To Eat: A Country Life

At their home in North Hill, Vt., Eck and Winterrowd (who died in 2010, when this book was in progress) nurtured a seven-acre garden, reveling in its bounty and embracing harmony with nature. These elegant reflections on gardening and the vegetables and fruits they grow, harvest, and eat over four seasons offer a joyous celebration of our connection to food and the Earth. Writing about our attitude toward what we eat, for example, they observe that “we misuse our food. We treat it as a mere necessity when it is in fact an enormous pleasure... A simple cabbage or broccoli or cauliflower is, however you prepare it, goodness and pleasure, and what else ought we to seek in our lives?” About blueberries, they have the following to say: “Blueberries have every virtue. They are handsomely shaped, with dark sinuous twigging and foliage that in autumn turns a brilliant red.” And on the artistic side of gardening, they write, “If gardening has a purpose, it is to engender plenitude, a delicious human fantasy that want is banished... [It is] the Eden of our imaginations, here and now.” Gardeners and cooks should have a copy of this book, beautifully illustrated by Bobbi Angell and with recipes by Beatrice Tosti de Valminuta, in their kitchens, next to their garden tools, or on their nightstands. (June)