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TO BOLDLY GROW

Tamar Haspel

Finding Joy, Adventure, and Dinner in Your Own Backyard

A part memoir, part how-to guide about the unexpected joys of what she calls "first-hand food"--meals we grow, forage, fish, or even hunt from the world around us.
Journalist and self-proclaimed "crappy gardener" Tamar Haspel is on a mission: to show us that raising or gathering our own food is not as hard as it's often made out to be. When she and her husband move from Manhattan to 2-acres on Cape Cod, they decide to adopt a more active approach to their diet: raising chickens, growing tomatoes, even foraging for mushrooms and hunting their own meat. They have more ambition than practical know-how, but that's not about to stop them from trying... even if sometimes their reach exceeds their (often muddy) grasp.

With "first-hand food" as her guiding principle, Tamar embarks on a grand experiment to stop relying on experts to teach her the ropes (after all, they can make anything grow), and start using her own ingenuity and creativity. Some of her experiments are a rousing success (refining her own sea salt). Others are a spectacular failure (the turkey plucker engineered from an old washing machine). Filled with practical tips and hard-won wisdom, To Boldly Grow allows us to journey alongside Haspel as she goes from cluelessness to competence, learning to scrounge dinner from the landscape around her and discovering that a direct connection to what we eat can utterly change the way we think about our food--and ourselves.

Tamar Haspel writes the James Beard award-winning Washington Post column Unearthed, which tackles food from every angle: agriculture, nutrition, obesity, the food environment, and DIY. She's also written for Discover, National Geographic's The Plate, Vox, Slate, Eater, Fortune, and Edible Cape Cod.
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Published 2022-03-08 by Putnam

Comments

A journalist who 'grew up in a food-focused household' chronicles her adventures gardening and eating in Cape Cod.With witty insight, the author shares their successes and failures along with tips and how-to advice.[A] great stepping-off point for individuals interested in exploring 'first-hand food opportunities' and exercising more control over the origins of what they eat. Knowledgeable inspiration for getting out there and getting dirty.

To Boldly Grow is part memoir, part how-to guide and wholly delightful.

Brimming with hilarious gardening anecdotes, To Boldly Grow. is an inspirational account of the author's improbable transformation from a city-dweller leading a life of the mind into an avid country gardener. Serving as a detailed six-part guide for readers who are considering food-gathering pursuits of their own and are curious about what it entails, Haspel's debut features all of the brilliant wit and lively storytelling that have made her a popular food and science writer.In this entertaining and practical guide to homegrown food, a journalist discovers the joys of gardening, keeping chickens and ice fishing after moving to Cape Cod from Manhattan.

One of The Washington Post's Books to Read in 2022 Based on What You Loved in 2021 One of Cosmopolitan's 10 Best Non-Fiction Books of 2022 You Should Add to Your Reading List ASAP One of Veranda's 22 Most-Anticipated Books of the New Year One of Life Savvy's March Reading List Full of Exciting New Titles One of Arlington Magazine's 10 Books to Read in March

Amusing. [with] a colloquial, curious tone reminiscent of the work of Mary Roach.The bright prose and clever insight make this a pleasure to dig into.