I really liked this book when I stsrted reading it. The book goes through different vegetables, gives a brief history of how it was discovered/cultivated/bred, and how to choose the best ones. Some of the facts he gave were really interesting and I am amazing by plants and people and how we interact, but by the end I was just a little bored. ( )

Brilliant book, just as good as Parsons' previous one, How to Read a French Fry. Just as that book improved my cooking after I'd read just a few pages (really it did), this one immediately changed how I picked fruit in the supermarket and stored them. For instance, I didn't know that a few small brown spots on cauliflowers were only sun spots, so this week I bought a couple of them that had been reduced because of this, and found, like the book said, they didn't affect eating quality at all. (Not a lot of brown spots, that is going bad!)

The book is mostly about why we eat the varieties of fruit we do which is generally because of the needs of farmers to make a living, not really anything to do with what the person who eats it might like. There is a way around this by going to farmers' markets where there is no middleman between the farmer and the retail outlet, where the farmer can get higher prices by growing what the public actually want - strawberries that are sweet and delicious rather than travel well and ripen slowly - and where the quantities grown can be small rather than what the distributor demands. By cutting out the middleman the farmer can make as much money selling directly as by growing quantity for the big brands and supermarkets.

I also learned quite a lot about the botany of fruits and got a mystery cleared up for me. I didn't know that there was no such thing as a wild orange, that an orange was originally a cross between a pomelo and a tangerine. In my garden in the winter I had a greenish citrus fruit that looked like an orange but tasted more like a tangerine. I have wild pomelo trees and probably tangerine somewhere in the bush (I live in a rain forest) so now I know what the fruit was. Its awfully ugly and knobbly but it tastes divine, like a tangerine with honey stirred in.

The book also includes tips on selecting, storing and cooking the fruits. It is very readable and enjoyable, full of ah-hah moments, and likely to improve your quality of life far more than the usual self-help books. ( )

"'Eat locally, eat seasonally.' A simple slogan that is backed up by science and by taste. The farther away from the market something is grown, the longer it must spend getting to us, and what eventually arrives will be less than satisfying. Although we can enjoy a bounty of produce year-round -- apples in June, tomatoes in December, peaches in January -- most of it is lacking in flavor. In order to select wisely, we need to know more. Where and how was the head of lettuce grown? When was it picked and how was it stored? How do you tell if a melon is really ripe? Which corn is sweeter, white or yellow?

Russ Parsons provides the answers to these questions and many others in this indispensable guide to common fruits and vegetables, from asparagus to zucchini. He offers valuable tips on selecting, storing, and preparing produce, along with one hundred delicious recipes. Parsons delivers an entertaining and informative reading experience that is guaranteed to help put better food on the table."

This description may make the book sound clinical but Parsons infuses it with details and personality that make us relate to what he writes about. The argument about whether fat or skinny asparagus are better? Been there. Argued that. To reduce the heat of a pepper remove the ... no, not the seeds ... the ribs, which is where the capsicum is stored. Aha!

For each fruit and veg he provides a very basic preparation method that we might not have considered. Then he goes on to a few more interesting recipes for each. Not too many, but just enough to pique our curiosity and taste buds and make us want to come back for more. ( )

The text is good, but this clearly not meant to be a keeper; no pictures, and the paper is so cheap it might actually be newsprint. My 4-month-old book is already starting to yellow.

Parsons is in the flavor camp, as opposed to the organic camp or the local camp, and he has some good advice on picking good produce from supermarket shelves, which is handy. There are a few essays on everything from souffles to Hmong-language farm reports, which are entertaining, but not revelatory. I'll copy a few recipes (none of the ones with heavy cream), write down a few tips on picking melons, and then pass the book on. ( )

Highly recommended. The author was the food critic for the LA Times. Part cookbook, part food dictionary, Parsons talks about the local food movement and educates on things most people don't know anymore: when things are in season, where they are grown and how to tell the good and ripe from the bad. He sets up his book by the seasons, starting in spring. The recipes, for the most part, are not terrible complicated. The author wants to show off the great freshness of the food, not how talented the cook is. Seriously, I have hated brussel sprouts and cabbage since childhood, yet because of this book I want to try some fresh ones just to see how much a difference freshness will make. ( )