Even if you're not "away," you can catch the flavor through cookbooks that conjure up dishes and ingredients associated with what for many of us are vacation lands.

"MaryJane's Ideabook-Cookbook-Lifebook," by MaryJane Butters (Potter, 2005, $35), has a sunny, straw-hatted figure on the cover and the subtitle, "For the farmgirl in all of us."

Butters, who runs an organic farm in Idaho and founded MaryJane magazine, seems capable of doing everything. Her book includes instructions in a serenely capable vein for cooking, sewing, cultivating, carpentering, looking after animals, hiking and camping and much more. Her text tells stories about family, family history, friends and places.