“The Permaculture Kitchen” by Carl Legge

“The Permaculture Kitchen helps you to get the most from what you have and harvest. You will learn how to make some useful preserves, get multiple meals from an ingredient and maximise the flavour and enjoyment from what you cook.”

Carl Legge is a horticultural enthusiast, whose experience and enjoyment in growing, foraging, brewing, baking and cooking have inspired him to write “The Permaculture Kitchen”, published by Permanent Publications.

He gardens a three acre permaculture smallholding in North Wales, and it is quite extraordinary how much he harvests and what he makes from it, across all weathers and seasons.

He is an avid Tweeter, spreading the grow-it-cook-it-eat-it message across social media with passion {follow him @CarlLegge to find out more}.

Permaculture is a way of life, as well as an agricultural system, requiring the gardener to think, observe and examine bio-diversity holistically, considering all ecological systems around the plot, maximising resources and ensuring long-term sustainability. It enables you, in short, to save time, money and effort by doing the right things at the right time in the right way.

The Permaculture Kitchen book is an empowering manual that enables the user to develop a flexible, versatile and intuitive way of cooking, avoiding waste and increasing value for money.

Across seasons, it delivers a range of simple, easy, frugal recipes that are born of intelligent land management and housekeeping. Even if your plot is very small, or if you have no land at all, you can still make delicious dressings, dips and condiments from containers of herbs and leaves, and you can use the fresh produce you buy from the market to your best advantage.

The book is mainly vegetarian, but there are fish, meat and egg recipes too, some of them unusual and original. The reader is shown how to preserve, pickle and pot , as well as grill and bake, combine and contrast and make use of parts of plants you might otherwise throw away {like cauliflower leaves, carrot tops, broccoli stems, broad bean pods and pumpkin seeds}.

The book is beautifully, simply photographed and designed and retails at £14.95 ~ making it an affordable and thoughtful gift.

“Love food. Love people. Love the planet”