Title: Fine Cooking in Season: Your Guide to Choosing and Preparing the Season's Best
Author: Fine Cooking Magazine
Pages: 320Source: NetGalley and Taunton Press
Genre: Nonfiction - Food
Intended Audience: Anyone who cooks
Star Rating: 4.75 stars
Setting: North America through the seasons
Recommended for: Anyone who cooks, people trying to eat healthier, fresher foods, anyone who eats, basically anyone

Why I picked it up: I am always interested in cook books (or culinary books) that have a focused (such as Waffles and Simply Breads) point of view. Also, pretty cover (always the pretty cover, I should probably just stop saying that.)What it's all about: Going through each season (and splitting summer into early and late), this book provides a look at the most common produce available during each. From spring asparagus through winter citrus, I can't think of an item at my grocery store produce section that isn't listed in this book. For each item or category, the book tells a bit of background, various types, how to choose the best produce, how to prepare it, interesting combinations, and how to preserve it. After learning all about the produce, there are are one to several recipes that features that item. 

tl/dr: Pick, serve, and preserve the best produce in each season

My thoughts: I learned so much in this book! I loved the way it was set up, through the seasons, and then the format for each type of produce. Did you know that radicchio is from the chicory family, the same one whose seeds are ground into coffee? Now you do! There are all kinds of interesting connections. I think knowing what to look for, and how to preserve it if you can are the parts of the book I will probably use the most. The appendix (maybe it was a chapter) explains with both words and pictures how to cut some of the more difficult or less familiar produce. I loved that many of the vegetables might be common in grocery stores (like turnips and parsnips), but so many cooks are unsure how to use them. This book solves that problem. (Also, some of these are so much less expensive, and knowing how to use them can certainly change up your meals and make them a bit more economical.) The only complaint that I had was that the varieties listed in the text did not always match the ones in the picture. It would have been nice to see each one, and not to see ones that weren't described. But with that minor of a flaw, I will definitely be purchasing this book for my small culinary collection, and copying the pages from each season that list the produce. Perhaps the colorful images will remind me what to look for in the store or at a farmer's market, and inspire me to look for the freshest foods that we can afford. 

Most looking forward to making: Right now we are in the middle of spring, and I am curious to try out some fava beans for snacking healthier. Also, if the price of asparagus comes down, I am all about trying new preparations of an old favorite.

This book seemed to list out what produce was in season rather than how to prepare seasonal dishes. It wasn't what I was expecting.

I read this with interest as a forager, but foraging information is not provided (they recommending buying wild foods at the farmers' market). It's a helpful guide organized by season but was lacking in a few things that mattered to me. For one thing, there were only photos of the fruits and vegetables themselves, not of the recipes. For another, most of the recipes were a little frou-frou for our family's simple, down home tastes. That's to be expected by the "fine cooking" in the title, of course. It's still a helpful guide to learning to cook by the seasons, though.