Beekeeping for Beginners: How To Raise Your First Bee Colonies


Amber Bradshaw - 2019
    You (and your bees) will be buzzing with delight.From picking the right hive and bringing your bees home to surviving winter and collecting honey, experienced beekeeper Amber Bradshaw takes you on an easy-to-follow journey through your first year of beekeeping and beyond.Beekeeping for Beginners includes: Just the essentials—Learn everything you need to know to begin your first colony—written with brand new beekeepers in mind. Modern beekeeping—Start your colony off right with guides that feature the newest practices and current, natural approaches. Learn to speak bee—Clearly defined terms and a complete glossary will have you talking like a pro beekeeper in no time. Begin your beekeeping the right way—and avoid getting stung by mistakes—with Beekeeping for Beginners.

The Family Garden Plan: Grow a Year's Worth of Sustainable and Healthy Food


Melissa K. Norris - 2020
    Melissa K. Norris, fifth generation homesteader and host of the popular Pioneering Today podcast, will walk you through each step of the process, from planning your food crops and garden space to harvesting and preserving the food you grow. Even intermediate to experienced gardeners will discover dozens of new ideas. More than just practical advice, you’ll learn how gardening can contribute to a sustainable lifestyle and give you a sense of accomplishment, peace of mind, and overall joy. Make the Family Garden Plan your “grow-to” guide for good eating and greater well-being for you and your loved ones.

Madhur Jaffrey's Essential Indian Instant Pot Cookbook


Madhur Jaffrey - 2019
    Now, Madhur Jaffrey, the beloved authority on Indian cooking, shares more than seventy fabulous recipes--some entirely new, others reworked from her previous, acclaimed cookbooks--for the Instant Pot. Here are recipes for Saffron Rice with Golden Raisins; Mung Dahl Rice and Cabbage Soup; Sweet Hot and Sour Eggplant; Chicken Cooked in a Kerala Style; and Pork Vindaloo. Also included are a selection of side dishes including chutneys, yogurts, and salads (think Baby Arugula Salad with Mustard Oil; Quick Tamarind Chutney; Onion and Tomato Salad; and Spicy Mushroom Chips). Here too is a primer on how to best use the Instant Pot to maximize flavor. And while these recipes are quick and easy to prepare, they retain all the rich complexity for which Jaffrey's food has always been known. Here is the only Indian Instant Pot cookbook the home cook will ever need.

The Edible Garden: How to Have Your Garden and Eat It, Too


Alys Fowler - 2009
    Abandoning the limitations of traditional gardening methods, she has created a beautifully productive garden where tomatoes sit happily next to roses, carrots are woven between the lavenders and potatoes grow in pots on the patio. And all of this is produced in a way that mimics natural systems, producing delicious homegrown food for her table. And she shares her favorite recipes for the hearty dishes, pickles and jams she makes to use up her bountiful harvest, proving that no-one need go hungry on her grow-your-own regime.Good for the pocket, good for the environment and hugely rewarding for the soul, The Edible Garden urges urbanites everywhere to chuck out the old gardening rules and create their own haven that's as good to look at as it is to eat.

Let it Rot!: The Gardener's Guide to Composting (Storey's Down-to-Earth Guides)


Stu Campbell - 1975
    The revised and updated edition of the classic guide praised by Library Journal as "a highly successful demystification of an increasingly popular art." The perfect book for a new generation of environmentally aware gardeners.

Vertical Gardening: Grow Up, Not Out, for More Vegetables and Flowers in Much Less Space


Derek Fell - 2011
    Vertical gardening guarantees a better outcome from the day the trowel hits the soil—by shrinking the amount of "floor" space needed and focusing on climbing plants that are less prone to insects, diseases, and animal pests.Notable author and gardener Derek Fell has tried and tested thousands of varieties of vegetables,flowers, and fruits and recommends the best plants for space-saving vertical gardening. His grow-up,grow-down system also shows which ground-level plants make good companions underneath and alongside climbing plants. Best of all, many of Fell's greatest climbers and mutually beneficial plants are available in seed packets in every local garden center.With a mix of DIY and commercially available string supports, trellises, pergolas, raised beds, skyscraper gardens, and topsy-turvy planters, the vertical garden system reduces work, increases yields, makes harvesting easier, and can be practiced in spaces as small as a container or a one-by-four-foot strip. Vertical Gardening features 100 color photos of the author's own vertical methods and showcases beautiful, troublefree perennials, shrubs, vegetables, annuals, and fruit perfect for this new, rewarding way to garden.

Freehand: Sketching Tips and Tricks Drawn from Art


Helen Birch - 2013
    Freehand breaks down basic drawing techniques into bite-sized chunks, and reveals their practical application in dazzling examples by today's coolest artists. Over 200 innovative works of art demonstrate all the fundamentals—line, tone, composition, texture, and more—and are presented alongside friendly text explaining the simple techniques used to achieve each stylish effect. The final section of the book offers aspiring artists essential reference materials to hone their drafting skills and practice what they've learned. Petite in size but comprehensive in scope, this hip handbook will teach artists of all skill levels how to find their personal drawing style and start making amazing sketches.

Second Nature: A Gardener's Education


Michael Pollan - 1991
    A new literary classic, Second Nature has become a manifesto not just for gardeners but for environmentalists everywhere. "As delicious a meditation on one man's relationships with the Earth as any you are likely to come upon" (The New York Times Book Review), Second Nature captures the rhythms of our everyday engagement with the outdoors in all its glory and exasperation. With chapters ranging from a reconsideration of the Great American Lawn, a dispatch from one man's war with a woodchuck, to an essay about the sexual politics of roses, Pollan has created a passionate and eloquent argument for reconceiving our relationship with nature.

Instant Pot Italian: 100 Irresistible Recipes Made Easier Than Ever


Ivy Manning - 2018
    And Italian food is a perfect partner for your Instant Pot—think rich and meaty braises, one-pot pastas, risotto, stuffed artichokes, and more. This authorized Instant Pot cookbook offers 100 delicious, sure-to-please recipes for weeknight cooking and beyond. Recipes take advantage of the Instant Pot's many settings, allowing you to perfectly sauté and simmer a variety of dishes with just the push of a button. Long-cooking foods like grains and beans (Fall Farro with Pears and Walnuts, Corona Beans with Tomato and Sage) as well as slow stews and braises (Tuscan Beef Stew, Chicken with Creamy Artichoke Sauce) finish in half the time of stovetop cooking. But other hacks and surprises abound, too—set-it-and-forget it recipes for focaccia, quick pickles, no-oven-required cakes and cheesecakes, and even DIY ricotta.

World of Geekcraft: Step-by-Step Instructions for 25 Super-Cool Craft Projects


Susan Beal - 2011
    Best of all, it's easy to get started with step-by-step instructions and handy templates included in the back of the book. With lots of photos and plenty of geekery throughout, this one-of-a-kind book shows that geek and craft go together like...pixels and cross-stitch!

The Gardener's Guide to Succulents: A Handbook of Over 125 Exquisite Varieties of Succulents and Cacti


Misa Matsuyama - 2020
    This book provides a beautiful overview of the diversity that succulents have to offer, presenting a wide variety of popular plants to help you create striking, aesthetically pleasing compositions.This succulent guide includes information about: What each variety needs and where it thrivesPlant characteristics, with ratings on ease of growth and maintenance requirementsIdeas for group plantings and illustrated tips on indoor plantingStriking identification photos, rich in color and contrastThis succulent encyclopedia is a useful resource for everyone--from cacti beginners looking to decorate their living space to serious gardeners hoping to expand their succulent plantings.

Don't Throw It, Grow It!: 68 Windowsill Plants From Kitchen Scraps


Deborah Peterson - 2008
    From the common carrot to the exotic cherimoya, you’ll be amazed at the gardening possibilities hidden in the foods you eat.

The Dirty Life: On Farming, Food, and Love


Kristin Kimball - 2010
    But she was beginning to feel a sense of longing for a family and for home. When she interviewed a dynamic young farmer, her world changed. Kristin knew nothing about growing vegetables, let alone raising pigs and cattle and driving horses. But on an impulse, smitten, if not yet in love, she shed her city self and moved to five hundred acres near Lake Champlain to start a new farm with him. The Dirty Life is the captivating chronicle of their first year on Essex Farm, from the cold North Country winter through the following harvest season—complete with their wedding in the loft of the barn. Kimball and her husband had a plan: to grow everything needed to feed a community. It was an ambitious idea, a bit romantic, and it worked. Every Friday evening, all year round, a hundred people travel to Essex Farm to pick up their weekly share of the "whole diet"—beef, pork, chicken, milk, eggs, maple syrup, grains, flours, dried beans, herbs, fruits, and forty different vegetables—produced by the farm. The work is done by draft horses instead of tractors, and the fertility comes from compost. Kimball’s vivid descriptions of landscape, food, cooking—and marriage—are irresistible. "As much as you transform the land by farming," she writes, "farming transforms you." In her old life, Kimball would stay out until four a.m., wear heels, and carry a handbag. Now she wakes up at four, wears Carhartts, and carries a pocket knife. At Essex Farm, she discovers the wrenching pleasures of physical work, learns that good food is at the center of a good life, falls deeply in love, and finally finds the engagement and commitment she craved in the form of a man, a small town, and a beautiful piece of land

The Big-Ass Book of Home Décor: More than 100 Inventive Projects for Cool Homes Like Yours


Mark Montano - 2010
    Your current home “décor” is ugly, shabby, and boring, but you can’t afford lots of new stuff. Or maybe your house is filled with tired old junk that you just can’t bear to throw away. Or maybe you bought all your furniture at a big box store, but it irritates you that it all looks like you bought it there. You have a solution—or, rather, a whole houseful of solutions. In this newest Big-Ass Book, do-it-yourself guru Mark Montano presents 105 practical, simple, and decidedly unboring projects for every space in your home. Montano’s wizardry—accomplished with masking tape, spray paint, and glue—transforms everything from accessories, to walls and windows, to lighting, to major pieces like headboards, tables, dressers, and chairs. (And there’s even a chapter on turning the anonymous items you got at IKEA into one-of-a-kind treasures.)

Lidia's Italy in America


Lidia Matticchio Bastianich - 2011
    Traveling around the United States, Lidia visits Italian American communities that created something new out of the recipes passed down from their ancestors. As she explores this utterly delectable and distinctive cuisine, Lidia shows us that every kitchen is different, every Italian community distinct, and little clues are buried in each dish: the Sicilian-style semolina bread and briny olives in New Orleans Muffuletta Sandwiches, the Neapolitan crust of New York pizza, and mushrooms (abundant in the United States, but scarce in Italy) stuffed with breadcrumbs, just as peppers or tomatoes are. Lidia shows us how this cuisine is an original American creation that redefines what we know as Italian food while always paying tribute to Italy, and she gives recognition where it is long overdue to the many industrious Italians across the country who have honored the traditions of their homeland in a delicious new style. And of course, there are Lidia’s irresistible recipes, including ·        Baltimore Crab Cakes ·        Pittsburgh’s Primanti’s Sandwiches ·        Chicago Deep-Dish Pizza ·        Eggplant Parmigiana from the Bronx ·        Gloucester Baked Halibut ·        Chicken Trombino from Philadelphia ·        authentic Italian American Meatloaf, and Spaghetti and Meatballs ·        Prickly Pear Granita from California ·        and, of course, a handful of cheesecakes and cookies that you’d recognize in any classic Italian bakery This is a loving exploration of a fascinating cuisine—as only Lidia could give us.