Too Many Tomatoes, Squash, Beans, and Other Good Things: A Cookbook for When Your Garden Explodes (Paperback)

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Editorial Reviews

Product Description

A reissue of the unusual and classic cookbook with hundreds of savory and delectable recipes to help every gardener find ample ways to make use of the riches the garden provides.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

Carrot Cake

Serves 8

2 cups flour
1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon nutmeg
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1 1/2 teaspoons baking soda
2 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 cups oil
2 cups sugar
4 eggs, slightly beaten
2 cups grated raw carrots
1 cup drained crushed pineapple
1 cup chopped nuts
8 ounces cream cheese, at room temperature
1 box confectioner's sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
12 tablespoons butter or margarine, at room temperature

Sift together into large bowl.

Mix together and add to dry ingredients.

Add to batter. Pour into greased Bundt pan and bake 1 hour at 325º. Or use greased 13-by-9-inch pan for 30 to 35 minutes.

Cream together, and frost cake when cool.

To decorate, wash and dry a carrot with greens still attached and lay on top of cake.

Spanakopitta

Serves 12-18

8 cups chopped spinach
1 onion, minced
4 tablespoons butter
2 tablespoons flour
1 cup milk
5 eggs, beaten 1 pound feta cheese, crumbled (or other mild white cheese, grated)
Dash of nutmeg and cinnamon
8 ounces phyllo pastry sheets
1/2 cup butter, melted

Sauté 4 to 5 minutes.

Stir in flour, then gradually add milk and stir until thickened. Remove from beat.

Stir in until smooth.

In 11-by-14-inch sheet pan, brush and layer 8 sheets with butter. Add filling and repeat with 8 more layers. Bake at 350º for 30 minutes. Cut into squares.

Cut this Greek delicacy into small squares and serve as hot hors d'oeuvre. Remember, when working with phyllo, to keep unused pastry sheets moist by covering with a damp towel.

Product Details

• Paperback: 287 pages
• Publisher: HarperPerennial (March 13, 1991)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0060968575
• ISBN-13: 978-0060968571
• Product Dimensions: 7.9 x 7.9 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (12 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #306,446 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

30 of 31 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Fantastic concept--poor execution, April 13, 2004

By	H. Grove "owling6683" (Maryland, USA) - See all my reviews (TOP 100 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

I love the *idea* of this cookbook. It presents chapters organized alphabetically by garden vegetable. Each chapter includes notes on growing and harvesting the vegetable, yield information, a few nutritional notes, information on storage, freezing, cooking, basic preparation, and complementary herbs. The freezing information is perhaps the most useful, in my mind. The one truly great piece of information I got out of this cookbook is that you *can* freeze and then reheat potato dishes, as long as you don't thaw them first; most cookbooks will just tell you that you can't do this. (However, it doesn't give any instructions as to which sorts of dishes work well for this and which don't--and believe me, some work *much* better than others. Let's just say that if you want to freeze potato dishes, freeze ones in which the potato is in as mashed and creamy a state as possible, with few chunks.)

The recipes themselves are all over the map in terms of quality, and lean very heavily on fatty dairy products to make them flavorful--which means that they won't be very useful to vegans or folks on a diet (two major groups of people who are going to want to make heavy use of vegetables in their diet). Most of them also don't use a huge amount of the vegetable in question, and don't state whether they freeze well or not (and if they do, how to alter the cooking instructions for the frozen dish), which means that these recipes aren't any more useful for the cookbook's stated purpose than those in other cookbooks. The only advantage is that in here they're organized by vegetable, and, well, that's what an index is for in other cookbooks. You'd be better off with a copy of the Joy of Cooking--it covers all the vegetables as well, and the recipes are of much more consistent quality.

Speaking of the recipes... Some of the recipes have blatant mistakes in them (like the recipe that called for WAY too much salt--our best guess is that it should have called for one *teaspoon* instead of one *tablespoon*). Others just don't taste very good; rarely have I found a cookbook with such incredibly mediocre recipes. Because of the way the recipes are written up, sometimes it's tough to tell which groups of ingredients go with which instructions. Although the recipes look incredibly simple, sometimes that's because they under-explain things or leave out steps, which means that the kind of cook who'll appreciate having simple recipes will probably have problems with them.

This book is a great concept, and it saddens me to have to give it such a poor review. But it just doesn't stand up to real use.

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Great Gardener's Cookbook, September 2, 2005

By	Erika Mitchell (E. Calais, VT USA) - See all my reviews (TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

This review is from: Too Many Tomatoes, Squash, Beans and Other Good Things: Cook Book for When Your Garden Explodes (Hardcover)

This book is a treasure-trove of ideas about what to do with your garden bounty. It goes far beyond tomatoes, with recipes for everything from asparagus to zucchini. The book has a chapter for each common garden vegetable, and the chapters are in alphabetical order for easy reference. At the beginning of each chapter is a brief description of the vegetable, notes for growing and harvesting, descriptions of yield, storage, freezing, and cooking instructions, and suggestions for complementary herbs. Then come about 15 recipes for each vegetable, including soups, appetizers, salads, main dishes, side dishes, and desserts.

The authors are obviously great and creative cooks. The recipes use basic ingredients, and do not call for processed or convenience foods. There aren't many recipes in this book for fancy occasions-most are for simple good home cooking type of meals that don't take a lot of elaborate preparations or require exotic ingredients. The gardening advice isn't quite up to the level of the cooking notes, however. For example, the authors instruct readers to discard the entire cabbage plant after harvest, but you can actually get some baby cabbages by leaving the plant in the ground and cutting an X across the stalk. Alternatively, one way to store cabbages is to pull the entire plant up by the roots and hang it in a cool, dry place. In the corn chapter, the authors recommend extending the corn season by planting corn with different maturation dates. However, corn is wind pollinated, and it is one plant where this year's harvest will be affected by mixing varieties, so if you're going to try to grow several kinds of corn, you need to keep them at least 100 feet apart. That's kind of hard to do in a backyard garden. In short, this is a great cookbook, but for gardening advice, you'd do better to look elsewhere.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Can't live without it!, August 10, 2003

By	"jcsf1" (San Francisco, CA USA) - See all my reviews

I bought this book at least 20 years ago, when I first started cooking. I originally bought it to find ways to use produce received from a neighborhood co-op. As a result I learned ways to cook items that I thought I did not like. Now, many of my favorite recipes are from the book.
Over the years, I used this cookbook so much it literally fell apart. So, I was thrilled to see it available on Amazon.com. Now I have a nice new copy.
I consider it an essential cookbook for any cook. The recipes range from classic to unique - all are easy to make; none too fancy.
It's a winner.