book list.

recommended reading.
(a work in progress)

This post will be backdated to January 2009 in perpetuity so as to keep it out of our way, and free for our updates as we encounter new or interesting books for addition to the list. Feel free to add your own recommendations.

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thoughts & theory.

• Well-written and provocative thoughts on the consequences of food, the conflict between nature and society and the things that end up in our stomachs from Michael Pollan in The Omnivore's Dilemma and his earlier work on gardening, Second Nature. From The New York Times, Unhappy Meals is a Pollan article on the problems that we've created for ourselves in our quest for culinary convenience, with some tips on what we can do.
  

• Mel suggests What are People For (and anything else by Wendell Berry).

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practical reference.

• I received Jam It, Pickle It, Cure It as a gift, and (this is a testament to how much I've enjoyed the book) I will be giving another copy away as a gift this holiday season. I will also be making treats from the book's many simple, beautifully photographed recipes to give away as gifts... this book is worth getting if you ever wondered how to make your own Junior Mints, marshmallows, bacon  and/or potato chips.

• Kitchen science at the molecular level, at its finest in Food and Cooking. More culinary/scientific reference in McGee's new tome Keys to Good Cooking: A Guide to Making the Best Foods and Recipes. Can't recommend these beautiful and useful books highly enough.

• Creative, informative and good-looking suggestions for urban gardens of all sorts in Alys Fowler's Garden Anywhere.

• Walter Willett takes nutritional science back to the basics in Eat, Drink, Be Healthy. 

• Here are some more recommendations I garnered from Roger Doiron's "How to Grow Your Own Urban Kitchen Garden Course" at Food+Farm in Portland, Maine. On Gardening: Ed Smith's The Vegetable Gardener's Bible, Mel Bartholemew's Square Foot Gardening and Barbara Damrosh's The Garden Primer. Both by Eliot Coleman are the classics The New Organic Grower and Four Season Harvest. Some fermentation recipes: Sandor Ellix Katz, Wild Fermentation. On preserving and canning your yield: Janet Green, Putting Food By.

• A list of books and films related to community, film and agriculture is available on Professor Phillip Howard's website.