Field Guide to Produce: How to Identify, Select, and Prepare Virtually Every Fruit and Vegetable at the Market

Binding: Paperback
ASIN: 1931686807
Manufacturer: Quirk Books
Average Customer Review: (From 17 total reviews)
List Price: ~~$15.95~~
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Editorial Reviews

Book Description:
Produce: It’s not just apples and oranges anymore. Today’s supermarket shelves are stocked with strange, exotic, and delightful items such as quince, jicama, kumquats, amaranth, yuzus, and wing beans. But you don’t need a degree in botany to make sense of it all — just carry along Field Guide to Produce! This practical guide to the world’s most popular fruits and vegetables features more than 200 full-color photographs — plus detailed descriptions, selection tips, and guidelines on peeling, blanching, cooking, and eating.
Award-winning chef Aliza Green describes everything you’re likely to find at your local grocery store and farmer’s market — from common cabbages and coconuts to more adventurous fare like chayote and cherimoya. Grocery shopping — and dinner — will never be the same again!

Customer Reviews

Produce book by Laura L. Mortenson
This book is great. It has all the produce you can think of and the ones you can’t and it tells you all you need to know about the way the food is grown. Wow Great book!!!

Field Guide to Produce by No Iceberg for me!
The Pros to this book: good info on description of fruits/veggies, when in season, tips for purchasing & what to avoid, storage, preparation and serving suggestions and flavor affinities, as well as a section in the center with photos.

The Cons: No nutritional information at all and tomatoes are classified as a vegetable, which is an odd mistake to make for a reference book, since tomatoes are technically a fruit.

Disappointed by WiseWoman
This book gives good, basic, brief information about a variety of fruits and vegetables. I feel it pales in comparison, however, to Elizabeth Schneider’s books on produce because her books are more detailed. I would say that if you like brevity you will like this book by Aliza Green, were it not that I feel your hard-earned money is better spent on the more detailed Schneider books.

Has its moments, but … by Readz Alot
So much of the advice in here is purely common sense … and some of it is rather weird. Are there really readers out there who need to be told, when selecting fruits/veggies, to not buy things that are moldy or bruised or rotten? I was hoping for something a bit more profound.

And I couldn’t believe my eyes when I read that apples should be kept in the fridge, because they’ll go ‘mealy’ within 48 hours on the counter! Am I the only person in America who keeps apples on the counter for weeks without difficulty? (Well, assuming they don’t get eaten up first.)

There is some interesting info on different varieties and cultivars, but even that is available elsewhere, and most of the content is a waste of time/money for anyone who already knows more than the basics.