Here’s a sure-fire plan for successful dining. Take California’s bountiful food producers and ask for the best recipes for their favorite crops. Combine them with brilliant photos and interesting stories of the farms and their owners, and you have a masterpiece of fresh and wholesome foods. We call this recipe The California Farm Cookbook. This harvest of great foods utilizes the flavorful vegetables, fruits, meats, cheeses, and other specialty crops of the Golden State.

This cookbook offers refreshing ways to prepare old favorites like carrot cake, fried green tomatoes, meatloaf, cheesecake, smoked duck, barbecued oysters, and potato soup. Recipes include special adaptations and family secrets that have been passed on for generations. The dishes also feature less traditional ingredients like persimmons, tilapia, quail eggs, Brie, cherimoyas, jujubes, sturgeon, and sapotes as well.

Each recipe comes from the growers themselves, who offer serving tips and little-known histories of the farms and their crops. This book also offers a section of recipes from California’s finest chefs and a chapter devoted to foods and recipes from Baja California, Mexico. An appendix lists California farms and grocers who ship fresh to your door.