Entries feature a description of the plant, its botanical name, its native range and its primary functions -- edible, medicinal, commercial or practical. Concise text is highlighted by elegant botanical drawings, paintings and photographs as well as insightful quotes.Many of the plants are well known, such as rice, tea, cotton, rubber, wheat, sugarcane, tobacco, wine grapes and corn. However, there are also many whose stories are less known. These history-changing plants include:Agave, used to make sisal, poison arrows, bullets, tequila and surgical threadPineapple, which influenced the construction of greenhouses and conservatoriesHemp, used for hangman's rope, sustainable plastics, the Declaration of Independence and Levi's jeansCoconut, used for coir fiber, soap, margarine, cream, sterile IV drips and coagulantsEucalyptus, used in mouthwash, diuretics, vitamins, honey, underwear and fire-resistant uniformsSweet pea, which Gregor Mendel used in his research on genetic heredityWhite mulberry, used to make silkEnglish oak, used for fire-resistant structures, dyes, leather tanning, charcoal, casks and shipsWhite willow, used in the manufacture of aspirin, cricket bats, hot-air balloon baskets and coffins This attractive reference provides an innovative perspective on both botanical and human history.

    She had never before considered making her own peanut butter and pita bread, let alone curing her own prosciutto or raising turkeys. And though it sounded logical that "doing it yourself" would cost less, she had her doubts. So Reese began a series of kitchen-related experiments, taking into account the competing demands of everyday contemporary American family life as she answers some timely questions: When is homemade better? Cheaper? Are backyard eggs a more ethical choice than store-bought? Will grinding and stuffing your own sausage ruin your week? Is it possible to make an edible maraschino cherry? Some of Reese's discoveries will surprise you: Although you should make your hot dog buns, guacamole, and yogurt, you should probably buy your hamburger buns, potato chips, and rice pudding. Tired? Buy your mayonnaise. Inspired? Make it. With its fresh voice and delightful humor, Make the Bread, Buy the Butter gives 120 recipes with eminently practical yet deliciously fun "Make or buy" recommendations. Reese is relentlessly entertaining as she relates her food and animal husbandry adventures, which amuse and perplex as well as nourish and sustain her family. Her tales include living with a backyard full of cheerful chickens, muttering ducks, and adorable baby goats; countertops laden with lacto-fermenting pickles; and closets full of mellowing cheeses. Here's the full picture of what is involved in a truly homemade life -- with the good news that you shouldn't try to make everything yourself -- and how to get the most out of your time in the kitchen.

    These coveted floral treasures come in a dazzling range of colors, sizes, and forms, with enough variety for virtually every garden space and personal preference, making them one of the most beloved flowers for arrangements.In these pages, readers will discover:• Expert advice for planting, harvesting, and arranging garden-fresh dahlias• A simple-to-follow overview of the dahlia classification system• An A–Z guide with photos and descriptions of more than 350 varieties• Step-by-step how-to's for designing show-stopping dahlia bouquets that elevate any occasionExpert Author: Erin Benzakein's gorgeous flowers are celebrated throughout the world. Her book Floret Farm's A Year in Flowers was a New York Times bestseller and her first book, Floret Farm's Cut Flower Garden, won the American Horticultural Society Book Award.Filled with Wisdom: Overflowing with hundreds of lush photographs and invaluable advice, DISCOVERING DAHLIAS is an essential resource for gardeners and a must-have for anyone who loves flowers, including flower lovers, avid and novice gardeners, floral designers, florists, small farmers, stylists, and designers.Beautiful Present: This book is a beautiful present for Mother's Day and a thoughtful gift for nature lovers, flower enthusiasts, and gardeners. The colorful, flower-forward package pairs perfectly with a bouquet of flowers, seeds, or a vase.

    But Kim Boyce truly has reinvented the wheel with this collection of 75 recipes that feature 12 different kinds of whole-grain flours, from amaranth to teff, proving that whole-grain baking is more about incredible flavors and textures than anything else.   When Boyce, a former pastry chef at Spago and Campanile, left the kitchen to raise a family, she was determined to create delicious cakes, muffins, breads, tarts, and cookies that her kids (and everybody else) would love. She began experimenting with whole-grain flours, and Good to the Grain is the happy result. The cookbook proves that whole-grain baking can be easily done with a pastry chef’s flair. Plus, there’s a chapter on making jams, compotes, and fruit butters with seasonal fruits that help bring out the wonderfully complex flavors of whole-grain flours.Praise for Good to the Grain: “Boyce started playing with a variety of flours when she took a break from restaurant kitchens and wrote her first cookbook, Good to the Grain, a whole grains baking bible that won a coveted James Beard Foundation Award this year.” —O Magazine

    Today, bunches of fresh oregano and rosemary can be found in nearly every supermarket, basil and mint grow abundantly in backyards from coast to coast, and garden centers offer pots of edible geraniums and lemon thyme. But once these herbs reach the kitchen, the inevitable question arises: Now what do I do with them? Here, at last, is the first truly comprehensive cookbook to cover all aspects of growing, handling, and cooking with fresh herbs.Jerry Traunfeld grew up cooking and gardening in Maryland, but it wasn't until the 1980s, after he had graduated from the California Culinary Academy and was working at Jeremiah Tower's Stars restaurant in San Francisco, that he began testing the amazing potential of herb cuisine. For the past decade, Jerry Traunfeld has been chef at The Herbfarm, an enchanted restaurant surrounded by kitchen gardens and tucked into the rainy foothills of the Cascade Mountains, east of Seattle. His brilliant nine-course herb-inspired menus have made reservations at the Herbfarm among the most coveted in the country. Eager to reveal his magic to home cooks, Jerry Traunfeld shares 200 of his best recipes in The Herbfarm Cookbook. Written with passion, humor, and a caring for detail that makes this book quite special, The Herbfarm Cookbook explains everything from how to recognize the herbs in your supermarket to how to infuse a jar of honey with the flavor of fresh lavender. Recipes include a full range of dishes from soups, salads, eggs, pasta and risotto, vegetables, poultry, fish, meats, breads, and desserts to sauces, ice creams, sorbets, chutneys, vinegars, and candied flowers. On the familiar side are recipes for Bay Laurel Roasted Chicken and Roasted Asparagus Salad with Fried Sage explained with the type of detail that insures the chicken will be moist and suffused with the flavor of bay and the asparagus complemented with the delicate crunch of sage. On the novel side you will find such unusual dishes as Oysters on the Half Shell with Lemon Varbana Ice and Rhubarb and Angelica Pie. A treasure trove of information, The Herbfarm Cookbook contains a glossary of 27 of the most common culinary herbs and edible flowers; a definitive guide to growing herbs in a garden, a city lot, or on a windowsill; a listing of the USDA has hardiness zones; how to harvest, clean, and store fresh herbs; a Growing Requirements Chart, including each herb's life cycle, height, pruning and growing needs, and number of plants to grow for an average kitchen; and a Cooking with Fresh Herbs Chart, with parts of the herb used, flavor characteristics, amount of chopped herb for six servings, and best herbal partners. The Herbfarm Cookbook is the most complete, inspired, and useful book about cooking with herbs ever written. -8 pages of finished dishes in full color -16 full-page botanical watercolors in full color

    Learn the basics of making kimchi, sauerkraut, and pickles, and then refine your technique as you expand your repertoire to include curried golden beets, pickled green coriander, and carrot kraut. With a variety of creative and healthy recipes, many of which can be made in batches as small as one pint, you’ll enjoy this fun and delicious way to preserve and eat your vegetables.

    There are an increasing number of books on the market about making cheese, but none approaches the intricacies of cheesemaking science alongside considerations for preparing each type of cheese variety in as much detail as Mastering Artisan Cheesemaking.Indeed, this book fills a big hole in the market. Beginner guides leave you wanting more content and explanation of process, while recipe-based cookbooks often fail to dig deeper into the science, and therefore don't allow for a truly intuitive cheesemaker to develop. Acclaimed cheesemaker Gianaclis Caldwell has written the book she wishes existed when she was starting out. Every serious home-scale artisan cheesemaker--even those just beginning to experiment--will want this book as their bible to take them from their first quick mozzarella to a French mimolette, and ultimately to designing their own unique cheeses.This comprehensive and user-friendly guide thoroughly explains the art and science that allow milk to be transformed into epicurean masterpieces. Caldwell offers a deep look at the history, science, culture, and art of making artisan cheese on a small scale, and includes detailed information on equipment and setting up a home-scale operation. A large part of the book includes extensive process-based recipes dictating not only the hard numbers, but also the concepts behind each style of cheese and everything you want to know about affinage (aging) and using oils, brushes, waxes, infusions, and other creative aging and flavoring techniques. Also included are beautiful photographs, profiles of other cheesemakers, and in-depth appendices for quick reference in the preparation and aging room. Mastering Artisan Cheesemaking will also prove an invaluable resource for those with, or thinking of starting, a small-scale creamery.Let Gianaclis Caldwell be your mentor, guide, and cheering section as you follow the pathway to a mastery of cheesemaking. For the avid home hobbyist to the serious commercial artisan, Mastering Artisan Cheesemaking is an irreplaceable resource.

    Headaches, indigestion, fatigue, allergies, anxiety, eczema, high blood pressure, and other conditions are clues to a deeper imbalance in your body, and learning to read those clues is a key step in maintaining optimal health. Herbalist Maria Noël Groves shows you how to read your body’s signals and support your own wellness with herbal remedies and other natural treatments. You’ll learn how each of your major body systems — respiratory, digestive, immune, nervous, memory, reproductive, circulatory, and more — optimally functions, and you’ll discover how to use natural remedies to nourish and repair problem areas, restore lost vitality, support your body as a whole, and prevent future problems. Groves includes in-depth instructions, with step-by-step photographs, for making your own herbal remedies, as well as expert guidance on buying and effectively using commercial preparations.

    Grown indoors our out, in pots or in the ground, cultivating herbs for their many uses is a delightful and satisfying pastime for the beginner and seasoned gardener alike. Find out how these aromatic and fragrant plants can help to bring you closer to nature, and make your life simple and healthier. Discover the fresh new and pungent tastes you can give to foods and the uplifting effects of herbs in medicine. The Herb Bible includes: how to grow your own herbs how to make simple and delicious recipes using herbs how to use herbs for self-help and medicine a comprehensive directory with 70 common herbs

    Whereas traditional vegetable plots are largely made up of short-lived, annual vegetable plants, perennials are edible plants that live longer than three years. Grown as permaculture plants, they take up less of your time and effort than annual vegetables do.Martin Crawford’s book outlines the benefits of growing perennial vegetables:Perennials provide crops throughout the year, so there’s always something that can be used in the kitchen. You avoid the hungry gap between the end of the winter harvest and the start of the summer harvest of annual vegetables.Perennial vegetables are less work. Once planted, they stay in the ground for many years. They are the classic plants for no-dig gardeners.Unlike annual vegetables, perennial vegetables cover and protect the soil all year round. This maintains the structure of the soil and helps everything growing in it.Humous levels build up and nutrients don’t wash out of soil. (Cultivating the soil for annuals exposes this humous to air on the surface, causing the carbon to be released as carbon dioxide.)Mycorrhizal fungi, critical for storing carbon within the soil, are preserved. (They are killed when soil is constantly dug for annual vegetables.)Perennial plants contain higher levels of mineral nutrients than annuals because perennial vegetables have larger, permanent root systems, capable of using space more efficiently, and they take up more nutrients.How to grow perennial vegetables gives comprehensive advice on all types of perennial vegetable, from ground-cover plants and coppiced trees to plants for bog gardens and edible woodland plants:In Part One Martin Crawford outlines why we should grow perennials. He then explains where and how to grow them in perennial polycultures, in forest garden or aquatic garden settings. He outlines how to propagate them, how to look after them for maximum health and how to harvest them.Part Two is a plant-by-plant reference of over 100 perennial edibles in detail, from familiar ones like rhubarb, Jerusalem artichokes (sunchokes), horseradish and asparagus to less common ones such as skirret, nodding onions, red chicory, Babbington’s leek, scorzonera, sea kale and wild rocket. With beautiful colour photographs and illustrations and plenty of cooking tips throughout, this book offers inspiration and information for all gardeners, whether experienced or beginner.

    With her engaging storytelling and gorgeous full-color photos, Shaye brings to life how to entertain simply yet beautifully without mortgaging the farm. Simple recipes, decorating advice, and projects make this an inspirational and aspirational sequel to her beloved previous books.

    A plant-by-plant guide recommends 39 palate-pleasing species that are especially well-suited to the home landscape. Add beauty to your outdoor space while bringing organic fruit to your table.

    Beloved by Gwyneth Paltrow ("This might be my favorite thing ever") and named Saveur's Best New Food blog of 2013—with half a million Facebook fans and counting—Thug Kitchen wants to show everyone how to take charge of their plates and cook up some real f*cking food.Yeah, plenty of blogs and cookbooks preach about how to eat more kale, why ginger fights inflammation, and how to cook with microgreens and nettles. But they are dull or pretentious as hell—and most people can't afford the hype.Thug Kitchen lives in the real world. In their first cookbook, they're throwing down more than 100 recipes for their best-loved meals, snacks, and sides for beginning cooks to home chefs. (Roasted Beer and Lime Cauliflower Tacos? Pumpkin Chili? Grilled Peach Salsa? Believe that sh*t.) Plus they're going to arm you with all the info and techniques you need to shop on a budget and go and kick a bunch of ass on your own.This book is an invitation to everyone who wants to do better to elevate their kitchen game. No more ketchup and pizza counting as vegetables. No more drive-thru lines. No more avoiding the produce corner of the supermarket. Sh*t is about to get real.

    If you want to grow food but you don’t want your yard to look like a farm, what can you do? The Beautiful Edible Garden shares how to not only grow organic fruits and vegetables, but also make your garden a place of year-round beauty that is appealing, enjoyable, and fits your personal style. Written by a landscape design team that specializes in artfully blending edibles and ornamentals together, The Beautiful Edible Garden shows that it’s possible for gardeners of all levels to reap the best of both worlds. Featuring a fresh approach to garden design, glorious photographs, and ideas for a range of spaces—from large yards to tiny patios—this guide is perfect for anyone who wants a gorgeous and productive garden.

    Plants are a quick and easy way to add life, color, and texture to any indoor space. But houseplants offer so much more than just visual interest to a room. They can purify the air, reduce stress, improve sleep—and much more! Houseplants for a Healthy Home explains the specific health and wellness benefits of 50 common, easy-to-grow, and popular houseplants, while introducing you to new favorites bound to brighten your life. You will find an A-to-Z guide of a variety of the plants that includes a beautiful illustration of each plant, along with the plant’s health benefits and clear, detailed care instructions. Let Houseplants for a Healthy Home lead you to a life in full bloom.