Sure, there are ten new features in this all-new, updated book. Sure, it's even simpler than it was before. Of course, you don't have to worry about fertilizer or poor soil ever again because you'll be growing above the ground.

But, the best feature is that "anyone," "anywhere" can enjoy a Square Foot garden. Children, adults with limited mobility, even complete novices can achieve spectacular results.

But, let's get back to the ten improvements. You're going to love them.

1) New Location - Move your garden closer to your house by eliminating single-row gardening. Square Foot Garden needs just "twenty percent" of the space of a traditional garden.

2) New Direction - Locate your garden "on top" of existing soil. Forget about pH soil tests, double-digging (who enjoys that?), or the never-ending soil improvements.

3) New Soil - The new "Mel's Mix" is the perfect growing mix. Why, we even give you the recipe. Best of all, you can even "buy" the different types of compost needed.

4) New Depth - You only need to prepare a SFG box to a depth of 6 inches! It's true--the majority of plants develop just fine when grown at this depth.

5) No Fertilizer - The all new SFG does not need any fertilizer-ever! If you start with the perfect soil mix, then you don't need to add fertilizer.

6) New Boxes - The new method uses bottomless boxes placed aboveground. We show you how to build your own (with step-by-step photos).

7) New Aisles - The ideal gardening aisle width is about three to four feet. That makes it even easier to kneel, work, and harvest.

8)New Grids - Prominent and permanent grids added to your SFG box help you visualize the planting squares and know how to space for maximum harvest.

9)New Seed Saving Idea - The old-fashioned way advocates planting many seeds and then thinning the extras (that means pulling them up). The new method means planting a pinch- literally two or three seeds--per planting hole.

10) Tabletop Gardens - The new boxes are so much smaller and lighter (only 6 inches of soil, remember?), you can add a plywood bottom to make them portable.

Author Barbara Kingsolver and her family abandoned the industrial-food pipeline to live a rural life—vowing that, for one year, they’d only buy food raised in their own neighborhood, grow it themselves, or learn to live without it. Part memoir, part journalistic investigation, Animal, Vegetable, Miracle is an enthralling narrative that will open your eyes in a hundred new ways to an old truth: You are what you eat.

Each of the over 1,000 recipes was selected by editor in chief Ruth Reichl, a best-selling author in her own right, who wrote the introductions to each chapter. Every recipe has been tested and cross-tested in the Gourmet test kitchen so every cook, whether a first-timer or a veteran, gets impeccable results. With menus for holidays and other seasonal occasions, an authoritative glossary of ingredients (plus mail-order sources), and hundreds of sidebars on ingredients and handy techniques from the test kitchen, Gourmet Today is the indispensable book for today's cook.

Amazon Exclusive: A Letter from Ruth Reichl

These days you hear a lot of gloom and doom about the state of American food. It's certainly true that if you want to focus on the negative, there's a lot to despair about.

On the other hand, the opposite is also true. I wrote my first cookbook in 1971, and when I see the difference between what was available then and the food that now fills my supermarket, it makes me want to go dancing down the aisles.

Back then things were so different that my editor insisted that I call for ground beef instead of lamb in a classic Greek moussaka; she said not many grocers actually sold lamb. She also worried about the recipe for handmade pasta (too esoteric) and a simple Chinese stir-fry of chicken (what on earth was a wok). She worried when I called for freshly grated Parmesan cheese (most people still used the stuff that came in the green can), fresh garlic (frowned upon in many places) and chiles (too hot, too hot, too hot).

What a difference a few years make! The American supermarket has turned into an international bazaar, offering us all the best flavors of the world. Whether you want to cook the foods of Asia, the Americas, India or Europe, the ingredients are there. And that's only part of the good news; the other is that the era of mindless eating is over. Good cooks everywhere are now aware of the consequences of their choices, and when they walk through the aisles, they think about sustainability.

It's a wonderful time for people who care about food. But it requires a new kind of cookbook, one that takes advantage of the great modern marketplace. Gourmet's twelve test cooks spent five years exploring all the new ingredients available in the supermarkets--from frozen pizza dough to Thai chili pastes and eggroll wrappers--figuring out the best ways to use them. They haunted farmers markets too, so we could offer advice on cooking everything from ramps to celery root. They spent time in fish markets, snapping up new offerings like Arctic char and tilapia. Then they cooked each dish again and again and again, taking out unnecessary steps and ensuring that each was absolutely foolproof. The result is more than a thousand recipes that are absolutely guaranteed to work. I couldn't live without this book. I love cooking from it. I hope you will too.

Best wishes,

Ruth Reichl

(Photo © Brigitte Lacombe)

Recipe Excerpts from Gourmet Today

• Raspberry Lime Rickey
• Grilled Ceasar Salad
• Grilled Cumin Chicken Breasts with Avocado Salsa
• Chocolate Chunk Oatmeal Coconut Cookies