The Southern Harvest Cookbook: Recipes Celebrating Four Seasons [Paperback]

The southern garden produces delights in all four seasons, from asparagus to tomatoes, apples to collard greens. Make use of the bounty of your garden or farmers' market with new twists on familiar favorites. Recipes for Apple Radish Salad and Bacon Apple Burgers break up a fall parade of crisps and crumbles. Instead of roasting, make Whiskey Braised Sweet Potatoes or Sweet Potato Peanut Stew and add greens to Shrimp and Grits. Recipes for preserving herbs, pickling peaches and berry jams mean that your harvest will never go to waste. Let experienced gardener and cook Cathy Cleary walk you through four seasons of fresh, flavorful cooking.

You'll find a cornucopia of wonderful uses for foods you thought you knew. Each season is specifically addressed, and each is intended to give you the sense of anticipation. In this our modern age, every food is available year round in supermarkets, where it is really no more than packaged bland fuel. Cleary reminds us it doesn't have to be that way. From a real garden, which she encourages as part of her 'edible education', through loving preparation to your dinner plate, she takes us on a delightful trip. She shows how food can bring friends together, establish trust, and serve as a joy to all. Especially southern cooking.Decatur Daily

The book's layout emphasizes Cleary's focus on sustainable agriculture, with sections dedicated to each of the four seasons. The opening section highlights spring greens, including asparagus, ramps and rhubarb. The next part is devoted to summer dishes and drinks that incorporate berries, tomatoes, peaches, corn, cucumbers, green beans and summer squash. In the autumn segment, readers are shown meals that use pawpaws, apples and peppers. And once the snow starts to fall, winter greens, root vegetables, winter squash and sweet potatoes are thrown into the mix.Mountain Xpress