(read by the authors) while gardening, canning and freezing produce this week. In this book Kingsolver, her husband Steven Hopp and daughter Camille write about their family project of eating locally grown food for a year. Only locally grown food. Do you know what that means? No bananas. No lettuce from Mexico in the winter. Their motivation seems primarily environmental (saving fossil fuels needed to ship food), but they make a good case for the superior quality of local food.
The book was a mixed bag. Kingsolver writes warmly about their family life and the challenges involved with raising and growing enough food to can and freeze for winter months. This is their gospel and, despite their obvious attempts at a light touch, their message lumbered with sermonizing. I caught myself groaning when Steven started talking. Camille, a remarkably articulate college student, reminded me of a Preacher’s Kid who knows all the right answers and earnestly espouses them. You had to love Lily, the eight year old with a thriving egg business, the only member of the family who didn’t actually write part of the book.
Sticking Points:
• If you have young children and could only afford one organic food purchase, a pediatrician recommended it be milk. Growth hormones in cow’s milk are nasty for young bodies.
On a practical note, I was listening late last night to Barbara’s rant against a January newspaper food column on making pesto, a helpful article in the wrong season, when you’d need to live in the Southern Hemisphere to find fresh basil for making pesto. I had scooped my own fragrant green pesto into my last half-pint jar and was wondering how to freeze small portions of the rest of my batch. At that very moment, Kingsolver spoke of the convenience of small baggies of pesto in the freezer. ~Aha~!
Animal, Vegetable, Miracle was good; but if I had only one book to read about food origins, I would enthusiastically recommend The Omnivore’s Dilemma
I’m off to the Farmer’s Market!
A Living Pencil 
loved that book – even organized a round-up about it. Animal Vegetable Miracle round-up.
Carol, you are reading the same books I have read recently. Like you, I loved the Kingsolver book although I do not think I could forgo lettuce in winter. Here in Florida I don’t have to, and I also have fresh basil all year round. I also have a bell pepper plant that I overwintered by bringing it under cover when frost threatened and it is bearing again.So one doesn’t have to go all the way to the southern hemisphere…
the book one of my dear sister’s favorites;i will recommend the other two books to her; they’re an avid grow your own,make your own etc family; they’ve just installed their own outside bread oven… how far will i go? i do know that i would like to be self-sufficient…