Saving the Season

This cookbook is unlike any other on my shelf. West approaches his topic--home canning and preserving--with a reporter's attention to detail and a poet's sensibility; it's less a canning tutorial and cookbook than it is a collection of absorbing personal essays, literary excerpts, explications of culinary history, and friendly advice, all of which happens to be punctuated by appealing, easy-to-follow recipes. . . . The text dances on, its cadence dictated by the season, and while there are more than enough spring and summer recipes to keep you busy every weekend from now through the end of August (I, for one, can't wait to make my own Maraschino cherries), West's engaging stories will probably have you reading ahead, looking forward to homemade pumpkin butter and blood orange marmalade. <br>--Saveur.com <br> I love Kevin West's beautiful new book about canning, pickling, and preserving. <br>--Alice Waters <br> Part cookbook, part manifesto, and part crypto-memoir . . . literate and lyrical and fanatically well researched. . . . The kind of cookbook you can read for pleasure. . . . It has more than 200 recipes but is shot through with little essays, too--about preserving, food gathering, gardening, family. <br>--John Jeremiah Sullivan, Lucky Peach<br> <br> When is the last time you wanted to read a cookbook, not just use its recipes? . . . There have been bushels of cookbooks published on home preserving in recent years, but this comprehensive collection of more than 200 recipes is an essential guide for accomplished canners . . . as well as novices. . . . Author Kevin West's writing is beautiful, revealing canning lessons learned from friends [and] the traditions behind American preserving. . . . Filled with personal stories that show the connection between the garden and the dinner table, and how that can be extended to offer tastes of summer in the middle of winter. . . . There's so much wisdom here it's hard to put down, and literary references to oper