Edible: A Celebration of Local Foods

Edible: A Celebration of Local Foods
Authored By:Tracey Ryder and Carole Topalian
List Price: $29.95
Amazon Price: 19.75
Reviewed By: Aubrey Gill
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Edible: A Celebration of Local Foods. They say to not judge a book by its cover. If I had, I think I would have been pretty close. Edible: A Celebration of Local Foods looks and feels very much like a college textbook. After opening the book, I realized that it is in fact very text heavy. The majority of the book is comprised of short essays about local foods and their origin. These essays successfully highlight the farmers, retailers, chefs, and organizations of different geographic regions (six). By doing this, Edible illustrates to us how food travels from its source to the table. If you are like me and enjoy reading cookbooks that contain recipes from cover to cover, don’t hold your breath. It isn’t until page 209 that we uncover the first recipe. The wait though, is worth it. Like the rest of the book, the recipe section is filled with beautiful color photos that aren’t overworked, which reminds us of the natural and organic nature of the book. Recipes range from very simple, like grilled apricots with blue cheese and hazelnuts, to complex ones, like the grilled quail with hazelnuts, apricot curry sauce, and wild huckleberry coulis. Simple or not, the recipes (divided into seasonal sections) are fresh and new just like the featured ingredients. There is indeed a revolution going on that travels from earth’s magnificent dirt, to the end of our fork, and whether or not you have a handle on it, this book opens yet another window from which we can see the bright future that is local food.