We are embarking on an adventure to deepen our community connection with the fantastic cookbook, Good Things by Samin Nosrat. And we want you to join us!
This is Stout Oak Farm’s own take on a “1 Book : 1 Community” read. We’ve chosen Good Things by Samin Nosrat as our inaugural 1 CSA : 1 Cookbook for 2026.
We want to learn more about the food we grow and how best to prepare it, trying new recipes and getting fresh inspiration. This cookbook’s simple and delicious recipes just so happen to include almost every vegetable we grow and we think it will be a tremendous addition to your CSA share – and your everyday cooking.
Join us for this fun project as we all cook and learn more delicious ways to love our vegetables, level up our cooking skills, and enrich our experience through shared cooking adventures. We’re going to use this book as a great reference and touch point throughout the year.
Join Our CSA and purchase a discounted copy of the
cookbook to cook along with our community.
Thanks to Water Street Bookstore, we’re able to offer Good Things to you at a discounted price. Purchase a copy when you sign up for CSA Shares and let’s get cooking!
Learn More about Stout Oak Farm’s Certified Organic CSA Shares
We have a variety of farm share choices, including Vegetable Shares, Mini Vegetable Shares, and Greens Boxes, over 3 seasons. We’re known for our high quality, clean, and delicious organic Vegetables and our awesome CSA Community!
1 CSA : 1 Cookbook
We’ve been inspired by this special cookbook to try our own take on a “1 Book : 1 Community” read, where our whole community has this fun book in common to cook from, talk about, and share ideas from!
Community Reads are often a project of libraries, and yes, our own librarian-farmer Sara Zoe has us all excited about being able to deepen our community connection through the magic of books!
Fresh inspiration, just our style
The Good Things cookbook is really wonderful and special – it’s not just a book of recipes, but also a book of great resources like seasonal salad matrices, sauces and dressings that turn every veg into satisfying and delicious meals, and great information about the essential tools and pantry goods that make cooking a pleasure!
There are seasonal vegetable recipe sections, sections for sauces and tasty condiments to make throughout the year, deserts, a whole chapter on chicken (Hello Clyde Farm!), and recipes that are worth the effort to make in larger batches and share with your friends and family.
The seasonal vegetable sections are just incredible actually – there are simplified versions of how to boil / steam / saute / roast / etc etc any vegetable, what shapes you might want to cut it into, and then a slew of easy suggestions on what sauces or spices would turn it all into meals you look forward to.
This book reads like we want to cook – mostly very simply and seasonally, focused on veg, protein, and whole grains, with the flavors of the food shining through and tasty condiments for spice and variety.
The tagline reads, “Recipes and Rituals to Share With People You Love”
It’s also a book that reinforces what we know is true, that community connection matters most, and grounding ourselves with good food and good people is worth valuing, and carving out time for.
“I now consider a good life to be one where I feel deeply rooted in both my community and the natural world.”
– Samin
Gathering together – and sharing good food that nourishes us in body and spirit to support creating and being in community, is an important part of this cookbook!
We are feeling truly inspired by this book – inspired to have fun in the kitchen, to enjoy new flavors, and to gather with our people around good food.
We would be thrilled to have you cooking along and learning with us as we dive into this project. We are so excited to take CSA to the next level!
Get to Know Samin
We love Samin Nosrat’s writing! It’s moving and speaks to us on multiple personal levels. This is one of those cookbooks where you don’t skip the intro … or chapter intros … or the appendix.
Samin’s writing and cooking style fits so well as fresh inspiration for all of us. All of us have known a cooking rut at one time or another – this cookbook has been like the breath of fresh air we didn’t even know we needed.
It’s giving us new ideas that fit so well into what we already know and do, not a reinvention but a good reinvigoration! It feels like a leveling up for everyone that has spent time with the cookbook so far – no matter what our cooking experience has been up till now.
And it’s definitely influencing our crop plan and what vegetables we hope to grow this year!
We’ve very much become fan-kids of Samin. Maybe you, too will start to have a para-social relationship with Samin through her cookbooks and podcasts. She’s our BFF. We’re on a 1st name basis with her obviously!
Home Cooking Podcast – always a super fun listen, and worth going back to the beginning for. Get ready for terrible food puns and the kinds of easy wonderful meal ideas that get you hungry to try something new. 5 stars from J, SZ, and Kate.
Samin’s website includes gift links to quite a few of her most popular New York Times recipes! (She was a New York Times recipes columnist from 2016 – 2021 and still occasionally writes or appears in articles there, and her NYT YouTube videos are also a goldmine of joyful cooking ideas.)
Samin’s Substack, A Grain of Salt an email newsletter that comes out every few weeks, and includes a variety of delightful topics in addition to recipes and food like gardening and reading.
Salt Fat Acid Heat was Samin’s first cookbook, in which she helped us understand a bit about food science and the essentials of cooking in the most fun fashion. Salt Fat Acid Heat is also the name of the four-episode Netflix series where Samin explores with us these four elemental aspects—learning about salt in Japan, acid in Mexico, fat in Italy, and heat at her home in California.
