The Jewish Gardening Cookbook : Growing Plants and Cooking for Holidays and Festivals Book

Whether you garden in an herb garden, a city apartment windowsill or patio, or on a country acre, with the fruits and vegetables of your own gardening labors, the traditional repasts of Jewish holidays and celebrations can be understood in many new ways!

The Jewish Gardening Cookbook gives easy-to-follow instructions for raising foods that have been harvested since ancient times, such as grapes, figs, dates, and pomegranates. It also provides carefully selected, tasty, and easy-to-prepare traditional and modern recipes using these foodstuffs for holidays, festivals, and life cycle events, including:

• Rosh Hashanah: apples, apple-raisin-nut cake
• Sukkot: figs, fig preserves
• Hanukkah: potatoes, latkes
• Tu Bishevat: almonds, rice with dates, almonds, and raisins
• Purim: zucchini, zucchini nut bread
• Passover: dates, charoset
• Shavuot: wheat, challah

While introducing us to Biblical and rabbinical references to specific foods and agricultural methods, the author firmly grounds gardening and food preparation in the celebration of traditional Jewish rituals and life cycle events, such as Shabbat, Yom Ha-Atzma'ut (Israel Independence Day), the birth of a child, and more. Home cultivation of foods is thoroughly explained-from planting to pruning to the use of your long-awaited harvest surplus.

Clearly illustrated with more than 30 fine botanical illustrations, this pro-active, creative book for beginner and professional gardener alike will inspire and bring insight into your most humble celebrations.