Book review - Animal, Vegetable, Miracle by Barbara Kingsolver
Review by: Mermaid Jennifer
This book was released in probably the most timely manner possible during the upswing of the Green Movement of late 2007. For all of 2008, we heard nothing but news about how to live better, eat better, work better. All of us sat up around our take-out pizzas and said, "Oh my gosh - do all of our habits as humans really hurt the planet, our bodies, and future generations?"
While the green movement is still valuable, it seems to be leveling off in the media. This book by Barbara Kingsolver, although released during the height of all of the hullabaloo is as timeless as my grandfather's- J.Crew chinos worn 50 years before they became popular in glossy catalogs.
It is a book that is imminently readable because of how Kingsolver writes about not only the nature of growing food and raising animals - but how her family interacts with the scenario. "This is not a book aimed at getting you cranking out your own food. We ourselves live in a region where every other house has a garden out back, but to many urban people the idea of growing your food must seem as plausible as writing and conducting your own symphonies for your personal listening pleasure," she extrapolates.
Kingsolver, an established novelist, essayist, and poetess, among other things, is not here to prove that she can tell a good story - although she can. She included her family in the writing of the book because they were real people within the story who were learning to adapt to making their own cheeses; gathering eggs; and spending Friday nights baking pizza from the vegetables in the garden.
One thing that I love about this book is that at the end of the day, despite our work and even what we've eaten or accomplished; it is our family relationships that matter. Kingsolver demonstrates this through her stories of the family interacting in the kitchen and communicating. This my friends is a task that I certainly haven't mastered as when I cook I prefer to not have others looking suspiciously over my shoulder at my techniques. Kingsolver invites them all in for canning beans and plucking chickens.
Her husband, Steven L. Hopp educates us on the political and social perspectives of what we eat and where we stuff it. Daughter, Camille Kingsolver, already a gem in my book because she is a yoga teacher; shares how the change from just eating the food of the world to growing and eating your own food changed her life. "I have a confession to make," she writes, "Five months into my family's year of devoted local eating, I moved out. Not because the hours of canning tomatoes in early August drove me insane or because I was overcome by insatiable cravings for tropical fruit. I just went to college."
She goes on to share how she began to look around the cafeteria and wonder how the t-shirt clad squints could be eating the limp lettuce in the salads. She didn't don a caftan and take up a piece of poster board to share her concerns about their food reality in front of the student union building, however. "...because who really cares when there are basketball games and frat parties to talk about?" she notes.
But what she did realize is how much she missed the seriously delicious food grown right from the earth on her family soil. She also because to realize how as much as we can bury our heads in a box of Froot Loops to hide from the future of our planet and stomachs - the reality is coming.
Now, as a family who does plant the two tomato plants and one zucchini plant a season, it's not likely that we are going to get into raising chickens or tracking down heirloom seeds to foster the weak soil in our garden. This book however, did bring an awareness to me in how I should go about feeding my own family. It impacted how I think of casually picking up a bunch of bananas that happen to be at Safeway; but have traveled over 4,000 miles to get to the fruit bowl on my table.
After reading the book, I began buying my eggs from the Liberty Lake Farmer's Market in the summer. The chickens are happily roaming a local property eating well and feeling happy. The eggs cost more, and they aren't bleached out white and clean like the prim grocery variety.
So if you decide to read this book - read it to enjoy it. Try some of the fun recipes, and let the book work on your mindset about food to become something appropriate for you.
Ways to change your food thinking for the better:
- Try sitting at a table with your family to eat in the evenings. If you don't have a outside commitment, gather at the table to eat and talk.
- Try slow cooking your food. The aroma in the home when you return from work is amazing and all of the prep work has been done. Then eat together!
- Go to your local Farmer's Market and buy food grown locally that is in season. Then eat it!
- Grow your own garden according to the seasons of where you live and your own tastes.
- Eat organic food and support those who are making an effort to remove chemicals from our food.
- Resist buying produce that is out of season and that must come from thousands of miles away. Try to buy produce that is local or in season at least somewhere close to where you live.
