Advance Copy Is Here!!!

The are not enough words to say how excited I am!! Elisa Spungen Bildner and Robert Bildner dropped off an advance copy of The Berkshires Farm Table Cookbook this afternoon!!

It looks so beautiful, and even though I had seen the galleys when we had many conversations about the recipes and the food photographs, it’s so much more thrilling to see it bound as a book! (Check out the companion website, https://berkshiresandbeyond.com/ where you can find links to pre-order from Amazon, Indie Bound, or Barnes & Noble.)

This is a must-buy cookbook for anyone and everyone who loves the Berkshires, whether full-time residents, devoted summer visitors, or new tourists to our region.

Most touching are the beautiful profiles of farms and farmers of the Berkshires. We owe so much to those who grow and raise the foods we put on our tables, and Elisa’s heartfelt prose celebrates the joys and reveals the challenges of farming. Rob’s striking photos of farms and farmers in action brings these stories into stunning focus.

The recipes were much more my domain, though, as a recipe tester and copyeditor for this book. I read through every recipe at least three times, and I tested well over two-thirds of the 125 recipes in this book, many of them multiple times! And there were even some terrific recipes I tested that had to be cut due to the page limit of the volume. So I did a lot of cooking, much to the pleasure of my family and my colleagues at school who helped to make sure nothing went to waste!

Elisa and Rob compiled these recipes from various sources. Some came from the farmers themselves, while others were shared by beloved chefs of restaurants in the region. Most significantly, Chef Brian Alberg, of Main Street Hospitality Group, developed numerous recipes to ensure that there would be recipes from all the products of the farms profiled in the book.

The breadth of recipe choices in this cookbook will make it worthwhile for every kind of cook, no matter what your food preferences. Many recipes have various versions: for omnivores, vegetarians, and vegans. Having tried so many of these recipes, I hope that you will get new ideas and find new favorites when you explore this cookbook.

I had so much fun working on this project with Elisa and Rob, and I am so very proud to see it in print, after all their hard work. Bravo!