This is a great, old-school cookbook.  Its where I go for custards and ice creams and rice- or bread- pudding. It's the go to book when its cold or its overcast or I'm glum and I need some good food that is classy but comfortable and reminiscent--even though my grandma never made custard or rice- or bread-pudding. Weird huh?

It is natural whole-ish food because the first edition came out long before the food industry.  It is how it used to be.

There's a preface by James Beard.  What more can I say?

I agree with lemondrop about the reference mistakes in the book.  However, I appreciate the seasonality of the organization of the book and, as that is what I'm trying to add to my cooking, I like it better than organizaing by soup/bread/whatever.  That said, it is a trade off, and one could reasonably be irritated by it, particularly given the difficulty with the index.  Me, I'm more annoyed by recipes calling for spring veg to intermix with fall veg.

I just don't reach for this anymore because too many things were just a little too low fat--tough and chewy muffins, soup missing something in the mouth-feel, that kind of thing. 

I am inclined to love a Moosewood book, but this just didn't get there for me.  Good to try a different title by them.

This book disappointed me once I got it home.  Good information on the vegetable, attractive cover (to the point that the husband left it on the counter in a place of honor as a decoration) but I haven't cooked out of it like I expected I would.  It was part of a rash of cookbook purchasing in anticipation of last season's CSA (I'm prone to that), and I was really surprised that I didn't turn to it more.

It is more of a book for gardeners who eat than for modern eaters of fresh excellent cuisine.  Some of the recipes are a little alarmingly outdated for their complexity or late-70's to mid-80's feel of too much saturated fat or roulade-y difficulty or I don't know what. 

That said, I loved the PBS tv show, love the in-depth information about the various vegetables, think it provides essential information for the new CSA-er, but I find lately, as I go through the book, that there are too many recipes that I just think--no, I'm not ever gonna make that.   And you...

This book has me wanting a bigger yard not just for the larger garden (I've wanted that for years), but to have 2 pigs some chickens and maybe a cow or two when I get to those sections of the book.

What a comprehensive tome, and fun to read too.  I seriously don't know how he pulls it off.  It tells you how to grow it (be it vegetable or animal and probably mineral as well) and how to buy it and then how to cook it.  It is all so accessible and yet unbelievably alluring.  The pictures are amazing--must have...

This is my go to cookbook (generally after I've gone to 101cookbooks.com).  This makes me feel like I really can cook anything, in that there are recipes, but, to paraphrase Pirates of the Carribean, they're mostly guidelines.  I know what I can safely change.  I get an idea about how to adjust things for what I have or what the things I'm cooking are doing in my particular pot/oven/warm place to rest.

It isn't vegetarian per se (there is a How to Cook Everything Vegetarian for that), but what I like is it doesn't assume that you're either eating no meat...