All about: Cooking With The Seasons: A Year In My Kitchen By Monique Jamet Hooker and Tracie Richardson This very personal culinary narrative cookbook is meant to help you learn to prepare meals using fresh, seasonal ingredients grown in your geographical area, whatever your level of expertise in the kitchen. It is also meant to entertain the casual reader with the experiences I shared with nine brothers and sisters while growing up on my family's 17 th century chateau farm in France. Over 200 recipes are included in the book, all inspired by the dishes and techniques I grew up with in Europe. At the same time the recipes are uniquely American because they call for a wide range of ingredients easily available to us here in the United States. The recipes are seasonally based month by month to encourage cooks to learn about and use foods grown regionally. A convenient, easy to read harvest chart individually detailing the peak times for fresh produce in five growing regions of the United States is included. Following this chart makes understanding local growing seasons easy, and helps you understand when foods shipped from different parts of the country to their neighborhood market are at their flavorful best. The recipes I've created are beautiful to look at and simple to prepare, using basic cooking techniques. They play on seasonal characteristics of taste, texture and color, and are meant to spark the imagination and encourage your own creativity in the kitchen. Cooking With The Seasons: A Year In My Kitchen is also the story of how families can enjoy the seasonal market by celebrations at the table. Taking that little extra moment to share, whether it's during a large holiday dinner or at a picnic enjoying the best of summer's bounty, is what binds us together. There are many ways of gathering around food. Let me show you how by telling of my childhood in Brittany through stories and recipes that celebrate the best food America has to offer each season. My family's daily life may seem to speak with the voice of another era, but it is only the echo of the joy I continue to find through sharing meals today. By bringing the seasons into the kitchen I know you, too, will soon find your own joy inviting family and friends to the table. à bientôt and Bon Appétit Monique "Drawing on her Brittany tradition, Monique Hooker helps us discover that fascinating, little-known par of France and allows us to partake of great cooking from her youth> This book is based on the seasons, and all her recipes - from Country Soup with Dandelion and Watercress and her Braised Pork Roast with Carrots and plums to her Upside-Down Apple Cake - use seasonal ingredients for peak flavor. This is the best way to enjoy food in communion with nature." -Jacques Pepin, master chef, cookbook author, and host of "Jacques Pepin's Kitchen" on PBS-TV "This book is a compelling inspiration in accordance with seasonal foods, Organized by the month and guided by a harvest chart of when fresh produce is at its peak, over 200 well-written, appealing recipes elicit the best of the season. When such recipes as Fireside Cabbage Soup, Sea Scallops with oranges and Cracked Pepper, Chicken in Calvados, and Thumbprint Lemon Cookies brighten January, you can imagine the culinary temptations for the remaining eleven months. Drawing from her mother's cooking for a large family of twelve on their farm in Brittany, Monique Hooker has preserved the essence of her mother's seasonal taste while adapting the recipes to her own style and the realities of American kitchens. The seasonal comments, side notes, variations, and 'Monique's Touch' tips expand each recipe, evidence of the expertise that she has developed in her years of teaching cooking classes." -Abbey Mandel, author of "Celebrating the Midwest Table" and founder of the Green City Market in Chicago "If you wondered about what Frenchmen call 'la cuisine du coeur' (cooking from the heart), here is your chance to dicover it in Monique Hooker's splendid description of her mother's food offerings and how they molded her into a Breton cook. Do not miss this book; its recipes are as simple to execute as they are delicious and it is peerless in its evocation of the yearly cycle of life in Brittany." -Madeleine Kamman, Author of "When French Women Cook", Founder of the School for American Chefs, Beringer Wine Estates "Monique Hooker's philosophy of seasonal cooking is one we all need to heed, not only for the pleasure of serving the best-tasting, freshest meals, but for a greater awareness of nature and our place in it" -Carol Haddix, Food Editor, Chicago Tribune Best described as a culinary pioneer, Monique Jamet Hooker is a chef, teacher and author with a lifelong enthusiasm for food and travel. Trained in Europe, she moved to New York where she worked alongside of and made lasting friendships with chefs like Jacques Pepin, Pierre Franey, Andre Soltner and Madeleine Kamman. In the early 1970's, she moved to C