Customer Reviews

The Food Lover's Garden (Cook's Classic Library)

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This is a great book for home gardeners. Suggestions can be modified depending on geographical location. Then there is the personal commentary and great cooking suggestions. I have had this book since it's original printing in 1970 and treasure it immensly. I've just ordered it for my daughter who lives in the Seattle area.

I bought this book because who would not buy a book about which none other than MFK Fisher calls "in every sense of the word a modern classic"? I had read Mr. Pelligrini's book "The Unpredjudiced Palate". Although I find his very florid writing style a trifle overdone, he does make good points about staying in touch with the earth and our connection to the animals and plants we eat and how they get to the table. It is true we live to a large extent in a cellophane-wrapped, frozen, fast-food world. "A Food Lover's Garden" , however, must be read in these days with the knowledge that the book was originally published in 1970. And in those days, Mr. Pellegrini was obviously unaware that the wonderful fresh vegetables he harvested from his backyard garden, which were so "healthy" for his family's table, had been dusted, sprayed and marinated in chemical fertilizers and poisons such as diazinon and rotenone. So, although he does have a few interesting things to say about different vegetables, his straight-furrow planting and growing techniques are out-of-date, to say the least. In today's ecology-conscious world, we are all aware (or should be) of the effect of these poisons on the environment and on our bodies. Gardeners still must deal with garden pests, but I much prefer the totally organic, successive planting, intensive planting and interplanting techniques used by Sally Jean Cunningham in her book "Great Garden Companions". Her basic theory is to follow Mother Nature's example and create biodiversity in your garden by interplanting several species of vegetable and flower and herb, thereby creating a habitat for friendly garden predators who prey upon the pests. "Never spray!", she says. And as my husband and I are building our raised beds to start our first garden this spring, I look down at the creek below and wonder how much poison from lawn treatments and weed killer has gotten into it - lots, I suspect. No matter that we have many more "weeds" than the former inhabitants, to whom Round-Up was something you spread around everywhere, to the point there are still places where you can smell it a year later. "A Food Lover's Garden" means well - a curiosity read. But the how-to manual should be "Great Garden Companions". It is better to pick off a few bugs from your vegetables than to put all that poison into your land and into your bodies.