I've been reading again.

This evening I paged through Amanda Hesser's The Cook and the Gardner (I supposed I ought to do a proper citation but I'm not going to - it is late, I am tired and anyway Amazon has already done it). Amanda Hesser has a lot of snark thrown her way, which I'm not sure she deserves. I think she accomplished a lot in a competitive field at a young age and also comes across as rather unnecessarily pedantic and rigid in her writing (I hope to God that you can't really tell what someone is like through their writing, else my personality is not only run-on but also full of typos), a deadly combination for those who love nothing more than to tear down a tall poppy, as it were. But I like her and I think she's clever and creative and, unlike some well-known food industry people, I wouldn't be at all shy about having her to dinner. If she didn't like something I was doing I would just say, "Well then, Amanda, the kitchen's right there. Have at it!" She'd probably have a good time and either way I win.

I was unsure of The Cook and the Gardner because it is very, very thick and full of all kinds of things that I will never cook. I cannot, ever, make rabbit anything - as much as I might enjoy it - for my family because Brainiac had a pet rabbit in his youth and remains unrepentently sentimental about them. I will never cook a goose (although I could be talked into a duck), and I've never actually seen salsify or any of maybe a score of other vegetable featured in the book. But I was surprised by the preserving recipes, for jellies and jams, pickles and spirits. There are a couple recipes I will be noting before the book has to go back to the library, among them one for cassis (where I'm going to get black currents I couldn't tell you, but I want to be ready just in case) and another for a garlic green bean pickle that's sufficiently different from my own that I'm very intrigued. I need to make a list on the sidebar of this season's canning plans, but for now you can add Amanda Hesser's pickled green beans to the plum jam I've already mentioned.

In more book news, the same library visit that awarded me with The Cook and the Gardner also resulted in me bringing home two kids' books, From Fruit to Jam and From Fruit to Jelly. Despite the remarkably similar titles these books are not, in fact, from the same series - although each series has books with titles like From Metal to Airplane and From Idea to Book.

The first of the books, the Jam one, has lovely little 70s-era drawings showing a man and a woman visiting a farm to pick fruit and making jam in their own little kitchen. Part of the text is outdated - you just don't see preserving skin all that much anymore - but as a whole the book is charming and quite accurate. I can imagine a child reading the book might be inspired to ask a nearby grown-up to make jam right away.

The Jelly book, published in 2004, is an entirely different affair. In the illustrating photos, a large machine drives between rows of plum trees and the jelly is made in a small factory. The procedural steps are accurate as described - fruit is crushed and the resulting juice is heated with sugar and pectin to make jelly. Fair enough. I'm sad, though, that the heating step is described as necessary to kill the germs lurking in the pot (which could "make people sick") and that the final product is packed into boxes so trucks can take it to stores. No where is there even a hint that one might be able to cut out the packing and truck business altogether. Then again, who would want to make their own jelly when doing so requires braving contact yucky germs and avoiding large farm machinery and those huge vats of boiling liquid. Much safer just to hit the store and buy an already prepared jar thoughtfully delivered by the nice people in the truck. The glossary in the back of the book contains five terms, two of them are "germs" and "factory".

I'll give you two guesses which book I've read to the kids this week and which book went right back into the library tote for a speedy return.