A visual feast of the Midwest's homegrown bounty In this splendidly illustrated book, food writer and self-described farm groupie Janine MacLachlan embarks on a tour of seasonal markets and farmstands throughout the Midwest, sampling local flavors from Michigan, Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Missouri, Iowa, Minnesota, and Wisconsin. She conducts delicious research as she meets farmers, tastes their food, and explores how their businesses thrive in the face of an industrial food supply. She tells the stories of a pair of farmers growing specialty crops on a few acres of northern Michigan for just a few months out of the year, an Ohio cattle farm that has raised heritage beef since 1820, and a Minnesota farmer who tirelessly champions the Jimmy Nardello sweet Italian frying pepper. Along the way, she savors vibrant red carrots, slurpy peaches, vast quantities of specialty cheeses, and some of the tastiest pie to cross anyone's lips. Informed by debates about eating local, seasonal crops, organic farming, sanitation, and biodiversity, Farmers' Markets of the Heartland tantalizes with special recipes from farm-friendly chefs and dozens of luscious color photographs that will inspire you to harvest the homegrown flavors in your own neighborhood.

A popular exploration of the fundamental structure of the universe. Another example of Bernstein's lucid and lively writing for the layman. Winters (history, Vanderbilt U.) chronicles the agricultural history of Tennessee during the antebellum period, exploring ways in which farmers created a complex agricultural system that provided goods for household consumption and for sale in markets off the farm. He details the commercial network, agricultural slavery, and farming innovations in this state that occupied a transitional position between the staple agriculture of the South and the grain-livestock agriculture of the North. Contains bandw maps and tables. Annotation copyright by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR