The Modern-Day Pioneer celebrates these forgotten joys by showing you how to incorporate basic skills and living into your everyday life. Whether you're interested in growing your own fruits and vegetables, raising chickens for meat or eggs, crafting delicious meals from scratch, or creating and mending your own clothes and quilts, this book makes it easy to live a healthier and more sustainable life in the twenty-first century.Filled with step-by-step instructions and homegrown inspiration, you'll wonder how you ever lived without the sweet taste of locally harvested honey or the refreshing scent of homemade lavender soap.

    One of Logsdon's principle contrarieties is the opinion that--popular images of the vanishing American farmer, notwithstanding--greater numbers of people in the U.S. will soon be growing and raising a greater share of their own food than at any time since the last century. Instead of vanishing, more and more farmers will be cottage farming, part-time. This detailed and personal account of how Logsdon's family uses the art and science of agriculture to achieve a reasonably happy and ecologically sane way of life in an example for all who seek a sustainable lifestyle. In The Contrary Farmer, Logsdon offers the tried-and-true, practical advice of a manual for the cottage farmer, as well as the subtler delights of a meditation in praise of work and pleasure. The Contrary Farmer will give its readers tools and tenets, but also hilarious commentaries and beautiful evocations of the Ohio countryside that Logsdon knows as his place in the universe.

    Should we eat locally? Is organic really better for the environment? Can genetically modified foods be good for you? JUST FOOD does for fresh food what Fast Food Nation (Houghton Mifflin, 2001) did for fast food, challenging conventional views, and cutting through layers of myth and misinformation. For instance, an imported tomato is more energy-efficient than a local greenhouse-grown tomato. And farm-raised freshwater fish may soon be the most sustainable source of protein. Informative and surprising, JUST FOOD tells us how to decide what to eat, and how our choices can help save the planet and feed the world.

    What she thought would be a short-term experiment turned out to have a huge impact on her personally. After wading through their fair share of challenges, experiencing unexpected improvements in health, and gaining a preference for fresh, wholesome meals, the Leakes happily adopted their commitment to real food as their "new normal."Now Lisa shares her family's story, offering insights and cost-conscious recipes everyone can use to enjoy wholesome natural food prepared with easily found ingredients such as whole grains, fruits and vegetables, seafood, locally raised meats, whole-milk dairy products, nuts, natural sweeteners, and more.Filled with step-by-step instructions, this hands-on cookbook and guide includes:Advice for navigating the grocery store and making smart real food purchases Tips for reading ingredient labels 100 quick-and-easy recipes for such favorites as Homemade Chicken Nuggets, Whole Wheat Pasta with Kale Pesto Cream Sauce, Cheesy Broccoli Casserole, The Best Pulled Pork in the Slow Cooker, and Cinnamon-Glazed Popcorn Meal plans and suggestions for kid-pleasing school lunches, parties, and snacks A 10-day mini-starter program, and much more.100 Days of Real Food offers all the support, encouragement, and guidance you'll need to make these incredibly important and timely life changes.

    It’s my first in a few years because I’ve been a little busy with TV stuff and interwebs stuff and live stage show stuff. Sure, I’ve been cooking, but it’s been mostly to feed myself and people in my immediate vicinity—which is really what a cook is supposed to do, right? Well, one day I was sitting around trying to organize my recipes, and I realized that I should put them into a personal collection. One thing led to another, and here’s EveryDayCook. There’s still plenty of science and hopefully some humor in here (my agent says that’s my “wheelhouse”), but unlike in my other books, a lot of attention went into the photos, which were all taken on my iPhone (take that, Instagram) and are suitable for framing. As for the recipes, which are arranged by time of day, they’re pretty darned tasty. Highlights include:  • Morning: Buttermilk Lassi, Overnight Coconut Oats, Nitrous Pancakes • Coffee Break: Cold Brew Coffee, Lacquered Bacon, Seedy Date Bars• Noon: Smoky the Meat Loaf, Grilled Cheese Grilled Sandwich, “EnchiLasagna” or “Lasagnalada”• Afternoon: Green Grape Cobbler, Crispy Chickpeas, Savory Greek Yogurt Dip• Evening: Bad Day Bitter Martini, Mussels-O-Miso, Garam Masalmon Steaks• Anytime: The General’s Fried Chicken, Roasted Chile Salsa, Peach Punch Pops• Later: Cider House Fondue, Open Sesame Noodles, Chocapocalypse Cookie So let’s review: 101 recipes with mouthwatering photos, a plethora of useful insights on methods, tools, and ingredients all written by an “award-winning and influential educator and tastemaker.” That last part is from the PR office. Real people don’t talk like that.

    Little did he know, that grain would change his life. Years later, after finishing a PhD in plant biochemistry and returning to his family’s farm in Montana, Bob started experimenting with organic wheat. In the beginning, his concern wasn’t health or the environment; he just wanted to make a decent living and some chance encounters led him to organics. But as demand for organics grew, so too did Bob’s experiments. He discovered that through time-tested practices like cover cropping and crop rotation, he could produce successful yields—without pesticides. Regenerative organic farming allowed him to grow fruits and vegetables in cold, dry Montana, providing a source of local produce to families in his hometown. He even started producing his own renewable energy. And he learned that the grain he first tasted at the fair was actually a type of ancient wheat, one that was proven to lower inflammation rather than worsening it, as modern wheat does. Ultimately, Bob’s forays with organics turned into a multimillion dollar heirloom grain company, Kamut International. In Grain by Grain, Quinn and cowriter Liz Carlisle, author of Lentil Underground, show how his story can become the story of American agriculture. We don’t have to accept stagnating rural communities, degraded soil, or poor health. By following Bob’s example, we can grow a healthy future, grain by grain.

    Angelic Organics is a leader in community supported gardening and biodynamics, helping to connect people with their food, their farmers, and healthful living.

    But Friend's attitude began to change after she and her partner bought a farm and began raising sheep for meat. Friend's ensuing odyssey through the world of livestock and farming is a journey that offers critical insights--for omnivores and herbivores alike--into how our meat is raised, how we buy it and from whom, and why change is desirable and possible. From a distressing lesson about her favorite Minnesota State Fair food (pork-chop-on-a-stick) to the surprising gratitude that came from eating an animal she'd raised and loved, Friend takes us on a wild and woolly ride through her small farm (with several brief detours into life on factory farms), along the way raising questions such as: What are the differences between factory, conventional, sustainable, and organic farms, and more importantly, why do we need to understand those differences? What do all those labels -- from organic to local to grass fed and pasture raised -- really mean? If you're buying from a small farmer, what are the key questions to ask? How do you find that small farmer, and what's the best way to help her help you? In the same witty and warm style that characterized her memoir Hit by a Farm,Friend uses her perspective as a sustainable farmer and carnivore to consider meat animals' quality of life--while still supporting the choice to eat meat. Regardless of whether you eat meat once a day, once a week, or once a year, your perspective of what goes on your plate--and in your mouth--will never be the same.

    In Fields of Plenty, respected farmer, teacher, and ecology advocate Michael Ableman seeks out these innovative and committed farmers to reveal how the fruits of those who till the soil go beyond taste. From Knolls farm in California, famous for succulent figs tree-ripened to perfection, to an urban farm in Chicago that sustains an entire community, his odyssey takes him to farmers who are trying to answer questions of sustenance philosophically and, most importantly, in practice. Illustrated with evocative color photographs of the land and the people who work it, and accompanied by a bountiful selection of recipes, this beautifully written memoir reveals the power of food as a personal and cultural force.

    Susan Wicklund chronicles her emotional and dramatic twenty-year career on the front lines of the abortion war. Growing up in working class, rural Wisconsin, Wicklund had her own painful abortion at a young age. It was not until she became a doctor that she realized how many women shared her ordeal of an unwanted pregnancy—and how hidden this common experience remains. This is the story of Susan's love for a profession that means listening to women and helping them through one of the most pivotal and controversial events in their lives. Hers is also a calling that means sleeping on planes and commuting between clinics in different states—and that requires her to wear a bulletproof vest and to carry a .38 caliber revolver. This is also the story of the women whom Susan serves, women whose options are increasingly limited.Through these intimate, complicated, and inspiring accounts, Wicklund reveals the truth about the women's clinics that anti-abortion activists portray as little more than slaughterhouses for the unborn. As we enter the most fevered political fight over abortion America has ever seen, this raw and powerful memoir shows us what is at stake.

    Why spend time sorting through the millions of cookie recipes available in books, magazines, and on the Internet? Isn’t it easier just to remember 1-2-3? That’s the ratio of ingredients that always make a basic, delicious cookie dough: 1 part sugar, 2 parts fat, and 3 parts flour. From there, add anything you want—chocolate, lemon and orange zest, nuts, poppy seeds, cinnamon, cloves, nutmeg, almond extract, or peanut butter, to name a few favorite additions. Replace white sugar with brown for a darker, chewier cookie. Add baking powder and/or eggs for a lighter, airier texture. Ratios are the starting point from which a thousand variations begin. Ratios are the simple proportions of one ingredient to another. Biscuit dough is 3:1:2—or 3 parts flour, 1 part fat, and 2 parts liquid. This ratio is the beginning of many variations, and because the biscuit takes sweet and savory flavors with equal grace, you can top it with whipped cream and strawberries or sausage gravy. Vinaigrette is 3:1, or 3 parts oil to 1 part vinegar, and is one of the most useful sauces imaginable, giving everything from grilled meats and fish to steamed vegetables or lettuces intense flavor. Cooking with ratios will unchain you from recipes and set you free. With thirty-three ratios and suggestions for enticing variations, Ratio is the truth of cooking: basic preparations that teach us how the fundamental ingredients of the kitchen—water, flour, butter and oils, milk and cream, and eggs—work. Change the ratio and bread dough becomes pasta dough, cakes become muffins become popovers become crepes. As the culinary world fills up with overly complicated recipes and never-ending ingredient lists, Michael Ruhlman blasts through the surplus of information and delivers this innovative, straightforward book that cuts to the core of cooking. Ratio provides one of the greatest kitchen lessons there is—and it makes the cooking easier and more satisfying than ever.

    From a journalist and mother who learned that genetically modified corn was the culprit behind what was making her and her child sick, a must-read book for anyone trying to parse the incendiary discussion about genetically modified foods.GMO products are among the most consumed and the least understood substances in the United States today. They appear not only in the food we eat, but in everything from the interior coating of paper coffee cups and medicines to diapers and toothpaste. We are often completely unaware of their presence.Caitlin Shetterly discovered the importance of GMOs the hard way. Shortly after she learned that her son had an alarming sensitivity to GMO corn, she was told that she had the same condition, and her family’s daily existence changed forever. An expansion of Shetterly’s viral Elle article “The Bad Seed,” Modified delves deep into the heart of the matter—from the cornfields of Nebraska to the beekeeping conventions in Brussels—to shine a light on the people, the science, and the corporations behind the food we serve ourselves and our families every day. Deeper than an exposé, and written by a mother and journalist whose journey had no agenda other than to understand the nuance and confusion behind GMOs, Modified is a rare breed of book that will at once make you weep at the majestic beauty of our Great Plains and force you to harvest deep seeds of doubt about the invisible monsters currently infiltrating our food and our land and threatening our future.

    216-page Softcover.Introduction to Permaculture is an updated and revised version of the first two permaculture books, Permaculture One (Mollison and Holmgren, 1978) and Permaculture Two (Mollison, 1979), and replaces them. New material by Bill Mollison and Reny Mia Slay has been inserted, along with excerpts from Permaculture: A Designers' Manual and information taken from permaculture design courses taught by Bill Mollison (1981, 1986) and Lea Harrison (1985). Some of the illustrations in this book have appeared in Permaculture Two and Permaculture: A Designers' Manual.

    The journey is scary, exciting, and, ultimately, encouraging."--Elizabeth Kolbert, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Sixth ExtinctionClimate models show that global crop production will decline every decade for the rest of this century due to drought, heat, and flooding. Water supplies are in jeopardy. Meanwhile, the world's population is expected to grow another 30 percent by midcentury. So how, really, will we feed nine billion people sustainably in the coming decades?Amanda Little, a professor at Vanderbilt University and an award-winning journalist, spent three years traveling through a dozen countries and as many U.S. states in search of answers to this question. Her journey took her from an apple orchard in Wisconsin to a remote control organic farm in Shanghai, from Norwegian fish farms to famine-stricken regions of Ethiopia.The race to reinvent the global food system is on, and the challenge is twofold: We must solve the existing problems of industrial agriculture while also preparing for the pressures ahead. Through her interviews and adventures with farmers, scientists, activists, and engineers, Little tells the fascinating story of human innovation and explores new and old approaches to food production while charting the growth of a movement that could redefine sustainable food on a grand scale. She meets small permaculture farmers and "Big Food" executives, botanists studying ancient superfoods and Kenyan farmers growing the country's first GMO corn. She travels to places that might seem irrelevant to the future of food yet surprisingly play a critical role--a California sewage plant, a U.S. Army research lab, even the inside of a monsoon cloud above Mumbai. Little asks tough questions: Can GMOs actually be good for the environment--and for us? Are we facing the end of animal meat? What will it take to eliminate harmful chemicals from farming? How can a clean, climate-resilient food supply become accessible to all?Throughout her journey, Little finds and shares a deeper understanding of the threats of climate change and encounters a sense of awe and optimism about the lessons of our past and the scope of human ingenuity.

    In The Kind Diet, actress, activist, and committed conservationist Alicia Silverstone shares the insights that encouraged her to swear off meat and dairy forever, and outlines the spectacular benefits of adopting a plant-based diet, from effortless weight loss to clear skin, off-the-chart energy, and smooth digestion. She explains how meat, fish, milk, and cheese--the very foods we've been taught to regard as the cornerstone of good nutrition--are actually the culprits behind escalating rates of disease and the cause of dire, potentially permanent damage to our ecology.Yet going meat- and dairy-free doesn't mean suffering deprivation; to the contrary, The Kind Diet introduces irresistibly delicious food that satisfies on every level--it even includes amazing desserts to keep the most stubborn sweet tooth happy. Alicia also addresses the nutritional concerns faced by many who are new to a plant-based diet, and shows how to cover every nutritional base, from protein to calcium and beyond.Whether your goal is to drop a few pounds, boost your energy and metabolism, or simply save the world, Alicia provides the encouragement, the information, and the tools you need to make the transition to a plant-based diet deliciously empowering.