About this item
With more than two dozen cookbooks and hundreds of television shows, lectures, and personal appearances devoted to promoting healthful cooking, award-winning chef and former "Galloping Gourmet" Graham Kerr literally starts from the ground up in this engaging, inspiring, and highly informative introduction to the joys of the kitchen garden-and the pleasures of the table that start with growing your own food. While Kerr taps into the current trend of sustainability, eating locally and organically, and eschewing fast food, he recognizes that today's home cooks are savvier and more discerning than their predecessors in the back-to-the-land movement. And in this day of rampant obesity and related diseases, he understands how critical taking these vital steps toward wellness can be. Growing at the Speed of Life takes you through the first year in his kitchen garden, sharing the lessons learned and the wisdom received from his circle of local knowledge providers. From digging up his "south lawn" and putting together a greenhouse to planting his first seeds and harvesting and sharing his first crop with others in need, Kerr provides a whirlwind tour through his gardening adventures. Along the way, he profiles sixty common-and not-so-common but readily available-garden vegetables, fruits, and herbs with useful advice and recommendations for care and feeding. Once the harvest is done, Kerr takes you into the kitchen, offering guidance on the best cooking methods to create appealing dishes in his inimitable and spirited style. He includes more than one hundred recipes that are as simple and elegant as they are healthful-and that will certainly entice you to increase the amount of plant foods in your diet.
About the Author
Graham has been a 'food man' since his fifteenth birthday, or sixty-seven years from post World War Two to the present day.Raised in the European Hotel business and following his national service in the British Army he was the General Manager of the Royal Ascot Hotel at age 27.He moved to New Zealand as the Chief Catering Advisor to their Air Force and, in 1959/60 began his public life in broadcasting and television, between Peyton Place and the Avengers!His wife Treena began to produce the shows behind the scenes until, in 1968, following a successful TV series on prime time in Australia, she took over as the formal producer, for which she earned two Emmy nominations as daytime 'Producer of the Year'.Their Galloping Gourmet show was shown worldwide and was credited for creating 'culinary entertainment' as we know it today.In 1970 they suffered a major traffic accident during a production tour that abruptly ended the series. Graham and his family set out to 'regain resilience' by sailing 24,000miles in a two year period in their own sailboat.They have been residents since 1973, mostly in the Pacific Northwest where they became US citizens in 1981.The Kerr's have made over 1,800 TV shows and segments, several thousand radio shows and written 30 books, selling over 14 million copies worldwide.In 1974/75 they made news in their public announcement of their faith in Jesus Christ and from that time on devoted themselves to the general idea that 'habits that harm can become resources that heal'.Starting in 2009, Graham 'discovered' a deep and ongoing interest in ecology. This interest began in the backyard of his small local church. "It was there that I began to gain my interest in resilience and mankind's urgent need to do what he can do to do less harm to this amazingly creative environment""Above all let us try to do less harm and learn how we might live beyond our immediate self-interest".
