Books about Tomatoes from Amazon.com

Situated beautifully at the intersection of Michael Pollan, Ruth Reichl, and Barbara Kingsolver, Heirloom is an inspiring, elegiac, and gorgeously written memoir about rediscovering an older and still vital way of life.

Fourteen years ago, Tim Stark was living in Brooklyn, working days as a management consultant, and writing unpublished short stories by night. One evening, chancing upon a Dumpster full of discarded lumber, he carried the lumber home and built a germination rack for thousands of heirloom tomato seedlings. His crop soon outgrew the brownstone in which it had sprouted, forcing him to cart the seedlings to his family’s farm in Pennsylvania, where they were transplanted into the ground by hand. When favorable weather brought in a bumper crop, Tim hauled his unusual tomatoes to New York City’s Union Square Greenmarket, at a time when the tomato was unanimously red. The rest is history. Today, Eckerton Hill Farm does a booming trade in heirloom tomatoes and obscure chile peppers. Tim’s tomatoes are featured on the menus of New York City’s most demanding chefs and have even made the cover of Gourmet magazine.

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This gardening classic was first published in 1975, and now a second generation of gardeners who prefer pest-resistant planning to chemicals will find a place for it on the shelves. Not only does it tell what to plant with what, but also how to use herbal sprays to control insects, what wild plants to encourage in the garden, how to grow fruit and nut trees, how to start small plots or window-box gardens, and much more. It's one of the most practical books around for any gardener of edibles, no matter how serious or casual..
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This is a book for the true tomato snob who is not content with the ordinary red beefsteak weighing heavily on the vine at the end of summer. Yellow, pink, green, and orange tomatoes are all part of this guide to heirloom varieties, many of which are only available through catalogs or through an organization called the Seed Savers Exchange.

Author Carolyn Male favors heirlooms that have been passed down through families, not commercially created hybrids. She does not hesitate to be critical, calling some varieties mealy or bland, while others send her into epiphanies. Although she makes gestures toward guiding the novice, this is a book for either food fanatics or experts who move in the subculture of truly obsessed gardeners catering to gourmet cooks and specialty markets. Throughout the book, enticing photographs of freshly picked heirlooms remind the reader that grocery store tomatoes aren't really tomatoes at all, sitting sadly under fluorescent lights, losing their flavor and color. If only they had been born in a tomato snob's garden; then they would have been treated like royalty. --Emily White.
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Folksy and fresh, endearing and affecting, Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe is the now-classic novel of two women in the 1980s: of gray-headed Mrs. Threadgoode telling her life story to Evelyn, who is in the sad slump of middle age. The tale she tells is also of two women--of the irrepressibly daredevilish tomboy Idgie and her friend Ruth--who back in the thirties ran a little place in Whistle Stop, Alabama, a Southern kind of Cafe Wobegon offering good barbecue and good coffee and all kinds of love and laughter, even an occasional murder. And as the past unfolds, the present--for Evelyn and for us--will never be quite the same again. . . ..
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Since 1973, Storey's Country Wisdom Bulletins have offered practical, hands-on instructions designed to help readers master dozens of country living skills quickly and easily. There are now more than 170 titles in this series, and their remarkable popularity reflects the common desire of country and city dwellers alike to cultivate personal independence in everyday life..
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With 150 tempting recipes for those lush, vine-ripened, sun-warmed, fat, juicy, and ready-to-burst heirloom tomatoes, The Tomato Festival Cookbook is the landmark cookbook for America's favorite garden vegetable Author Lawrence Davis-Hollander presents an exhaustive collection of everything about the tomato--from tomato lore, gardening how-to, expert advice on seed saving and preservation to selecting the right heirlooms for your gardenand your kitchen. With definitive recipes for such classics as Tomato Basil Quiche and marinara sauce to show-stoppers from chefs Alice Waters, Deborah Madison, Daniel Boulud, Rick Bayless, and Melissa Kelly, to name a few.

Whether you grow your own rainbow selection of heirlooms or are thinking of adding them to your garden, Davis-Hollander has the best advice on heirloom growing. As the founder and director of the Eastern Native Seed Conservancy, an organization dedicated to promoting our knowledge of useful plants, especially heirloom food plants, Davis-Hollanderhas handpicked the recipes and the chefs to contribute to this preeminent tomato bible. Along with an impressive background in botany and farming, Lawrence is committed to food preservation, sustainable farming, and the rebirth of the American Farmer's Market. For the tomato lover who does not have a garden full of plump, red heirlooms, this book offers a guide to the local Farmer's Market with a knowledgeable eye and an appetite for Green Zebras, Cherokee Chocolates, Box Car Willies, Omar's Lebanese, and Earl of Edgecombs. With recipes for everything from salsas, risottos, and Chicken Nicoise to tomato tarts and sorbet, The Tomato Festival Cookbook takes the tomato to new culinary heights. For anyone who loves eating, growing, preserving or just admiring tomatoes, The Tomato Festival Cookbook is as essential to the kitchen as the tomato itself..
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Charles Wilber tells his personal story of learning to work with nature, and his philosophy and approach to gardening He reveals for the first time how he grows record-breaking tomatoes and produce of every variety. There's no magic involved. Just a well thought out system that gives plants more than they could ever want, and makes it possible for them to reach their full potential. Wilber's compost is the cornerstone along with a wide circumference around plants layered with compost, alfalfa meal and mulch. Valuable pruning and watering details are given, too, as well as a new way of looking at seeds. As you will learn, growing awesome tomatoes integrates every aspect of gardening that you can imagine..
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"IT'LL MAKE FOR SOME MIGHTY FINE EATING."
--Fort Worth Star Telegram
After the tremendous success of her novel, Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe, and the beloved movie that followed, author Fannie Flagg received thousands of requests from all over the world asking for recipes from the little cafe of her Alabama childhood that was the model for the cafe in her novel. Now, she joyfully shares those recipes, in what may well be the first cookbook ever written by a satisfied customer rather than a cook! Inside you'll find wonderful recipes for:
* Skinless Fried Chicken * Pork Chops with Apples and Sweet Potatoes * Baked Ham and Pineapple Rings * Baked Turkey with Traditional Cornbread Dressing * Black-eyed Peas * Fried Okra * Creamed Onions * Broccoli Casserole * Southern Cream Gravy * Fried Catfish * Scalloped Oysters * Down Home Crab Cakes * Beaten Biscuits * Corn Pones * Lemon Ice Box Pie * Kentucky Bourbon Chocolate Pecan Pie * And much more!
The recipes in Fannie Flagg's Original Whistle Stop Cafe Cookbook are all for delicious hearty happy food that comes with all sorts of things, from gravies to hot sauces (very often the secret's in the sauce). But most of all this food, and this book, comes with love.
"If you liked her novel, Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe, and if you liked the movie they made from that novel, you'll like this cookbook....It's funny, just like Flagg."
--Richmond Times-Dispatch
"Recommended...All the traditional dishes are here, along with the author's irreverent, irresistible commentary on Southern cooking and culture."
--Library Journal.
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The Ripe Stuff

Jane Fonda, Judy Collins, and Isabel Allende are in their juicy years. So are a Midwest banker and Boston professor, a therapist who became a Mexican inn-keeper, an empty nester who took up Contra dancing

Author Susan Swartz likes to call this model of the new fifty-plus woman a Juicy Tomato, someone who enjoys her lushness, and, to push the metaphor, squeezes the most from life. The generation of women who fought to have a career, guilt-free sex, and their say in all things now insists on the right to make the second half of life as meaningful and ground-breaking as the first.

Juicy tomatoes know that experience is an asset, not a liability and that wisdom and power are a lot sexier than a flat stomach. They don't apologize for their age and they don't hide their spunk and savvy. Sure, there are regrets, losses, and laugh lines, but juicy tomatoes don't look back. Long after breaking barriers for women in their youth they are remaking the image of midlife and beyond.

The Juicy Tomatoes Guide to Ripe Living After 50 introduces you to over 100 such women, some well known and some as regular as the friends you call for coffee and comfort. They have clout and daring and humor and the reason they stand tall is not simply because they take their calcium. In candid interviews with the author they tell how they forged ahead and kissed those aging stereotypes goodbye.

The Juicy Tomatoes Guide to Ripe Living After 50 will inspire you, tickle you, and may even spur you to find your own juice.

"In reading Susan Swartz's wonderful The Juicy Tomatoes Guide to Ripe Living After 50 , I laughed out loud, recognizing so many of my own internalized myths about the aging process. What a relief to realize that there are so many gutsy and brave women over fifty who have turned life's detours and challenges into grand opportunities through their amazing resourcefulness and creativity. These passionate and daring risk takers are a joyful testimony to the new possibilities of womanhood. The lives of so-called "ordinary women" are woven into the most extraordinary tapestry of good advice and celebration of joyful living. Resonating throughout every story is the profoundness of Eleanor Roosevelt's message, "You must do the thing you think you cannot do."
- Molly Murphy MacGregor, executive director and the cofounder of the National Women's History Project

"After reading this second book by Susan, I've realized that not only am I juicy AND ripe, I've been marinating long enough! No more excuses! I'm gonna get out there and LIVE! I would be happy to call any one of the women in this book, 'Sister.' Susan knows how to bring the 'juice' out of each of us!"
- Dee Adams, creator of Minnie Pauz

"The Juicy Tomatoes Guide to Ripe Living After 50 gives you a girl's night out without leaving your favorite reading chair-or bubble bath. It's a "whew!" for those of us at 50+ who have thoughts 180 degrees different from our mothers, letting us know we aren't alone. And a nudge down a path we were contemplating but needed just a bit more courage to take the first step."
- Jeanie Linders, writer and producer of Menopause: The Musical, founder of Aging Out Loud, and publisher of W4W VOICES.
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