In this fresh and beautiful cookbook, the four seasons form the natural framework for 200 superb seasonal recipes illustrated by 16 striking photographs in full color. No one who loves Vermont needs to be introduced to its author (alias Mrs. Appleyard), who has made Vermont and its food familiar to thousands of fans. Many of the recipes in the book, in fact, appeared in her column in Vermont Life Magazine.

Winter is great blue drifts over a buried farmhouse where a brown pot of beans simmers in the oven, or perhaps an oyster pie, and where a great variety of recipes from soup to dessert greets the famished skier.

Spring can begin with a blizzard and end with a nipping frost. Meanwhile tin sugar buckets hang from gnarled maple trunks and a dish of fresh doughnuts accompanies a plate of "snow ice cream"—spring snow covered with fresh sap from the bucket. There are also more sophisticated things to do with maple syrup, and Mrs. Appleyard knows them all, as well as what to do with a catch of "big speckled" from a rushing trout stream.

For summer, color Vermont green with ancient barns casting dark shadows down the sloping meadows. The newest of peas drop their green in an old tin pan to accompany the Fourth of July salmon. Corn tassels are green, too, but they must turn gold before the first frost, when they are picked and eaten ten minutes off the stalk. All the rewards of gardening are made clear in these recipes, but they're just as useful for the good things in the local supermarket.

Autumn is the many-colored season, and both recipes and photographs do her full justice. Yellow bowls of red cranberries surround the Vermont turkey waiting to be stuffed. Jack-o'-lanterns glow to appear later as pumpkin pie. From before the turkey to the Vermont cheddar after the pie, here is the best of American eating, for which we give thanks.

The Vermont Year Round Cookbook also includes special sections on outdoor cooking, an accurate listing of all cooking terms with instructions, a section on "Tools of the Trade," which will keep any bride from having three electric can openers and no double boiler, and a helpful glossary of food terminology.

From the dust jacket