Garden to table A kid's guide to planting, growing, and preparing food

Review by Booklist Review

This vibrant instructional manual and cookbook celebrates the satisfaction of making food, from its most basic form in the garden to culinary creations in the kitchen. Hengel highlights several common herbs and vegetables, including basil, carrots, and tomatoes. Basic guidelines for growing are outlined, and a handful of kid-friendly recipes are demonstrated. All aspects of gardening are explained, from watering and mulching to thinning and harvesting, and Hengel encourages eco-friendly pest management and fertilization. Also discussed are container-friendly varieties for readers with limited space, and varieties that are suitable for an array for regions. The recipes are perfect for budding chefs, offering a succinct list of extra ingredients and cooking tools, along with warnings about potentially dangerous steps, and definitions of unfamiliar culinary terms. Each recipe is illustrated with clear step-by-step photographs, and the finished dishes look appetizing. Parents, teachers, activity group leaders, and young gardeners and chefs will find plenty to read and plant and cook together.--Anderson, Erin Copyright 2014 Booklist

From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.

---

Review by School Library Journal Review

Gr 4-7-This attractive guide instructs readers in the cultivation of basil, carrots, green beans, lettuce, potatoes, and tomatoes. Instructions for growing the produce have been given with container gardening in mind, offering a practical alternative for readers with limited space, but they could easily be adapted for those with garden plots. The overall presentation is top-notch, providing clear, concise instructions heavily complemented by the book's visually rich format. High-quality photographs accompany every cooking term, ingredient, and kitchen tool as well as practically each step of the growing process and recipes. While maintaining the focus on the freshly grown foods featured, the recipes do sometimes call for prepared ingredients readily available in grocery stores. The recipes themselves are an eclectic blend of some classic staples such as salsa, salad, and oven fries, and more unusual fare: pickled carrots, basil cake, and sushi rolls. All are appealing, and most seem quite manageable by kids with minimal adult supervision. A sophisticated volume that is sure to garner kid interest while whetting appetites, this is a great tool for bridging the world of agriculture with culinary sustenance. Gardening and cooking collections would benefit from this title, and it would be an ideal guide for those wishing to start a new venture with kids.-Rebecca Gueorguiev, New York Public Library (c) Copyright 2014. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

---

Review by Kirkus Book Review

Hengel encourages middle-grade readers to grow and cook their own food.A compilation of Hengel's six books about growing and cooking with basil, carrots, green beans, leaf lettuce, potatoes and tomatoes, the formatted sections make it easy for readers to find the information they need to succeed in both growing and cooking with these foodsthough it does also make for some repetition of information. Each section includes spreads about the focus plant and its variations, the conditions it needs and how to sow the seeds, its stages of growth, harvesting the plant and a Q-and-A page. These informational pages are followed by five to six recipes (minus nutritional information and sometimes the colored circles that outline the numbered steps), including Creamy Carrot Soup, Tasty Thai Noodles Basil, Sassy Citrus Zest Beans, Sort-of Sushi Rolls, Cheddar Potato Cakes and Tomato Pie in the Sky. Three safety symbols used on the recipe pages alert chefs to sharp tools, hot materials and nuts. Extensive frontmatter includes a three-spread pictorial guide to cooking terms, three more spreads featuring an alphabetized pictorial list of ingredients (fish sauce, blue cheese and horseradish among them!), and two spreads of labeled kitchen tools. A URL directs readers to Abdo Publishing's website for more informational websites (eHow among them) and Burpee's online seed catalog.Budding gardeners who love to cook will find a treasure trove of information here. (glossary, index) (Nonfiction. 8-13) Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

---