A Year at Catbird Cottage

100 recipes for seasonal, locally sourced and foraged dishes from the owner of the idyllic Catbird Cottage B&B in upstate New York.

At the foot of the Shawangunk Mountain Ridge lies the hamlet of Accord, New York, dotted with orchards and farms, population 562. There, Melina Hammer is enticing guests from near and far to stay and eat at Catbird Cottage, a B&B run out of her charming home. Season to season, her eclectic table is set with meals that showcase stories and ingredients from her own garden, New York's wild landscape, and her travels around the globe.

These recipes are organized by season, since the seasons dictate what's on the Catbird Cottage table. Whether it's Beet-cured Salmon, Scallop Ceviche, Carrot-top Bagna Cauda, Spruce-tip Sugar Apple Galettes, or a Fall-apart Persimmon served with triple-crème cheese and freshly baked sourdough bread, Melina's food is deeply satisfying and sustaining--it brings eaters to an attainable means of cooking and living in a more connected and joyful way.

Melina also shares her foraging and preserving know-how, allowing readers to stock their pantries, cupboards, and freezers. But these recipes don't require you be a fully-fledged homesteader, expert forager, or connoisseur of global flavor. Instead, this book takes the foundations of those practices and integrates them into a new, accessible kitchen vernacular that is fueled by love and feeds more than the belly. This is precious community on a plate, growing and harvesting and preserving food with love, and then eating it with those you cherish.