Russ Parsons

"'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 show more 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. show less

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. show more (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. show less

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 show more 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. show less

I loved the information in this book so much that I started taking notes. In the book the author explains what is actually happening when you cook food. I started reading this book the day after I made fried green tomatoes for the first time, and it just so happened the the first section of the book was about the chemical process of deep frying. So then I totally understood the purpose of every layer of coating of the fried green tomatoes and why they were the consistancy they were... it was show more just really interesting. Just all of these things with making pie crust and sauces and salad dressing that I have observed as I've learned to cook.. now I understand it a little better. Some of it was a bit scientific and I really just don't understand chemical structures of proteins and fats and sugars and all that. I really enjoyed the book, but I'd only recommend it to people who really like cooking show less