Eatdrink #67 September/October 2017 "The Decade Issue"

62 | September/October 2017
Recipes
eatdrink.ca |@eatdrinkmag
The Food Lover’s Garden
Growing, Cooking and Eating Well
By Jenni Blackmore
Review and Recipe Selections by TRACY TURLIN
I
had mixed feelings about
reviewing The Food Lover’s
Garden: Growing, Cooking
and Eating Well (Jenni
Blackmore; New Society
Publishers; 2017; $29.99).
To be clear, the book is
fantastic. It’s just that my
gardening ambitions this
year collided with the
adoption of a new puppy
who is a bit ... energetic.
My tiny garden has been
reduced to a scraggly patch of
overgrown herbs surrounded by an ugly
chicken wire fence that has poodle shaped
holes in it. Kimi is obsessed with oregano,
though he will decimate parsley in a pinch.
Most of my gardening time this summer was
spent Googling “is it okay if my dog eats ...?”.
Fortunately, this book did give me a ton of
great information that will help make next
year’s garden — once the new fence is built —
a great success.
Jenni Blackmore is a writer, artist and
Permaculture Design Consultant who lives
on an island off the coast of Nova Scotia.
She practices her passion for sustainable
micro-farming on her own
homestead, Quackadoodle
Farm. She blogs about
her adventures there at
quackadoodle.wordpress.
com. Blackmore describes
herself as a former “kitchen
klutz” who learned to enjoy
making good food in order
to feed her family well. Her
focus is on vegetables that are
tasty, nutritious and easy to
grow. Her standards for being
easy to grow are high,
as the harsh Maritime
climate makes gardening
a challenge.
The Food Lover’s
Garden is more gardening
book than cookbook, so
it’s full of fabulous photos
— and the author’s original
artwork — of vegetables and
herbs. Unfortunately there
are not a lot of pictures of
the finished dishes. Do not
let this deter you. Some of
the best recipes I found were
tucked away in side notes or as anecdotes. The
best photos are those of gorgeous vegetables
still showing some garden soil and waiting to
be turned into supper long before they make
it to the fridge. Every time I opened The Food
Lover’s Garden I found a new dish, a new way
to prepare a vegetable or a new gardening tip
that I’d missed the last time I looked.
I liked the recipe for Pseudo Greek Salad
because it’s a dish that’s a staple at my house.
I loved the fact that the recipe is really more of
a guideline than a set of directions. That’s also
standard around here.
I’ve been obsessed with
pickling things this year so I’m
eager to try the Blackcurrant
Sweet Pickle. Tangy, sweet
and spicy — you can’t really
go wrong with that. I have a
feeling that it will be amazing
with roasted pork.
Some cookbooks I keep
around just because they
inspire me but I rarely follow
their recipes. The Food Lover’s
Garden is the exact opposite of
Author Jenni Blackmore