A truly delicious read (literally! Reading this book made me constantly hungry, I recommend that you only pick up this book when you are full, after a home-made meal of locally bought products) that traces the four seasons during which a family of four ate only local vegetables and animals. The year of eating local begins in spring, when the asparagus shoots emerge from the ground; thereafter, the family subsides, as much as possible, only on what they harvest or collect from their farm, what they can purchase at the local farmer's market, and what their friends give them. This takes us through seasonal eating of heirloom vegetables, potatoes, wild mushrooms, carrots, chickens and their eggs, cheeses, tomatoes (lots of them!), turkey, and pumpkins. Kingsolver, with her husband, does not neglect to give us lessons on why we should eat organic or local foods that are in season—the implications of food traveling 1,500 miles to reach our dinner table, genetically modified crops, the problem of overfed but undernourished Americans, concentrated animal feeding operations (CAFOs), subsidies paid to keep "conventional" industrially grown foods cheap—and why we should cook our meals from scratch and avoid, as much as possible, eating processed foods. In beautiful prose, Kingsolver also takes us through her trips to north-eastern part of North America and Italy, and the slow food movements there. We learn that aside from the rare items (such as fair trade coffee, wheat grown out of state, and breakfast cereals), the family succeeds in their efforts—and saves money in the process.
Kingsolver makes a case that organic food should not be seen as an elite privilege; penny-pinching should not be "an accepted defense for toxic food habits, when frugality so rarely rules other consumer domains". We also learn that liberation of women from the home into the workforce, but WITHOUT the liberation from housework, has meant that less and less food is cooked at home—as Kingsolver notes, nobody looks forward to cooking at the end of a long day—and this is where a profiteering industry comes in: “hey ladies... go ahead, get liberated. We'll take care of dinner”. But cooking is not only "the great divide between good eating and bad"; "home-cooked, whole-ingredient cuisine will save money" and also "help trim off and keep off extra pounds". How could we possibly argue against that?
My only problem is that Kingsolver mentions next to NOTHING about the problems of eating fish and seafood—such as overharvesting and depletion of fish, the dangers of eating large ocean fish as well as fish from most rivers in the US due to toxic poisoning, and aquaculture and its negative effects on the environment, to name a few. She mentions that when she and her family denounced CAFOs, they would only order vegetarian or seafood menus when they ate at restaurants, but the cultivated shrimp typically found in American restaurants are just as likely to have had negative environmental impacts and ethical concerns as CAFOs. But the book is, as the title suggests, about animals and vegetables, and another whole book would have to be written to delve into such issues. Kingsolver is one of my favourite authors since I first read her work as a college student in the U.S., and I have read almost all of her books. In particular, "Prodigal Summer" and "Small Wonder" deal with topics that I can really identify with. "Animal, Vegetable, Miracle" will be an addition to my bookshelf that I am likely to pick up often, whenever I need an inspiration—whenever I am tempted to succumb to eating out or order take out, after a long day at work.
Kingsolver makes a case that organic food should not be seen as an elite privilege; penny-pinching should not be "an accepted defense for toxic food habits, when frugality so rarely rules other consumer domains". We also learn that liberation of women from the home into the workforce, but WITHOUT the liberation from housework, has meant that less and less food is cooked at home—as Kingsolver notes, nobody looks forward to cooking at the end of a long day—and this is where a profiteering industry comes in: “hey ladies... go ahead, get liberated. We'll take care of dinner”. But cooking is not only "the great divide between good eating and bad"; "home-cooked, whole-ingredient cuisine will save money" and also "help trim off and keep off extra pounds". How could we possibly argue against that?
My only problem is that Kingsolver mentions next to NOTHING about the problems of eating fish and seafood—such as overharvesting and depletion of fish, the dangers of eating large ocean fish as well as fish from most rivers in the US due to toxic poisoning, and aquaculture and its negative effects on the environment, to name a few. She mentions that when she and her family denounced CAFOs, they would only order vegetarian or seafood menus when they ate at restaurants, but the cultivated shrimp typically found in American restaurants are just as likely to have had negative environmental impacts and ethical concerns as CAFOs. But the book is, as the title suggests, about animals and vegetables, and another whole book would have to be written to delve into such issues. Kingsolver is one of my favourite authors since I first read her work as a college student in the U.S., and I have read almost all of her books. In particular, "Prodigal Summer" and "Small Wonder" deal with topics that I can really identify with. "Animal, Vegetable, Miracle" will be an addition to my bookshelf that I am likely to pick up often, whenever I need an inspiration—whenever I am tempted to succumb to eating out or order take out, after a long day at work.
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