Product Description

Fork to Fork is about growing and eating your own fruit, vegetables and herbs using Monty and Sarah Don's kitchen garden at Livingston, in the English border. It is also the subject of a Channel 4 series, to be screened in the UK in November 1999. Nowadays food is 'manufactured', imported and marketed for convenience and all-year round availability. As well as losing the link between growing and eating, we have also lost quality and taste- it's not hard to see why asparagus grown at home tastes better than asparagus that has travelled 2000 miles to reach your table. This book returns to the value of real food, and shows both practical gardening and cookery techniques together with 40 recipes. Handwritten notebook entries record the successes and failures of the Dons' gardening year. An appendix gives a useful seasonal conversion chart for gardeners in the southern hemisphere.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #217384 in Books
• Published on: 1999-09-23
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 224 pages

Amazon.co.uk Review
"Self-sufficiency is for cranks," Monty and Sarah Don announce: "organic gardening is not a system to be punished for breaking." In the next breath, however, they inveigh--just as robustly--against the prevailing gardening culture which is all about adding foreign material to the soil: an approach they compare to "throwing antibiotics" at an ill body "and damaging the ability to self-heal."

Monty and Sarah Don are out to steer a middle course between the prevailing, impoverished approach to food production and the behaviours of total cranks whose worry and right-on-ness sucks the pleasure out of the whole business. The book, made to accompany the Channel 4 series, is full of exquisitely simple recipes and fuss-free gardening advice. (The beetroot and red chard risotto is a marvel.) As the diary of a year rooted to the soil, it's sure to be a modern classic. But don't be seduced into thinking it's any sort of bible or cure-all.

It's actually much easier to take advice from a crank--you take what you need and ignore the rest with a clear conscience--than to navigate books like this one, in which everything is tied up with everything else in a seamlessly "sensible"--and unique--scheme. "A boned leg of organic lamb, raised on the water meadow butting onto the garden, strewn with plenty of rosemary and cooked over the most basic of wood fires is not sophisticated cuisine, but a genuine feast nonetheless." Well, sure--but so what?

Monty and Sarah Don are rightly proud of the lifestyle they've achieved. But take their advice, and don't get hung-up. Pillage their prose. Take what you need. --Simon Ings

From the Author
Comments on the writing of Fork to Fork.
Fork to Fork was written over a two-year period admidst great debate about what to put in and what to leave out. I would have liked the book to have been much longer and with hindsight would have made the instructions visually clearer, although I think that the recipes are beautifully simple and easy to follow. The real point of the book is NOT a celebration of our 'lifestyle' (God forbid) but to point out that we are all losing the plot as far as food goes. Everybody sort of knows that the best food comes from good, simple, organic ingredients but does very little about it. Yet there are more gardeners now than ever before and more opportunities for people to grow some good, simple, organic ingedients themselves. Also it has always seemed crazy that gardening celebrates the look and size of veg and fruit without a side-glance at their taste. This is an attempt to address that. The other point that should be sung from the treetops is that Simon Wheeler is a fantastic photographer and we all decided on a book with no bullshit. Nothing was set up, nothing was cheated. By the way - as an author, I love the way that the internet has opened up this kind of instant feedback from readers, critical or otherwise.

About the Author
Monty Don is a highly original journalist and broadcaster. His weekly gardening column in The Observer is appreciated for its intelligent insight and imaginative coverage of gardening subjects. He is the author of 'The Sensuous Garden', (Conran Octopus), a ground breaking book that has changed the way many people view their gardens. His other books include, 'The Prickotty Bush' and 'The Weekend Gardener'. Sarah worked for 15 years as a designer. She has since trained as an architect. She has made three gardens with her husband, and is a superb cook.

Customer Reviews

An excellent combination of gardening and cooking
A friend bought me this as a present and at first I sort of ignored it for a while as being just another gardening book (being possessed of hundreds of gardening books...and cookery books for that matter!). But then I spent a Sunday morning in bed reading this from cover to cover....and what a joy! I have had an allotment for quite some time now and what Monty and Sarah Don manage to convey is the sheer joy of eating your own "free food". It's really amazing, you feel as though you've received a gift everytime you pick, say, the first new potatoes - what excitement as you lift those roots! - or when you harvest onions, all golden brown and papery skinned. Even better when you get your food to the kitchen, cook it and savour the fact it's "free"! This book combines the best of both worlds and is a joy to read and cook from. This book makes you envy Monty and Sarah for their lifestyle and if it doesn't encourage you to grow your own food, then I don't know what will!

More recipe book than gardening manual
I liked this book if only to inspire me to attempt more in my own garden. It gives some tips but no really detailed information for a complete novice. I found the diary aspect pretty dull but some of the recipes are delicious and the principle of eating the food that' s in season appeals to me, even when I have to buy the ingredients!
If you already know what you are doing in the garden and are looking for tips, seasonal recipes and some pretty pictures then this book is definitely for you. If, however, you were looking for a how-to manual then you may be disapointed.

An inspiring book for cooks and gardeners alike.
This is a wonderful book. Monty's enthusiasm for his garden is infectious, Sarah's recipes are gorgeous, and Simon's photographs evoke a yearning for each beautiful season. The book contains valuable information primarily aimed at novice gardeners, who can draw upon the Dons wide experience of gardening successes and failures. But it will be thoroughly enjoyed by anyone who has a patch of earth to call their own, and enjoys life and food.