Food to Live By: The Earthbound Farm Organic Cookbook [Paperback]

Myra Goodman (Author), Linda Holland (Author), Pamela McKinstry (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: October 20, 2006

Organic food is the best food possible. It’s synonymous with premium quality, delicious flavor, conscientious farming, and optimum health. It’s what we need to feed our kids, it’s what we deserve to feed ourselves. And thanks in part to Myra Goodman, co-owner and cofounder of Earthbound Farm with her husband, Drew, organic food is now available just about anywhere fresh food is sold, becoming more mainstream every day.

Not only has Myra been growing organic food for over twenty years, she has been cooking with it, too. In Food to Live By she combines her twin food passions, serving up hundreds of recipes, ideas, shopping and cooking tips, health notes, and more. Illustrating the book are full-color photographs throughout that bring readers right into the breathtaking California sunshine.

This is perfect cooking for friends and family, packed with irresistible dishes for weeknight dinners and casual entertaining, festive breakfasts and fall picnics. Recipes are all about the ingredients and their intrinsic qualities, not fancy techniques or time-consuming steps. Marry chicken with three simple accompaniments— rosemary, lemons, and garlic—and it’s transformed. Heighten the flavor of a springtime fava bean and orzo salad with an unexpected fava bean “pesto.” Combine Meyer lemon juice and soy sauce to create a marinade, tenderizer, and sauce that results in a perfect grilled flank steak.

Food to Live By also includes a wealth of information about organic farming and how to make the wisest food choices; there are full-color Field Guides—to gourmet greens, apples, heirloom tomatoes, winter squash—and Farm Fresh ingredient guides to sorrel, corn, melons, avocados, organic poultry, asparagus, artichokes, ginger, and more, featuring what to look for plus care and handling. The book is a boon to food lovers.

Editorial Reviews

Book Description

Organic food is synonymous with premium quality, the deepest, richest taste, conscientious farming, and optimum health. It’s what we need to feed our kids, what we deserve to feed ourselves. And no one is doing more to popularize organic food that Myra Goodman, a mother, a creative cook, and most significantly, co-owner of Earthbound Farm, the world’s largest grower and purveyor of organic produce.

In Food to Live By, a dazzling full-color cookbook, Myra Goodman offers an utterly appealing, new casual style of cooking based on using the best ingredients, organic or otherwise. The dishes are irresistible: Sweet Corn Chowder. Spinach, Feta and Mushroom Quiche. Foggy Day Chili. Merlot-Braised Short Ribs with Cipollini Onions. Spicy Chicken Lettuce Wraps. Ginger Lime Salmon. Grilled Pork Tenderloin with Spiced Orange Sauce. Blue Cheese Smashed Potatoes. Coconut Lemongrass Sorbet. Cherry Panna Cotta. Farm Stand Carrot Cake. Plus, throughout are Farm-Fresh Ingredient boxes—on sorrel, corn, asparagus, artichokes— cooking and shopping tips, and health notes.

Before Myra and her husband, Drew, founded Earthbound Farm, they tended a small organic raspberry patch in Carmel, California—and Myra baked (and sold) amazing Raspberry Corn Muffins, plus jams, and more. Then Earthbound grew to offer organic lettuce mixes to local restaurants, and eventually the rest of the country. When The Organic Kitchen at Earthbound Farm opened, it was yet another venue for Myra, and the café’s chefs, to share delicious recipes and ideas. Now Food to Live By brings this organic revolution to everyone who cares about what they eat.

From the Back Cover

From Earthbound Farm's Myra Goodman and her Farm Stand's Organic Kitchen comes an appealing, casual style of cooking. Easy to prepare, the more than 260 recipes make a deliciously persuasive case for using flavorful, fresh, organic foods as often as possible. Take the Sweet Corn Chowder, which uses not only corn kernels for the soup, but also the stripped cobs to make a rich, herb-scented broth. Or Ginger Carrot Soup, which proves how even familiar vegetables take on a whole new intensity and character when raised organically. From Golden Tomato Gazpacho, Roasted Beet and Arugula Salad, Foggy Day Chili, and Merlot-Braised Short Ribs with Cipollini Onions to Farm Stand Carrot Cake and Cherry Panna Cotta, these are deep down delicious dishes for everyone who cares about what they eat.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 402 pages
• Publisher: Workman Publishing Company (October 20, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0761138994
• ISBN-13: 978-0761138990
• Product Dimensions: 8.1 x 1.1 x 9.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.4 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (68 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #101,793 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #32 in Books > Cookbooks, Food & Wine > Organic Cooking

More About the Author

Myra Goodman and her husband, Drew, are co-founders of Earthbound Farm, which they started in their 2 1/2 acre backyard garden in 1984. Myra, originally from NYC, fell in love with organic farming and cooking at the same time.

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

62 of 63 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars My new favorite cookbook! January 27, 2007

By Trudy

Format:Hardcover

The beautiful cover of this cookbook caught my eye but the personal story of Earthbound Farms beginnings and the fantastic recipes have held me captive and peaked my enthusiasm for organics and healthy cooking. Since buying this delightful cookbook I feel a bit obsessed with trying recipe after recipe. I was especially happy to see the meat recipes as I have wanted to incorporate more organic meat dishes into my family's diet, especially with 2 teenagers, but felt I lacked experience in buying and preparing meat. What a hit they have been with my family and unexpected surprise in this cookbook. The Sizzling Steak with Olive Sauce had everyone applauding mom's new found culinary skills and the Merlot Braised Shortribs elevated my status to "chef Mom".

In addition to expanding my repertoire of meals this cookbook has given me healthier versions of some family favorites. The Maple Walnut Muffins thrilled me with the small amount of sugar and no butter! Using a 1/4 cup of heart healthy canola oil instead of the 2 sticks of butter I was using in The Barefoot Contessa's Banana Crunch Muffins showed me how easy to eliminate fat and not sacrifice taste. My kids adored them as well as all 30 of the recipes I have tried to date.

This is a cookbook I highly recommend and bought for many family and friends. Its interesting tips and facts as well as beautiful, inspiring photos have made cooking 24/7 for my family a delight and pleasure.

62 of 64 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Healthy Tasty Food March 13, 2007

By Jennifer A. Wickes VINE™ VOICE

Format:Paperback

Myra Goodman and her husband, over 20 years ago, began their farm by offering passers-by a taste of their organic raspberries. Today, they own and operate the world's largest grower of organic produce. Food to Live By encourages readers to embark on a healthier way of life. Through organic food, people can live a cleaner life. This is not confined to only vegetarianism, but to meat, produce, wine and more. Packed with color photos of Earthbound Farm, as well as the recipes, this book teases the reader into trying easy-to-prepare, healthy recipes that packed with originality. If you are pressed for time, Goodman offers shortcuts by using organic packaged products, so you can have the flavor and health without the guilt. Included in this book are guides to greens, squash and more. Similar to The Organic Cook's Bible (by Jeff Cox, Wiley, April 2006, ISBN: 0471445789), but with more recipes. Delicious encounters within this book are: Chicken Piccata, Pumpkin Pecan Muffins, Portuguese Kale Soup, and Apricot and Almond Tart.

70 of 78 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent General Cookbook. NOT just organic. January 17, 2007

By B. Marold HALL OF FAMETOP 100 REVIEWER

Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase

`Food to Live By' by Earthbound Farm co-founder, Myra Goodman and culinary `accomplices' Linda Holland and Pamela McKinstry announces itself as a cookbook for organic ingredients, and yet except for an emphasis on cooking with fruit, this is largely a brightly illustrated and joyfully assembled general purpose cookbook, I'm certain that the publisher, Workman, has a lot to do with the sidebar intensive style and better than average illustrations and snaps, but I also suspect much is owed to the great pleasure the author had in realizing this book.

The fact that the book does not quite fill its billing as a `healthy foods' book tempted me to give it only four stars. Two facts changed my mind. First, the hefty (402 pages) book lists for a scant $21.95 US. Second, the last Chapter 10 on `Basics' has excellent advice on making stocks. It may not be on the great reflective level of Deborah Madison or as finicky as the Culinary Institute of America textbook, but for a budget priced book, it is very good indeed.

I would still have demoted it to four stars if the general level of recipes was weak, but they are not. All of the traditional stuff is entirely up to snuff. For example, the pastry crust recipe hits all the right notes. The only caveat is that this and other recipes call for whole-wheat pastry flour, which I have not seen in my local megamart (Wegmans). On the other hand, I have seen lots and lots of `Earthbound Farm Organic' products in my very same Wegmans and the story of how Drew and Myra Goodman established their little business that could almost sounds too good to be true.

This story takes up the first 24 pages (the Roman numeraled ones in the introduction) of the book (which means that 402 pages are all recipes, no fluff). This is primarily a tale of being at the right place at the right time with the right idea. The couple leased a 2˝-acre farm in Carmel Valley, California and started by raising and selling raspberries while they accumulated moneys to continue their educations. One thing lead to another, falling into great good luck when they hit upon the notion of bagged salad greens just at the time that the country was becoming a lot more interested in more diverse vegetables and in organic produce, all with the same convenience of other supermarket fare. The result is that our heroes now own and run the largest producer of organic vegetables in the country, and probably in the world.

While the book starts with raspberry recipes and continues with soup and salad recipes, great destinations for their organic produce, the chapters are really almost exactly what you would find in a conventional cookbook. As the author points out, eating organic is certainly NOT the same as being a vegetarian (however, I suspect it is much easier to find organic fruits and vegetables than it is to find organic milk, eggs, meats, and poultry, let alone `organic' fish). This brings me to one of the very few complaints about this book. There is no appendix of sources for some the things not sold by Earthbound Farm. This includes the whole-wheat pastry flour and Grade A dark maple syrup. Fortunately, there are very few such `hard to find' ingredients.

The very first thing that told me this was a book with which to be reckoned was the recipe for carrot soup. While I'm sure I have a recipe for this somewhere among my dozen soup cookbooks, this is the first time this has caught my attention, and I plan to make it at the first opportunity. Talk about liquid gold!

One thing this book brings to mind is a latter day `Whole Earth Catalogue' lifestyle; however, there is very little hint of the hippie ethos and lifestyle here. We are, after all, talking about the owners of a multi-million dollar business. Thus, there are not many bread baking recipes or detailed canning or pickling recipes, but there is a bit of all these things, including ice cream making and homemade granola.

While Workman publishing sometimes strikes me as something of a `cookbook factory' publisher like Chronicle Books, both publishers seem to maintain a high standard, and this book fits a higher standard than most. Every so many pages, we run across little presents such as `A Field Guide to Great-Tasting Tomatoes'. These are informative and great eye candy. My only caveat is that you don't consider them `complete' guides. They do, however, spice up this amazingly low-priced book.

The value of this cookbook to you is directly in proportional to you inclination to collect cookbooks, divided by how many cookbooks you have now. If you already have 500 cookbooks, this one won't add a whole lot beyond the uplifting story of how the family Goodman got rich raising lettuce. It does not have a strong `health food' emphasis (just look at the mac and cheese recipe') and aside from the very good stock making section, there are not a lot of cooking insights, but that doesn't mean it isn't a danged good cookbook. So, if you like vegetables and soups and a really nice collection of good recipes, this book will brighten your day.