“What grows together goes together.”  I don’t know who first coined that phrase, but it’s one of the potential methods for figuring out what ingredients will “mesh” — and it’s a big piece of this book’s premise.  The One-Pot Gourmet Gardener contains a series of container gardening groupings, each with accompanying recipes.

Keep in mind that this concept can only go so far.  You’re not going to grow every single ingredient for a given recipe in one pot.  Just like an analogy, you have to recognize the limits and not expect the impossible.  But you can grow together either most of the ingredients for a recipe, or all of the characteristic ingredients of a recipe, which is a lot of fun — and the focus of the book.

About The One-Pot Gourmet Gardener

The first step in the process of grow-cook-eat is growing the key ingredients.  Some of us are pretty clueless on that front, so the first section is designed to help us out.  It includes information about types of seeds, choosing pots, what type of soil to use, etc.  It walks the reader through the process of planting seeds, or of planting small plants, then when and how to water, how to maintain the plants, and how to harvest and store them.

After this section of growing information, there are chapters of recipes.  Picnics, soups & salads, quick suppers, tasty accompaniments, and drinks & puds.  (I’m a little baffled by this last one.  “Pud” seems to be a “Briticism,” as I like to call them, for “pudding,” but there are no puddings in this section.  I can only assume this must be used here as a catch-all phrase to encompass the jellies and chutneys included in this section, because I can find no other food-related definition for the word.  Do not look it up in a slang dictionary.)

Each recipe section contains five recipes, each with an introduction followed by a “grow me” section and an “eat me” section.  The “grow me” section features several plants that are the key ingredients for the recipe.  It tells you which plants you need, what size container to grow them in, and gives tips for planting, maintaining, and harvesting them.

This is then followed with a recipe in the typical recipe format: ingredient and preparation instructions.

It’s full of full-color photographs of both the plants and the prepared foods, along with some of the ingredients.

This is a fun book for illustrating the soil-to-table nature of where our food comes from.