Hot topics - the books you are reading

There is a wonderful giveaway prize of Amish dolls clothes and a book here. Hurry, it closes today.

I've had an unusually large number of people ask me what I've been reading lately. Well, apart from the obvious, in the past two months I've finished The Contented Chook, The New Home Larder, and Annie's Garden to Table, this last book was sent to me by the lovely Anne (calico ann) at the D2E forum. I'm now reading A Year of Slow Food. There was a time, pre-babies, when I read about three books a week. Now I read a book a month and sometimes not even that. I'm always going back to my core group of books though. These include The Complete Book of Self Sufficiency by John Seymour, Nourishing Traditions by Sally Fallon, Wild Fermentation by Sandor Ellix Katz, The Thrifty Kitchen by Suzanne Gbbs and Kate Gibbs and Real Food by Matthew Evans. 

The Contented Chook is an ABC book published by Harper Collins. This was sent to us by a lovely man, Ted Dobbs, who we met in Toowoomba. Ted owns the Dymocks book shop there and originally asked me to take my pick of books in his store, then posted this book out to Hanno. Thanks again Ted! It started out as a feature in Gardening Australia magazine when they had a feature asking readers to send in photos of their chook houses. There are about 60 photos of chook houses around the nation but also a good guide to the various chook breeds available in Australia, and much more. The section on looking after your chooks is excellent.

The New Home Larder by New Eden Books is a British book in two parts. Part one is how to stock and maintain a larder and part two is all recipes. It would be a good book for a young homemaker but I didn't find much in there that was new.

Annie's Garden to Table by Annie Smithers is an Australian book published by Lantern, an inprint of Penguin. Annie is a women who has worked as a chef and transferred that knowledge and passion to her own farm. It's a seasonal book, going through a series of recipes month by month. I don't think seasonal books work well in Australia because our country is so big, there is no one size fits all here. Nevertheless, I did enjoy this book a lot. It highlights the importance of fresh local food and quality ingredients. The recipes and writing are good and there are delightful diary entries such as 31 May ~ Finding pleasure in patience.

My last book, the one I'm about to start, is A Year of Slow Food by David and Gerda Foster. This is an old book, published by Duffy and Snellgrove in 2001. It was sent to me by my good friend Kathleen who has just finished reading it. She loved it so I'm looking forward to it very much. It's the story of a family with eight children who, 25 years ago, moved to the Southern Highlands of New South Wales to become productive and self reliant. They taught themselves to milk cows and grow enough food to feed themselves - all while renovating a derelict house to live in. It sounds like my kind of book and I'm looking forward to reading it.

What have you read lately that you recommend?