Animal, Vegetable, Miracle

I read a lot of books about food. After a few, they can seem a little didactic. They all rail against the Carhills and Monsantos of our world, extole the virtues of shopping locally and supporting small farms, and encourage everyone to eat a wider variety of plants and a smaller amount of quality fish and meat. While I don't disagree in theory, it doesn't make for very exciting reading book after book.

Enter Barbara Kingsolver of Poisonwood Bible fame. In Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, Kingsolver documents her family's year-long project of eating locally in the Appalachians. The story really reads quickly, in large part because Kingsolver is a novelist and not a food scientist or chef. It also helps that she focuses on her family's story and only occasionally refers to the larger fod issues plaguing this country. The book is alternately thoughtful and whimsical, and it makes me grateful to live in California. It's especially fun to see her teenage daughters really getting into a way of eating that most kids would consider torturous deprivation.

Kingsolver makes me want to leave it all behind and move to Sonoma, but she also does not candy coat the hard work that goes into working even the smallest farms. You can't leave your home for a day, much less a week, without worrying that something will happen to a crop and destroy a crop you were hoping to eat for the next year. If an entire tree of fruit ripens on the same day, you need to be outside from dawn until dusk making sure you get to the fruit before animals do. Farming is back breaking work, and it involves a LOT of mud. And if you want to eat meat, you have to deal with stinky animals and be willing to kill them yourself. And yet, Kingsolver has me hooked. Hopefully one day, when I start talking about secret projects, I'll be talking about moving to the countryside!

To see Kingsolver's website, click here.