Going "Green" - Eldrbarry's Vegetable Recipes Page

Cooking at Eldrbarry's - Going "Green"

Mediterranean Diet

There are some great cook books available and I have been gradually adding some of them to my own library.
I have put lists of them on this page, as well as some helpful resources for the growing of "leafy greens".
Check for them at your local library, then check out the "used book" prices on Amazon on ones you like -- there are bargains to be found.
Since we seldom "eat out" any more, it occurs to me that we can probably afford a few more "used" cook books with the money we no longer spend on "fast foods"!

The first question when encountering a new vegetable is usually: "How do I fix this?". Here are some books on preparation techniques...

How to Cook without a Book by Pam Anderson. This book teaches you all sorts of technigues for preparing dishes based on available ingredients and simple cooking techniques with plenty of flexibility to use what you have on hand. Each chapter consists of a simple technique, basic recipe, variations, key points and a little mnemonic device used to recall the technique. Such as Steam - Saute, Pan Sauces, etc. This is in my opinion, a Must Have! The author is a favorite of mine: her The Perfect Recipe for Losing Weight and Eating Great offers a sensible weight loss strategy.
The Art of Simple Food: Notes, Lessons and Recipes from a Delicious Revolution by Alice Waters. Her philosophy: buy local, high quality ingredients, and cook them simply. She then proceeds to give very explicit directions on how to cook things. What makes her recipes unique are the variations that she provides for each, and she does a very good job of explaining where you should improvise and where you should not. See also her book In the Green Kitchen: Techniques to Learn by Heart.
Jamie Oliver's Jamie's Food Revolution: Rediscover How to Cook Simple, Delicious, Affordable Meals is considered one of the best cook books for novice home cooks with step-by-step pictures and easy to follow traditional recipes that are fairly quick, good for you and easy. Jamie's Web Site.

Some Vegetarian books with healthy and good tasting food that you don't hve to be a "vegetarian" or "vegan" to enjoy...

Vegetable Literacy: Cooking and Gardening with Twelve Families from the Edible Plant Kingdom, with over 300 Deliciously Simple Recipes by Deborah Madison (see "Greens" below) is a big book that reveals the surprising relationships between vegetables, edible flowers, and herbs within the same botanical families, and how understanding these connections can help home cooks see everyday vegetables in new light. Publ in 2013 - one of the best books on the subject!
Donna Klein's The Mediterranean Vegan Kitchen looks promising for some tasty "meat- and dairy- less" meals, as does her Supermarket Vegan which uses simple ingredients from your local grocery store. These books show that "Vegan" can taste great!
366 Healthful Ways to Cook Leafy Greens by Linda Romanelli Leahy - "Leafing" through this one, all I can say is "Wow!" There are so many recipes begging to be prepared, and they all will be flavorful. Lots of different ways to fix them, and not all are vegetarian either!
Greens Glorious Greens: More than 140 Ways to Prepare All Those Great-Tasting, Super-Healthy, Beautiful Leafy Greens by Johnna Albi
Spinach and Beyond: Loving Life and Dark Green Leafy Vegetables by Linda Diane Feldt
Raising the Salad Bar: Beyond Leafy Greens--Inventive Salads with Beans, Whole Grains, Pasta, Chicken, and More by Catherine Walthers. There is a reason this book has only 5 Star reviews on Amazon - It inspires creativity. Striking combinations of ingredients, and guidence on how to choose them. And there are 70 homemade dressings too, including some marvelous vinaigrettes!
Mediterranean Fresh: A Compendium of One-Plate Salad Meals and Mix-and-Match Dressings by Joyce Goldstein. What I like about this book is it is packed with information; and most recipes offer alternative dressings. And for those of you who like pictures showcasing the presentation of a dish - this one abounds in those too.
Mediterranean Harvest: Vegetarian Recipes from the World's Healthiest Cuisine Martha Rose Shulman has gotten to be one of my favorites!
The Greek Vegetarian: With more Than 100 Recipes Inspired by the Traditional Dishes and Flavors of Greece by Diane Kochilas get good reviews, having looked through it, I can see why.
Serving Up the Harvest: Celebrating the Goodness of Fresh Vegetables by Andrea Chesman For those of you who don't know what to do with all of your home grown vegetables, this book has lots of ideas - another book I open often.
The Roasted Vegetable by Andrea Chesman. I have been hearing that Roasted Vegetables are great - here is the book that show us how great they can be. A reason to look forwards to Winter time, after Summer's bounty is gone. She also has Recipes from the Root Cellar: 270 Fresh Ways to Enjoy Winter Vegetables which may add some zing to the winter diet. The book is not just for vegetarians either.
Winter Harvest Cookbook: How to select and prepare fresh seasonal produce all winter long by Lane Morgan has lots of interesting vegetarian and vegan recipes. An added bonus is that she lives in the Pacific Northwest.
The Carrot Purple and Other Curious Stories of the Food We Eat by Joel S. Denker. This book is not a cookbook, but a collection of fifty informative essays about the vegetables we eat. (For more books on the history of foods, see eldrbarry's page on Cuisines.

The Mediterranean Diet is very healthy, and uses a lot of fresh vegetables...
This is not a low-fat or low-carbohydrate diet. The eating plan approximates the traditional Mediterranean diet by suggesting the optimal intake of fruits, vegetables, nuts, legumes, whole grains, dairy products, olive oil, meat, chicken, eggs, and fish. The diet also helps prevent chronic heart desease and diabetes.

The Mediterranean Diet Marissa Cloutier, registered dietitian, The Mediterranean Prescription: Meal Plans and Recipes to Help You Stay Slim and Healthy for the Rest of Your Life by Dr. Angelo Acquista, and/ or The Advanced Mediterranean Diet: Lose Weight, Feel Better, Live Longer by Dr. Steve Parker, will show the way to using the diet to promote healthier living.
The Flat Belly Diet by Liz Vaccariello (Prevention Magazine) and Cynthia Sass has a Flat Belly Diet Cookbook and a very handy Flat Belly Diet Pocket guide And yes, Flat Belly's working for us, combined with walking 2-3 miles a day - we both took off about 15 pounds in a month, and have continued to lose weight while eating some great food!. In three months, I have lost over 25 pounds.
The New Mediterranean Diet Cookbook,: A Delicious Alternative for Lifelong Health by Nancy Jenkins has lots of recipes.
I have collected Mediterranean Pesto and Tapenade Recipes -- both add a lot of healthy flavor to foods, and are tasty on wraps, and with vegetable & pasta dishes.

A number of fine Restaurants have taken a lead in bringing people back to eating more healthy Greens and Vegetarian foods.

Chez Panisse , Alice Waters' restaurant in Berkeley, California, became a path-finder back to fresh, healthy foods. She is behind the Edible Schoolyard Project and involved in the Slow Food Movement. Chez Panisse Vegetables and Chez Panisse Fruit introduce the variety of fresh fruits and vegetables they have used in preparing many striking recipes. One of the first restaurants to build its menus on fresh local ingredients - it was the foundation of California Cuisine - and the jumping off place for Jeremiah Tower and Wolgang Puck who have shaped the Fusion Cuisine now served in many fine restaurants. See my page on the Cuisines of America for more on the development of cuisines.

Greens, a restaurant in San Francisco, was founded by Deborah Madison who wrote The Greens Cookbook and Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone which includes comprehensive information about ingredients and techniques, as well as 800 recipes. The current Chef Annie Sommerville has published Everyday Greens: Home Cooking from Greens and Fields of Greens: New Vegetarian Recipes. Reviewers suggest her recipes take time in preparation, but the flavors are great.

The Moosewood Restaurant is a prominent avocate of Vegetarian cookery - and has published a number of recipe books.

Mixt Greens A Chef's Bold Creations by Andrew Swallow, founder of Mixt Greens - an "eco-gourmet fast-casual" "green" restaurant with locations in San Francisco, Los Angeles, and Washington, D.C.
The best sources for these may be either local farmer's markets , or a local Food Co-op ; a Community Supported Agriculture program in your area; or the niche supermarkets focused on organic foods like Whole Foods, Trader Joes, etc. Most supermarkets (even the "organic" ones) generally bring their produce great distances, leaving significant "carbon footprints," with a loss of freshness and flavor.
Emeril Lagasse expounds this philosophy on his show, Emeril Green and Planetgreen.discovery.com has Emeril's "Green" recipes. His book Farm to Fork: Cooking Local, Cooking Fresh has some great vegetable recipes in it. Emeril's web site

Some more books on eating locally and seasonally...

Eating Well in Season: The Farmer's Market Cookbook by Jessie Price and the Editors at EatingWell. Healthy foods presented seasonally with extra delicious photography. The recipes seem somewhat complicated.
Local Flavors: Cooking and Eating from America's Farmers' Markets by Deborah Madison. Organized by the fruits and vegetables in their seasons, this book has a lot of tasty recipes using those odd ingredients that may be found in a farmer's market!
Earth to Table: Seasonal Recipes from an Organic Farm by Jeff Crump and Bettina Schormann. A significant portion of this book is made up of well written essays on the whys of eating seasonal, local, organic and "Slow Food." The recipes tend to be for chefs.
Edible: A Celebration of Local Foods by Tracy Ryder and Carole Topalian
Recipes from America's Small Farms: Fresh Ideas for the Season's Bounty by Joanne Hayes
Simply in Season by Cathleen Hochmann-Wert and Mary Beth Lind

Stocking the Pantry:

Urban Pantry: Tips and Recipes for a Thrifty, Sustainable and Seasonal Kitchen by Amy Pennington is a practical guide for country and city folk who want to make better use of their kitchen, garden, and time. Amy Pennington offers great tips on shopping, food storage, canning, and gardening, along with creative recipes and lots of helpful explanations of ingredients and technique.
A Twist of the Wrist: Quick Flavorful Meals with Ingredients from Jars, Cans, Bags, and Boxes by Nancy Silverton. Aims to simplify meal preparation through use of canned and boxed ingredients without resorting to the worst of processed foods.
Super Natural Cooking: Five Delicious Ways to Incorporate Whole and Natural Foods into Your Cooking by Heidi Swanson. Using the "natural foods" now widely available in co-ops and supermarkets, this book shows to become confident in a "whole-foods kitchen" by experimenting with alternative flours, fats, grains, sweeteners, and more.
Canning for a New Generation: Bold, Fresh Flavors for the Modern Pantry by Laura Krissoff. Fresh and new ways to preserve nature�s bounty throughout the year.
Put'em Up!: A Comprehensive Home Preserving Guide for the Creative Cook, from Drying and Freezing to Canning and Pickling by Sherri Brooks Vinton

More Home Preserving Titles...

Ball Complete Book of Home Preserving by Judi Kingry and Lauren Devine;
Making & Using Dried Foods by Phyllis Hobson;
The Complete Book of Pickling: 250 Recipes from Pickles and Relishes to Chutneys and Salsas by Jennifer MacKenzie
Pickles and Relishes: From Apples to Zucchinis, 150 recipes for preserving the harvest by Andrea Chesman
Jam It, Pickle It, Cure It: And Other Cooking Projects by Karen Solomon
Knack Canning, Pickling & Preserving by Kimberley Willis and Victor Budnik
The Flavor Bible: The Essential Guide to Culinary Creativity, Based on the Wisdom of America's Most Imaginative Chefs Definitely the better book of combining ingredients and their flavors!
The Food Substitutions Bible: More Than 6,500 Substitutions for Ingredients, Equipment and Techniques by David Joachim

And now for finding fresh or locally grown ingredients nearby us . . .:

Sno-Isle Natural Food Co-op, Everett . . Central Market, Mill Creek . . PCC Natural Markets, Seattle Area

Local Farms and Farmer's Markets: Washington Farmer's Markets Association . . EatWell Guide
Snohomish County Agricultural Tourism (Local Farms) . . Local Harvest CSA (Everett Area)
Red Rooster Route (Arlington) . . Garden Treasures Farm

Organic Home Deliveries: SPUD! (Small Potatoes Urban Delivery) . . Klesick Family Farm . . Full Circle Farm . . Mother Nature's Organic Delivery

Oranizations Re-"localizing" our food system:
Local Harvest: Community Supported Agriculture : . . Cascade Harvest Coalition : Puget Sound Fresh (King County) . . Seattle Chef's Collaborative

Farmer's Market Videos: Puget Sound Farmer's Markets . . Healthy, Local, Fresh: Farmers Markets & Community Wellness (Tacoma) . . Hints for Shopping at a Farmer's Market . . Farmer's Markets . . Growing Communities . . Taking back our Food System . . Community Supported Agriculture . . Connecting with Local Agriculture
Building a Local Food Economy Part 1 . Part 2 . Part 3

More: Cooking Up a Story Shows about People, Food and Sustainable Agriculture

For a directory of Farmer's Markets around the USA see the Local Harvest website

The Locavore's Handbook The Busy Persons Guide to Eating Local on a Budget by Leda Meredith is a very practical book that might help you in implimenting local foods into your diet.
Some helpful books for those who want to grow their own vegetables and greens . . .