What We’re Reading: Kitchen Garden Cookbook

Cooks and gardeners alike will find lots of inspiration in this beautiful book from Williams-Sonoma. Celebrating the homegrown and homemade, Kitchen Garden Cookbook is filled with more than 100 recipes along with practical information for anyone interested in growing food. Author Jeanne Kelley organizes the book by the seasons, offering tips on cultivating specific fruits and vegetables, followed by recipes utilizing your newly harvested crop.

In the spring, learn how to plant and maintain peas, then try Kelley’s recipe for three peas with barley, chili and green garlic. Come summer, discover creative ways to use a bumper crop of zucchini, such as a shaved zucchini salad topped with almonds and Asiago cheese. Fall and winter bring an abundance of leafy greens, hard-skinned squashes, apples and pears. Showcase them in recipes like penne with chard and sausage, or a brandied apple cake.

And if you’ve ever dreamed of raising chickens and keeping bees in your backyard, check out the chapter on “The Coop and the Hive” for some sage advice.

Whether you’re tending a thriving garden plot or purchasing fresh produce from a local farmers’ market, this book will help you make the most of each season’s bounty.