The Harvest Eating Cookbook

More than 200 Recipes for Cooking with Seasonal Local Ingredients

By Keith Snow

With the popularization of organic foods in the last few years, many people have been changing their diets, opting for healthier and more natural fare. Chefs, too, are showcasing the importance of using fresh ingredients and the health benefits involved. Keith Snow, host of the PBS series "Harvest Eating with Chef Snow," is no exception as he introduces his audience to the "locavore" lifestyle of eating food grown or produced locally.

In The Harvest Eating Cookbook, Snow teaches readers how such a lifestyle is possible with more than 200 recipes and easy-to-follow instructions for the novice, as well as an introduction to his principles of "Cookonomics"—do-it-yourself, at-home cooking for the seasoned cook.

The Harvest Eating Cookbook is all about keeping things simple, from the ingredients to the instructions. Snow makes it clear that this isn't an attempt to create a fad diet, but rather an introduction to a lifestyle of cooking and eating foods that are fresh and in season. By doing so, you can avoid the fillers, preservatives and questionable ingredients found in many packaged foods. Not only does Snow supply sources for finding local food providers, but a guide to growing your own garden and a grocery list to get you started with a Harvest Eating pantry.

The recipes take up about 230 pages of the midsection with ideas for everything from breakfasts and breads, to soups and salads, to desserts and drinks, such as Spinach and Cheddar Cheese Stuffed Tomatoes, Cinnamon-Thyme Chicken, and Roasted Beet Salad with Sheep's Milk Feta Cheese. Each one is marked with symbols to indicate which recipe's main ingredients are at their freshest—a snowflake for winter, a sun for summer, etc. So go, locavore!