Book Stall Review: You Can Farm.

Less than a century ago farming was the most common profession in America; nowadays it's one of the most difficult fields to enter.

Joel Salatin, best known for his book "Pastured Poultry Profits," is on a mission to prove that it is possible to farm full-time in ways that are both enjoyable and lucrative.

You Can Farm

The Entrepreneur's Guide to Start and Succeed in a Farming Enterprise

by Joel Salatin

Reviews Archive
Pastured Poultry Profits
Farm Direct
continued in The Book Stall

Favorite Wisconsin Cheese Recipes

Known as "America's Dairyland" of its abundant dairy production, Wisconsin is famous for its cheese, especially cheddar. Locals have been cooking with cheese for almost two centuries now and have perfected these recipes included in Wisconsin Cheese: A Cookbook and Guide to the Cheeses of Wisconsin by Martin Hintz and Pam Percy

• Blueberry Ricotta Coffee Cake
• Wisconsin Three-Cheese Soup with Parmesan Croutons
• Wisconsin Buttermilk Blue and Asian Pear Salad
• Santa’s Wisconsin Cheese Delight
• Asiago Cheese Puffs
• Wisconsin Cheddar Scones with Smoked Turkey
• Hook’s Blue Cheese Cake
• Cherry Cheddar Crusted Pork Tenderloin
• Wisconsin Gruyère Fondue
• Fontiago Polenta with Tomato Basil Concassée
• Goat Cheese Fudge
• Milk Chocolate Cheesecake

Wisconsin Cheese

A Cookbook and Guide to the Cheeses of Wisconsin 

by Martin Hintz and Pam Percy

The Globe Pequot Press, 2008

Reviews Archive
Cheese
Outrider Reading Group

Now cooking with... Super Roots

Remedial food. It's a thing.
Got a tummy ache? There's chicken broth.
Feeling toxic? Try some Ginger Mapo Tofu.
Tired? Gado Gado.
Bloated? Bibimap Wraps.
This cookbook offers 60 health-enhancing recipes based on therapeutic dishes from the Far East cultures of Thailand, Malaysia, Korea, Indonesia and more.

Super Roots: 

Cooking with Healing Spices to Boost Your Mood by Tanita de Ruijt.

Hardie Grant, 2019.

The Book Stall
Cookbooks
Medicinal Plants and Seeds

testing Beehive Alchemy

This book is a continuation of Petra Ahnert's popular Beeswax Alchemy.

With this new book, readers learn about the benefits and attributes of beeswax, honey, propolis, and more alongside a full range of projects and techniques to process and harness the amazing gifts of bees. Inside, there are instructions to make hand dipped birthday candles, lip balm, the classic French dessert canele bordelais, Lithuanian honey spirits, honey butter, honey mustard, propolis salve, hair pomade and more.

Beehive Alchemy: Beehive Alchemy Projects and recipes using honey, beeswax, propolis, and pollen to make soap, candles, creams, salves, and more.

by Petra Ahnert

Quarry Books, 2018.

Travels with Foxfire

The Foxfire oral history project delivers another compendium of the collected wisdom of artists, craftsmen, musicians, and moonshiners in Southern Appalachia. In this volume we learn the secret origins of stock car racing, the story behind the formation of the Great Smoky Mountains National Park, and how to gather wild ginseng.

More than thirty essays include the recipes of an award-winning cookbook writer along with profiles of bootleggers and bear hunters, game wardens and medicine women, water dowsers, sculptors, folk singers, novelists, record collectors, and even the world’s foremost “priviologist.”

Travels with Foxfire

Stories of People, Passions, and Practices from Southern Appalachia

by Phil Hudgins and Jessica Phillips

University Press of Kentucky, 2018

Rural Delivery

Book List

Outrider Reading Group

Review: Bake Like a French Pastry Chef

Michel et Augustin is the pastry version of Ben & Jerry's in France, creating cookies and other desserts with a team of 100 employees in Paris, Lyon, and New York.

With the ambition of becoming "the first company on planet Earth to be 100% pastry-certified," this book compiles five years of employee training sessions to prepare for Certificat d'Aptitude Professionnelle exams that certify the ability to make good French pastries.

The lessons and recipes are divided into five pastry families (tarts, entremets, choux pastry, puff pastry and viennoiseries) with instructions on making doughs, creating fillings and exploring variations. There's a glossary of pastry terms from bain-marie and frangipane to pecher mignon and T45, an encyclopedia of essential ingredients, and a collection of templates for shaping Paris-Brest, Religieuse, Salambo pastries and more.

Bake Like a French Pastry Chef

Delectable Cakes, Perfect Tarts, Flaky Croissants, and More

by Michel de Rovira and Augustin Paluel-Marmont

Countryman Press, 2018

continued in The Book Stall

Reviews Archive
Pastry
The Book Stall

Reading the History of California Wine

This book tells the 200-year story of the heady dream that wines as good as the greatest of France could be made in California. A dream dashed four times in merciless succession until it was ultimately realized in a stunning blind tasting in Paris. In that tasting, in the year of America's bicentennial, California wines took their place as the leading wines of the world.

Here is the complete and dramatic story of the ascendancy of California wine in vivid detail. It also looks at the larger story of California itself through its singular wine history.

Crush

The Triumph of California Wine

by John Briscoe

University of Nevada Press, 2018

Out of the Past
Book List
History and American West Titles