second copy. The Ohio copy was given away as a prize on the podcast. We had the listeners comment and use the word chicken or one of it’s derivatives in the comment and we chose the most creative one. If you didn’t listen or read the comment head on over to this post to read them, some folks were very creative!
Do you have any great reference books to recommend that are worthy of a place on the library shelf?
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Book Review: The Unfinished Garden
When asked to review of a new novel, I accepted the challenge. I’m not really much of a novel reader, generally I prefer something I can glean information from or biographies. Novels should appear on my list more often and what a better way for it to happen.
The Unfinished Garden arrived at the perfect time, just after we finished our upstairs project. I had no mental capacity for learning much of anything and needed something that wasn’t tedious to read. One afternoon, I sat down with a cup of coffee and settled in for some much needed reading time.
This novel has a gardening theme woven throughout seem more engaging to me, being a gardener myself. The author is an avid gardener and you can really tell. I e-mailed Barbara Claypole White and asked d for a few photos of her garden to share with you. She happily obliged and even sent along this lovely image of her mom’s garden over in England. All the rest of the garden photos in this post are of her garden.
I have to admit that I was a bit nervous that this was going to be a cheesy romance novel, which are on the way bottom of my reading list, in fast they never make it on the list. I nervously cracked the book bracing myself for the worst. The book was finished in just a few sittings, generally the mark of a good book. If I find myself wanting to continue reading way past my bedtime, it’s an engaging story.
This story intrigued me for a few reasons. One being that the main character is a widow. I have a very dear friend who lost her husband after only a few years of marriage at a young age. She definitely came to mind often while reading this book.
I won’t be telling you all about the book here, I am the type of person who doesn’t like to read descriptions before cracking the cover of a book. I like to fully discover the story without any preconceived notions about the book.
I will tell you, if you enjoy a good novel and enjoy gardening, I think you’ll find this book engaging.
Now that I have read the book, I no longer need my copy. If you’d like to find a copy of this book in your mailbox, comment below and I’ll choose a winner next week. Winner chosen. Kimberly who said: “I would love to read the book – it sounds wonderful! What lovely pictures of the garden!” As an added bonus, I’m sending this book along to Barabara Claypole-White the author, she’s going to sign it and send it along to you Kimberly. Enjoy!
What’s your favorite kind of book to read?
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Brushing Up on Chickens
I’ve read countless books and articles throughout the years about keeping chickens, though I’ve never actually had chickens. Since it will only be a little over a month until I have them, it was time to brush up on my chicken knowledge.
Earlier this spring I requested Free-Range Chicken Gardens: How to Create a Beautiful, Chicken-Friendly Yard from the library and it arrived last week – perfect timing.
It provided the perfect refresher course in chicken husbandry with a permaculture twist that most other books don’t have. Since permaculture is something I try to practice in my garden, I really appreciated this aspect of the book.
I’m sure, like most things, having chickens is a learning experience and most of the knowledge you need will come through experience. Now I just have to decide what new area to study and learn about, goats, cows, pigs – all things I hope to end up with someday.
What skills have you been reading up on recently?
