"But even I know," she says from her apartment on the upper east side of Manhattan, "that there is no better place for discovering new vegetables. If I still traveled as much as I would like to, I would be there right now in one of your great farmers markets." Either that or she would be out foraging. "I love being out in nature, and I could forage until the cows come home."

Instead, she shops for produce at "one of the earth's great vegetable crossroads: New York City." A short subway ride from her home is Queens where, on Main Street in Flushing, people of 167 nationalities, speaking 116 languages, sell "more vegetables than those two numbers combined."

"I've been a journalist for almost 40 years," says Schneider, "and I have never in my experience seen the variety of produce that's coming to market now."

The large number of choices available to us all at the produce bins can be staggering. In the past 10 years or so every consumer in America has seen exponential growth in the number and variety of vegetables offered. The diversity is a plus, but it can be a challenge, too. Most home cooks want to try new vegetables, but few know how to cook them. What's more, interest in the culinary arts is exploding, and home cooks are looking for exciting new ways to fix the vegetables they already know.

Schneider's book reaches the vegetable lover at every level. For those who would try new vegetables, here's how to cook the colorful leaves of amaranth we bought at the market. For the cook who has more zucchini than she knows what to do with, it's a source of new and wonderful ideas. In addition to 500 carefully tested recipes of her own, Schneider has included a section of tips from professional chefs at the end of every chapter, with brief sketches of dishes that allow anyone with a good working knowledge of basic cooking skills to make hundreds more recipes.

From "Vegetables from Amaranth to Zucchini," by Elizabeth Schneider Serves 4
2 bunches small-medium beets with     greens (8 beets) 4 whole star anise "flowers"     or 1 teaspoon anise or fennel seeds 1 tablespoon butter lemon juice 1. Trim off the beet greens, leaving 2 inches of stem; reserve. Set each beet on a square of foil large enough to enclose it. Break the star anise in half and place a piece on each square (or if using anise or fennel seeds, divide them among the packets). Crimp each packet tightly shut. 2. Set the beets in a roasting pan. Bake in a preheated 375-degree oven until tender when pierced through with a knife tip or cake tester, 40 to 60 minutes. 3. Meanwhile, rinse the greens in several changes of water. 4. Cool beets or not, as convenient. Keeping them wrapped up, gently squish each beet, sliding the skin back and forth so that it loosens. Open the foil and, still holding the beet with it, slip off the skin and stem. Discard with spices. Halve the beets. 5. Set the greens on a rack in a steamer over boiling water. Cover and cook until tender, about 5 minutes. Meanwhile, heat the beets in a pan with the butter. 6. Toss the greens with lemon juice. Arrange in a ring on a serving dish. Nest the beets in the center and serve. Printer-friendly version.

Finally, it's a guide for the perplexed armchair cook. We can settle once and for all the differences between gold hubbard and red curry squash, or Maui onions and Walla Walla sweets. This book serves as the final word on distinguishing between varieties and understanding how the vegetables came to be in our markets.

Her mission, says Schneider, is to introduce everyone to these vegetables. "I have a belief in the peacemaking power of diversity. And I don't think it's going too far to say that even vegetable diversity is peacemaking. I mean, it's no accident that agriculture has the word culture in it.

"When I'm in Flushing and all those people of 167 nationalities are selling their produce — they're all sitting behind their tables with their vegetables — and I arrive, a woman of the wrong color and the wrong size, they're dubious about me. But when I ask them about their vegetables, they open up . . . I'm kind of a scholarly snoop; I like to get as close as I can."

According to Schneider, you can tell as much about people by their vegetables as you can by their faith or their mating rituals. When people start to talk about their vegetables, she says, they reveal things about their homes, their social lives, even details about sex and religion and art. "So my job is to introduce these vegetables to everyone," and bring some understanding of what they mean to people.

"When I first started this book," says Schneider, "I thought I should learn to use the Internet so that I could reference that vast store of information. So I took classes, I went online and I tried to look things up but so much of the information was spurious, I spent more time weeding out the garbage than I did finding anything of use. I decided my time would be better spent at the market and in the kitchen." As a result, Schneider's firsthand knowledge and personal understanding brings these vegetables to life on every page. Her love for them is tangible and her willingness to put the vegetables in a new context opens worlds of flavor that we never have known.

"If I didn't gain some fresh culinary perspective about a traditional vegetable or find some way to make an exotic vegetable more accessible, I skipped it." When her book was reviewed in Saveur magazine shortly after it came out, an editor there criticized the work for failing to include the basics. "But I didn't want to produce a guide to what's already been done with vegetables," says Schneider. "Marian Morash already did that in 'The Victory Garden Cookbook,' and that book is still current. I wanted to expose all the new ways of using vegetables that are just now unfolding."

Take eggplant, for example. Don't look for eggplant parmesan or baba ghanouj in this chapter. Instead, discover Eggplants Baked with Gingered Red Pepper Purée or White Eggplant Slices Steamed with Black Beans and Orange Zest.

And if you want to find a new way to use those beets you picked up at the farmers market, try Baked Scented Beets and Greens.