Spring: the cruelest months -- Eating my way through house and homeland -- Purging the canned, making room for the fresh -- Coping with death, and the life thereafter -- Riding the dunes and finding the ghosts -- Dead chemicals or peaches eaten alive -- Summer: the fertile months -- Saguaro fruit and cactus icons -- Mesquite tortillas and duck eggs -- Tomato hornworms and summer storms -- Scouting for wild greens and chiles -- Seed saving and foraging in the heartland -- The frontera grill and the frontiers of technology -- From toxic cornfields to rattlesnake roadkills -- Autumn: the feasting months -- The headwaters and the foodshed -- The fertile valleys and their wild varmints -- Sea turtle soup and by-catch stew -- The nomad's movable feast and the taste of island chicken -- Hunting mushrooms and grilling salmon -- Feasting with the dead -- Winter: the reflective months -- Of vinegars fermented and memories curdled -- The WTO in Seattle, and the spirit of St. Louis -- Hunting quail and stalking scavengers -- Mexico's breadbasket of toxins and migrants -- The desert walk for heritage and health.