Photo credit: Amazon.com
I’ve mentioned here before that we here in my family are big fans of farmers’ markets. Even though we have a good-sized garden just steps from our back door, we still like to head downtown on our bikes every Saturday and see what our local farmers have for us that week. We invariably pick up lots of great foods — including fresh cheese, grass-fed beef, and plenty of veggies — to feast on for days.
While we usually buy our favorites, we also often come across new veggies that look interesting. Last summer, for example, we were fascinated by blue potatoes and bought them several weeks in a row. We then experimented with preparing them different ways and discovered that roasting them was great, but mashing them was bad, as the color leached out and they ended up looking gray and sickly.
But there have been some foods that we haven’t been quite sure what to do with or have wanted to try new ways of preparing some of our old favorites. Thus it was that I was excited to read about Local Flavors: Cooking and Eating from American’s Farmers’ Markets by Deborah Madison. It’s a fascinating book — part history of farmers’ markets, part cookbook, and part coffee table book (the photos are gorgeous). This is an excellent book for anyone who wants to eat locally and seasonally, as the author has sections on the different vegetables and fruits you’ll find at the farmers’ market throughout the growing season and then gives you a plethora of ideas of how to eat all that bounty.
So if you’re a fan of farmers’ markets or just a fan of eating seasonally, I encourage to you get your own copy of Local Flavors and start cooking!
