| Title | : | Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life |
| Author | : | |
| Rating | : | |
| ISBN | : | - |
| Language | : | English |
| Format Type | : | Kindle Edition |
| Number of Pages | : | 383 |
| Publication | : | First published May 1, 2007 |
| Awards | : | Book Sense Book of the Year Award Adult Nonfiction (2008) |
Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life Reviews
-
I do not want to have lunch with Barbara Kingsolver. I do not want to sit across the table from this self-satisfied woman and have her gently scold me for eating imported "world traveler" foods, like bananas. I also do not want to hear any more of her stories about how awesome she and her family are, and how they were able to eat primarily off what they could grow in their backyard, (plenty of fresh vegetables!) or buy from local farmers (who are all personal friends, anyway! Aren't we cool?). I don't want to hear any more about how her family is doing their part to stop global warming by reducing food processing and transportation costs, and now they all managed to do it without fighting. Who are these people? Everybody gets home from work or school and has to go garden until dark every freaking day, and there's no fighting? There's no salmon, or packaged cookies, or Cheetos, and there's still no fighting? Even though some members of the family are 17 and, like, 10?
What I wanted most of all was to hear the stories about how she caught her daughter hiding Little Debbie under the bed, or how her teenager was too embarrassed to bring her friends over without soda to offer them. But nooooo. No such humanizing details. Some small bumps in the road, such as when the teenager craves fresh fruit in early spring, but none is in season. But -- a ha! -- easily solved, with rhubarb from the farmer's market. Give me a break. This is cheating the readers. It had to have been more interesting than this.
But, that aside, it actually was pretty interesting. She's a wonderful writer, and much of the information and storytelling was totally fascinating. I will be thinking about this book for a long time, and it really has inspired me to pay more attention to local growing seasons, (although in California I guess we're a little spoiled,) and do more shopping at farmer's markets, and cook more, and perhaps even grow my own tomatoes...heirloom, of course. I just don't want to hang out with Barbara Kingsolver. Ever. Unless she's prepared to talk about what really went down. -
This book was one of my big disappointments so far this year, because I went in thinking I'd really like it and wound up so unimpressed that I think I actually hated it. The premise of the book is an interesting one, so interesting that I called my mother on the way back from the bookstore to tell her all about this new book I just picked up that I thought she'd really like! Barbara Kingsolver and her family have decided, for various environmental, political, and health reasons, to eat locally for a year and try and raise as much of their own produce and meat as they deemed feasible.
Kingsolver is a good writer and I've enjoyed
Animal Dreams and
The Bean Trees, so I assumed I would enjoy her adecdotes about her family's efforts to grow their own food supply. What I ended up with was an essayist trying relentlessly to convert me over to her point of view. America is bad, cooking your own food is good, be ashamed of your horrible non-food-cooking empty life. I'm exaggerating a little bit but not much. Over and over again Kingsolver relates large-scale problems in America (crime! addiction!) today to the fact that we no longer live close to our own food supplies. She has some valid points, but the holier-than-thou attitude ended up annoying me so much I couldn't make myself receptive to her message, and instead devoted myself to picking apart her examples. Also, it felt like there was a subtle sexism going on with regard to a woman's place in the home. Her husband may have made all the bread in their household but Kingsolver and her daughters were portrayed as doing most of the labor and cooking, and as one point she talks about the deep contentment she gets out of Thanksgiving, all the women in the kitchen working and gossiping together as they cook, all the men outside pretending they can throw around a pigskin. I think my favorite one, though, was when she said that women going into the workplace in the mid-20th Century was the reason why America's food culture devolved. There was this sense that, wow, America had just been so much better a hundred years ago, gosh, why can't we all just get back to that.
My new goal is go get everyone to read this book and find out if they hate it as much as I did. -
Barbara Kingsolver has long been one of my favorite writers, but this most recent book was a bit of a mixed bag for me. The book covers the year she and her family spent eating only food they had either grown themselves or purchased from local farmers personally known to them. Kingsolver’s skill as a storyteller is undiminished, and there are some wonderful sections as she relates their adventures plotting how to foist some of their bumper zucchini harvest off on unsuspecting neighbors and how they helped their new turkey crop re-learn the lost art of natural copulation.
The book also succeeded in teaching me quite a bit I didn’t know about food and gardening. As someone who was raised on heavily processed foods, I was fascinated to learn the biological secrets of root vegetables, how a mild-mannered novelist “harvests” chickens at home, and how much better food can taste when it hasn’t been subject to the rigors of corporate food production. Her chapter on asparagus helped me understand why the tough, road-hardened variety found in most conventional stores is only a pale shadow of an organically grown stalk picked just hours earlier; her description of the succulent magic of morels made me want to take up mushroom hunting.
In these celebrations of the pleasures of fresh, locally grown, in-season produce, Kingsolver was very effective in inspiring me to think more about how to plan my menus around what is seasonally available. I’ll be adding her sweet-potato quesadilla recipe to my menu this week, and I’m looking forward to trying out her dried-tomato pesto.
On the down side, Ms. Kingsolver’s charming storytelling is laced with a rather heavy dose of preaching. I have no doubt that the food monoculture promoted by corporate America has had devastating effects on our health, taste buds, and environment, and the loss of crop diversity these practices have created has made us very vulnerable as a population. These are important issues that need to be talked about. But part of the reason I’ve admired Ms. Kingsolver’s past writing is because she has always woven her political views so seamlessly into her stories that, in reading her books, I always learned new things without feeling like I had been force-fed someone else’s opinions.
That was not the case with this book. The first quarter is particularly thick with commentary on the evils of our current food system. More than once, I found myself slogging through sections that left me feeling more guilty about the food currently in my kitchen than inspired to adopt her suggestions. This tone made the read much less effective for me than it would have been had she focused primarily on the very real value her family gained from choosing to forgo convenience in favor of such fantastically delicious food. -
I am exactly the target audience for this book, as a middle-class, whole-grain eating, own-veg-growing, food-mile worrier. And yet I hated it. There you go.
It's the patronising tone, basically. The cultural-cringey breast beating about how awful and fat-making the US food culture is (while her family soar above it in their eccentric yet back-to-the-land way). The presentation of France and Italy in particular as fantasy places where fast food is unheard of and everyone eats three hour home made dinners every night. The passages written by her earnest teenager which...sorry, but I did not pay cash money for the musings of an earnest teenager. Also the spinach lasagna recipe. JFC, what, and also why.
DNF at 17% before I gave in to my growing urge to go buy a Big Mac out of pure spite. -
Well...normally I am a Kingsolver fan. I like the way she writes--simple and straight forward. Her stories, both long an short are well done. But this book just really pissed me off. It's a non-fiction account of her back to the land movement with her family. The book starts off well and good. She describes their reasoning for leaving Tuscon and moving to a farm they inherited. She talks about the trials and tribulations of trying to live off of what they can either produce themselves through farming or buy locally. (Each family member is only allowed one "luxury" item. This consists of foodstuffs that can't be produced at home or bought locally. It's a bit over the top if you ask me but I suppose an interesting addition to their overall movement.) Kingsolver makes a lot of good points about eating what's in season and offers some handy recipes.
However, about mid-way through the book, her passion and reflections take an unfortunate turn to absolute preachiness. She writes as if our understanding of the food chain stops at our understanding of how to open a bag of Doritos. She proceeds to slam vegetarians--apparently we do not get the concept of family farming because if we did we would eat locally raised animals. She also looks down her nose at those who shop at supermarkets for food--apparently people who think we are doing good by purchasing organic items are really not. Ditto for those who use recycled paper towels. I guess her family makes their own. She gets on a high horse about, of all things, canning. She maintains that us city folk could feed ourselves off the land year round if we would only can the fruits and vegetables we buy at the farmer's market in the summer and store them in our pantry. Perhaps if Barbara went to a real NYC apartment, and not just those of her publisher and editor, she would realize that most of us, if we are lucky, have a broom closet and 2 cabinets. If only I would be selfless enough to keep my clothes on my fire escape.
I guess what made me the maddest about this reading experience is that I really like Kingsolver as an author and was looking forward to her take on living off the land. I also liked the premise of this particular book. It reminded me of a book my father-in-law wrote years and years ago, only this one is a hell of a lot less funny. We all have a responsibility to conserve and be aware of our impact. But her assumption that we're all bumbling idiots just threw me over the edge. Too bad. I hope her next piece is fiction. -
Dear Barbara Kingsolver,
I'm very sorry, but I'm abandoning my attempt to read your book Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, which chronicles the year your family spent living on your farm in Virginia attempting to eat only local, sustainable food.
I adore your novels. And I loved Fast Food Nation and The Omnivore's Dilemma. They even made me stop eating fast food, buy organic when I can, and give up most meat.
I wanted to love your book. I settled in as you scolded me for eating produce that is flown from halfway around the world. You're right! I know! It makes no sense! And then you said if I could only taste fresh vegetables, straight from the vine, I couldn't stand my bland Stop & Shop tomato. It's true! It doesn't taste that good! Tell me more! It's all very interesting!
Then four chapters later, you were still scolding me.
Barbara, I would love to harvest wild asparagus in the early mornings, but I do not have a family farm or a book contract to retreat to. All the CSAs near me are sold out for years. I know I'm a moral failure because the bananas I have for breakfast come from South America. I will patronize my local vegetable stand more because of reading your four chapters. Can you stop yelling at me now?
Please oh please, write another novel,
Sarah -
I can forgive the obvious shortcommings of this book for three significant reasons: First, I believe wholeheartedly that by purchasing as much locally grown/made food as possible we can solve our fossil fuel dependency. Secondly, by the luck of the draw I can afford to purchase food from the weekly farmer’s market. And finally, our household is committed to making around 95% of our meals from scratch, which started as a response to our collective allergies (nondairy, meat-eaters) but like the Kingsolver tribe, once our taste buds were reawakened by the flavor of our delicious made-by-scratch food, there was no turning back. I agree with most of what she says and respect her reminder that I need to buy as much food as possible from local farmers, and I am going to try a few of her recipes. I do, on occasion, enjoy a frozen Snickers bar.
In general I endured this book and it certainly motivated me. But the book has many problems.
Several critics have said it was not her intention to convince “everyone” but I don’t buy that. When a well-known author writes a book like this it becomes persuasive argument. (Hey, every book you write is an argument!) Besides, The Farmer’s Market Choir is already convinced. Rather quickly Kingsolver's tone is preachy, and well, whom is she yelling at but the uninitiated? It reminds me of the old saying, there is nothing worse than listening to the recently reformed. After all, she did spend a huge amount of time in Arizona and that other life eating and drinking. (Poor Arizona! The only answer this evolved American author can come up with is to abandon you.)
I was both an inspired and a reluctant reader; I wish I had edited this book to help cut out some of the unnecessary fat. One moment she has me right in the palm of her hand, the next she veers off, shoe-horning that well-warn and skewed stereotype about how the French, given their high calorie intake manage to stay thin, and how Europe has nude beaches where Americans could never show-up with rolls of fat hanging out, and suddenly I feel cornered by the marginalized relative at my family reunion. At first I am nodding with agreement when she argues that eating freshly prepared food is a matter of attitude, but then she says “take a look at Mexico,” and I stop nodding. Having stayed on many a ranch in Mexico, I wonder why she fails to recognize the rigid gender roles? The economic problems? Then much later, on page 127, she admits that “Full-time homemaking may not be an option for those of us delivered without trust funds…Required participation from a spouse and kids an element of the equation…” and well, it all comes much too late.
This book had the potential but missed the chance to change the minds of the other people--the unconvinced--the people she most needs!
I wanted her to stop meandering, stop arguing every counter-argument and stick to her narrative nonfiction story and its strongest argument: how a renewed connection to food transformed her family and their relationship with the community. By purchasing your neighbors food, you can help with the fossil fuel problem AND keep their farm in business. Small yet significant gestures such as buying butter from the same family in your area keeps them in business and it is a huge step in the right direction.
And since many Americans feel helpless, this book could show them how to help, and that's a big, wondeful adjustment in a culture where more and more people feel left out and powerless. This plan will only work if more people get on board, (and if we find a way to help Arizona!) And YES, by eating this kind of food, many have lost weight and become heart-healthy and all of that is good. But instead of shrilling, "tell" by "showing", girlfriend.
Like many narrative nonfiction books on the market today, the ones people in the publishing business call “idea books”--Kingsolver's narrator tries too hard, steps into her self-made traps. There’s so much I should love about this book, and I hope some other author takes up this subject again, and gives it a good try. I'd certainly buy it! -
I read this. Then I gave it my sister, then she gave it to a friend. Where it went from then I don't know, but I am reasonably confident that this book was of no practical use to any of us.
I'm tempted to say that everybody is haunted by the dream of the good life, when your eyes glaze over and you dream of escaping trouble and woe for a better way of living, but I'm probably just projecting my own state of mind here. Certainly though I can sympathise with the position that Barbara Kingsolver found herself in that starts this book off.
She was living in some part of the USA where the population was way in excess of local water resources so the municipality had water brought in by canal, which it advised the local population was safe to drink but not safe to put into aquariums. This experience put the seal on Kingsolver's concerns over food miles and the unease that comes from living in an arid environment with food and water brought into what was a desert ecosystem rather than the population living in a more sustainable environment in the first place.
This starting point, of which I'm reminded whenever I see asparagus air freighted into the UK that was grown in arid semi-desert regions of Peru, of realising that the logic of capitalism produces illogical and environmentally unsustainable outcomes is something that many readers can recognise, but Kingsolver's response, while interesting, is one that few will be able to emulate.
What Barbara Kingsolver did was to undertake a quest to live for a year on food either produced by herself or sourced very locally. Here we are on what could be for many common ground. However what this means in practise for her is moving her family to another state, where she has a large house with extensive grounds. These she has landscaped, using digging machines to carve out a system of terraces. This provides land enough not only to grow vegetables, but also to raise turkeys and money enough to pay for this as well as more basic vegetables from Farmers' Markets.
So this is a very personal response, not a manifesto, it is not suitable to become a call to arms. While I like what she and her family did, the lifestyle they adopt reflects their circumstances including an independent income, as well as a nearby Farmers' market that supplies basic foodstuffs.
This book provides no model for the good life, but nor does it aspire to do so. As laid out here only the aspiration of living off your own and local produce is scalable for those without her means. What saves the book is its humour - best demonstrated in her account of the upbringing and the sexual lives of turkeys. -
This book gave me desires. Deep dark desires for...gardening. And making my own cheese. And doing more things from scratch. And doing them now.
The thing is, these are all things I have aspirations to do anyway, but my way is rather slower than the way Barbara Kingsolver and her family approached trying to eat locally for a year. I'm trying to make small, long-term changes, one at a time, hopefully in a way that I'll stick to it. But it was fun to read about someone else's experiment, in mostly non-preachy tones, and, you know, quite a lot about turkey birth, sex, and death.
Note: The rest of this review has been withdrawn due to the recent changes in Goodreads policy and enforcement. You can read why I came to this decision
here.
In the meantime, you can read the entire review at
Smorgasbook -
You have to read this book. Not just because it conveys an important message about the sustainability and environmental impact of our foodways. Not just because its "Year in Provence"-style charm makes Appalachia sound as alluring as the French or Italian countryside (no euros required). But mostly because this is beautiful, tightly-strung writing about food and what it means to nourish ourselves. If you've read a certain amount of writing on food you know, sweet and delicious though it may be, that it can get cloying. A quick flip through Barbara's chapter on turkey butchering will cure you.
In case you've had your head in the sand or don't live in the Bay Area or somewhere like it, here's the book's basic premise: Novelist Barbara Kingsolver and her professor husband pack up their two daughters and move from the New Mexican desert to a small farm in Virginia, where it rains and things grow, and after a bit of a weaning process that involves hard decisions about bananas, undertake a year of eating nothing but locally produced food. It's a lot of hard work, since they're doing most of the local production themselves. They make cheese and cook pumpkins and OD on asparagus. They have slaughtering parties. They come up with seasonal menus and recipes and share them with you.
There's some sound political analysis of why and how our food chain has become a fossil-fuel eating monster that disserves developing economies around the world while eroding our health here at home. There's some preaching (oh well). There's a careful explanation of why and under what circumstances raising animals to eat them can be the best use of the planet's resources. There's a chick-hatching scene that will make you weep.
I still can't keep my beloved husband from buying huge flats of Costco fruit grown halfway around the world, and I'm not giving up Italian truffles or French cheese or wine any time soon. So I can't be smug. But right now I have a big pot of soup simmering on the stove full of veggies from our local community-supported agriculture box, and I feel like we're living just a little bit more. -
I have to admit that I have a real love/hate relationship with this book.
On one hand, when the author sticks to the actual practicalities and stories of what it took to live on local food only for a year such as the hilarity of turkey sex, the pets vs food dilemma or the aggravation that a zucchini crop can cause, it is a thoroughly enjoyable read. On the other hand, when she goes the route of moralizing and fear mongering about the environment and public health, and stoops to the typical "America sucks compared to the rest of the world" it gets maddeningly obnoxious (especially the part about the evils of Halloween and Fourth of July - come on lady, lighten the hell up!). I kept alternating between being riveted and wanting to toss the book against the wall.
I can't help but think that Kingsolver, her husband and daughter present a very incomplete and one sided picture of American farming. I suspect that the truth is somewhat more complicated than Evil Capitalist Overlord Farm Corporations vs. Saintly Environmentalist Local Organic Farmers. It becomes very obvious right from the beginning that she's got an extremely narrow focus for her arguments and doesn't quite understand how economies work and how and politics and public policy have shaped where people live and what foods are accessible to them beyond the typical liberal "you're being hoodwinked by those nasty CFOs."
It doesn't seem to occur to her that not everyone wants to be a farmer, grow their own food or make meals from scratch. Both of my grandmothers grew up on farms and could tell you at length about how much being a farmer, baking your own bread and living on only "local food" can completely suck. And while claims that she's not an elitist, smug self-satisfaction creeps into passages all over the book.
Her assertion that low income families can afford to shop at farmer's markets is equally boggling. I went to my local farmer's market last weekend and discovered that local organic ground beef costs about seven bucks a pound and that the organic, free range, local chicken runs between twice and four times as expensive as it does in the local supermarket.
Finally, her argument that America doesn't have any real food culture of it's own made me almost sprain my eyeballs from rolling them so much. It apparently escapes her that 1) America as a country is extremely young in comparison to most European, Asian and South American countries and therefore wouldn't have as ingrained of a tradition and 2) the reason that most of the traditions we have are imported from other countries because, hello, we're mostly a nation of immigrants and their descendants. She takes a trip to Canada and gushes about the local French food culture - as though she couldn't find the similar of thing in any major city in the States and as though French cuisine isn't imported to Canada too.
Not that she doesn't make interesting and legitimate points; the part about biodiversity among crops and livestock as well as the the havoc farm subsidies have caused are two of the best points that she makes. And I will give her this - although I don't agree with a lot of what she argues, she has given me a lot of things to think about and I will probably put a lot more thought into what I buy to feed myself and my family. But she seriously needs to dial back on the smugness, guilt and fear mongering, and focus more on the fascinating daily life of what it means to grow and eat locally because she'd win more converts that way. -
This books is not AT ALL in my normal wheelhouse, and I'm still scratching my head as to why I suddenly felt impelled to order it on Amazon and read it. It's non-fiction, which, nothing against non-fiction, but again, not a genre I normally go out and buy. I might read non-fiction if it's a gift, or library book/freebie, or it's our book club monthly read, but otherwise, not very likely.
Also it's a whole book about the author's family's year-long culinary adventure of eating exclusively natural and organic foods, and more, eating ONLY locally grown or raised foods, eschewing the imported, the canned and preserved (unless done by the family itself or some local business), anything shipped long distance - all those fossil fuels! Which, yay for that, but do I really want to read a whole book about that?
But someone (I think in the aforementioned book club) thought this book was fantastic and highly recommended it, and I really loved Barbara Kingsolver's novels
The Poisonwood Bible and
The Bean Trees, so in a moment of madness I clicked over to Amazon and bought this book (a used copy; I'm not that mad).
So here was my takeaway: I applaud this family's determination to stick exclusively with local organic foodstuffs only for a year. They did allow themselves a few exceptions as well, like coffee, dried fruit, grains, etc., "on the condition we'd learn how to purchase it through a channel most beneficial to the grower and the land where it grows."
Even though I'm not remotely tempted to try it myself, it did encourage me to be more aware of what's healthy and what's not, and to try to eat more fresh fruit and veggies ... even if they're imported from distant lands like California or Florida. My favorite parts were some of Kingsolver's charming stories of their culinary adventures, especially those involving goats and chicks and turkeys. Also turkey sex (or lack thereof - hah!). There are some interesting organic recipes interspersed throughout the book, though I found them somewhat daunting and/or dubious (from the standpoint of "would my family really eat this or would there be an uprising against Mom?"). Maybe I'll try some of them sometime.
There's also a lot of scary discussion of GM foods, lack of genetic diversity, hybridization, and other worrisome trends and potential ecological disasters. For some readers this will be fascinating stuff; I lost interest in the book about halfway through. I did get a chuckle out of the defensive tone of the part where Kingsolver was explaining why their family isn't vegetarian. Eating meat is okay as long as it's organic and doesn't come from stockyards or other inhumane conditions. Here again I have to applaud her family's commitment: they slaughter and prepare their own chickens and turkeys for the dinner table.
I think 350-plus pages was a bit much for this story, at least for my interest level in it. There's a preachy, didactic tone to the writing that infuses too much of the book and got really tiresome after a while.
Still, it has a worthwhile message, and we could all benefit from doing a little better in this department. And now I think I need to go find a local food stand and buy some fresh peaches and corn on the cob... -
I had a hard time putting this down once I'd started and once I'd finished I wanted to give up NYC life and move to the country to be an organic farmer. I'm hardly joking.
Anyone who eats -- and especially those who eat without thinking about where their food comes from -- should read this book. Not only is it informative and a bit scary (though she doesn't present anything terribly new or earth-shattering to those of us who have read things like Fast Food Nation or Portrait of a Burger as a Young Calf), but it's inspiring all at the same time.
Sure, she has the luxury of owning a farm in Appalachia and having the work schedule of an author (i.e. completely flexible), but many of the things she's doing on her farm are things that urban folks could -- and can -- do on a smaller scale through backyard gardens, compost bins or vermicomposting, potted vegetable plants, windowsill herb gardens, the purchase of a small food dehydrator and minimal canning equipment, or Community Supported Agriculture (CSA).
In addition to inspiring its readers to eat locally, the book provides funny anecdotes (I completely fell in love with her young daughter Lily and her entrepreneurial spirit) and offers concrete advice, links to resources, and recipes to try. I plan to try my first one -- for homemade mozzarella -- this weekend.
HIGHLY recommended to anyone that cares about their health and their planet. -
I have a few questions for you:
(1) Do you care about saving our planet?
(2) Do you care about your and your family's health and nutrition?
(3) Do you care about animal welfare?
(4) Have you ever been dreaming about homesteading and living (at least partially) off the land?
If you can answer YES to at least one of the previous questions, then this book is a MUST READ for you. -
First, I want to confess that I didn't finish this book. I couldn't. So there are about thirty pages at the end that I cannot account for, but I seriously doubt that they saved this book from where it had already been, and frankly I was too angered and frustrated to find out.
My two major complaints are these:
1. Kingsolver (and her husband and older daughter whose interludes are also included) are incredibly smug about the entire process. All the descriptions of what they are doing are terribly self-congratulatory, and never acknowledge that people do what they describe doing EVERY DAY. And not, as with Kingsolver's family, as a sort of "experiment" to see if they could "do without," but because it is necessary. They grow food and eat locally because doing so is necessary both for their income and as the direct source of food for their families. Kingsolver (who was almost certainly funded to some extent by her publisher) uses folksy language and lots of "we" talk to make it sound as if she struggles alongside farmers and shares a sort of moral high ground with them for "opting out." Guess what? It's not about options for most people. Most people who farm, even on a small scale, don't get to make an adventurous, fun choice to pick up, move across the country and farm just to see if they can do it. They don't have publishers who will pay for this, and the comfort of knowing that if their crops fail, they won't starve and the bills will still get paid. Most farmers are living where there families have lived for generations, and the success or failure of their growing seasons is everything. I'm not suggesting that there's anything wrong with engaging in this sort of experiment, or being supported by your publisher to do so and write about it. But it is wrong to pretend that it is the same reality as that faced by most who really do live off the land, or that it is a viable option for those who don't. This makes her awkward insertion of phrases like "plumb wasted" feel insulting and fake. It's hard to believe that she really speaks in that folksy sort of tone when her other books don't reflect that type of language anywhere, and when she is a noted and well-published writer.
She never acknowledges the role that poverty plays in poor nutrition in this country, or that for many people eating local fresh foods is simply not an option financially when they have whole families to feed, often on a single small income and have to fill stomachs as they can afford to. Fast food companies and other major food manufacturers and providers prey on these people by making the cheapest, most filling and widely available foods of a dreadful quality. She implies that anyone who doesn't eat a completely local, organic, and never prepackaged diet is morally lesser than she and her family, and/or has no idea where food comes from. She might suggest that those who cannot afford this type of food should grow it themselves, but these are not typically people who own or have access to acres of land or the starting capital to grow enough to feed their families.
In short: the whole book is rife with smugness and unacknowledged privilege.
2. She talks about the importance of eating more vegetables, more local vegetables, and more diverse vegetables, and almost in the same breath starts taking shots at vegetarians and vegans. Why? Because in her logic, cows and chickens and pigs would not exist at all if we didn't farm them. Excuse me? If they had never been domesticated as part of an agricultural strategy, they would simply have continued to exist in the wild as they had done before. Farms didn't invent farm animals, pulling them out of the ether. It's a statement that makes no sense whatsoever. She goes on to say that vegetarianism is actually worse than meat eating, since, as part of the process of harvesting plant crops, lots of insects and worms get killed. That's right. Vegetarians are actually even more morally culpable for food-related murder because more animals die when plants are cut down than just the one animal that dies for meat at a time. And that one is okay, because you see the plan was to eat THAT animal ALL ALONG. She further supports her positing that vegetarians and vegans are silly and naive by saying that they want to set all farm animals free, which would cause chaos and destruction everywhere. I don't know any vegetarians or vegans who actually want to do that or think it would be a realistic option even if they did. She portrays everyone who chooses not to eat meat or animal products as a sentimental moron who only thinks what they do because they just don't get it. She seems unaware than many vegetarians and vegans are such not only because they are living according to a principle of non-violent eating, but also often because they recognize that 99% of the meat and other animal products available for consumption are the result of operations that are inhumane, wasteful, polluting, and so on, and are choosing not to participate in that. They are saying, if this is what is required in order to consume meat or other animal foods, it's not worth it. And what if they have made that choice based on ethics. I agree wholeheartedly with Jonathan Safran Foer's argument on this subject, which is this:
Isn't ignoring all the facts of most modern animal production, the deep and lasting harm it causes to animals, laborers, consumers and the environment, and yes, the possible moral implications of killing another living thing when most of us no longer depend upon doing so to avoid starvation, all because "meat tastes good" and it affords a few minutes of pleasure in the eating a much MORE sentimental and LESS rational position than recognizing those facts and choosing to eat accordingly?
I realize that Kingsolver is supporting the eating of sustainably raised animals, which sidesteps the issue of CAFOs and factory farms somewhat, but these types of animals are NOT available to or affordable for everyone, or even to most.
She tells a story about her family sitting around the kitchen table one night all laughing together at a vegan actress they read about who wants to start a farm sanctuary. They laugh about how she must not know anything about farm animals, and how unhappy she'd be once she actually had to deal with them. There's no talk about the noble work that farm sanctuaries actually do. They rescue discarded animals from factory farms who have been effectively left for dead or so horribly abused that they are no longer considered fit even for consumption. They are rehabilitated and allowed to live out natural lives as well as possible on farm sanctuaries. If Kingsolver thinks this is funny, she is either clueless or heartless.
It's ill-informed, illogical, and ridiculous.
It made me wish I still had the library's copy of Foer's book so I could vent my frustration by using it to beat Kingsolver's into a pulp. No such luck.
Also I would have had to pay to replace it with another copy, which I would be loathe to do.
Even my omnivorous boyfriend responded to the passage when I read it to him with an unguarded, "She's an idiot!"
Her absurd rationale for putting down conscious abstainers follows some stories about her own dealings with food animals and how she teaches her children to think about them, which she seems to think are cute and funny, but are more often disturbing. I'll summarize one that I think tells the whole story.
Her youngest daughter, Lily, keeps hens as a little girl, both in their Tucson home and their new Appalachian one. The first time she experiences the death of one of her hens, she weeps and mourns for quite some time, until Kingsolver says to her, "It's just a chicken." Lily responds by saying that she loves her chickens, and to illustrate the point, says she loves them as much as she loves her mother. Kingsolver talks about how much that hurt her feelings, when of course her little girl was looking for a way to demonstrate the depth of her devotion to her pets by comparing it to the biggest love she knew, that of her mother. Instead of realizing this, Kingsolver pouts until her daughter apologizes. Now who's acting like a child?
In a later episode, told by Kingsolver as a cute little "growing up" story, they get a new flock of hens at their new home, and Lily asks for a promise that they aren't going to eat her hens as part of this project. Kingsolver says that the hens are Lily's and if she doesn't want them eaten, then they won't be. Fine. Here's where the story takes a dark turn.
Lily is interested in horseback riding. She's taken lessons and loves horses, and now that they are living next to and around so many farms, she has lots of friends who own horses of their own, and, inevitably she starts to want one of her own. Kingsolver tells her they can get a horse if Lily can raise half the money for it, which she will then match. How much does a horse cost, Lily wants to know? Oh, about a thousand dollars says Kingsolver (knowing that she's overestimating). Lily sets about figuring out how long it will take her to make five-hundred dollars selling eggs (which she has been doing as a hobby). When Lily returns from her room, concerned about how long it will take to raise the money, Kingsolver suggests she sell something else. When Lily (a little child, desperate for the horse she wants so badly) reluctantly asks how much she could get if she sold the chickens for meat, Kingsolver answers that she could get a quite a bit more for the meat than for the eggs, all the while acting as if she was just neutrally giving information to her daughter. Of course there is nothing neutral about basically creating a situation in her daughter's mind in which the choice is between killing her chickens or not getting a horse. Her daughter hesitantly agrees, but, hinting at the trouble her conscience is still giving her, repeatedly says "we'll only kill the mean ones."
Kingsolver could have admitted she'd overestimated the cost of a horse. She could have offered alternative ways of raising the money. She could have even just acknowledged her daughters feelings by saying, "I know you really want a horse, but are you sure you really want to kill your chickens to get it?" Instead, she tacitly sends the message that killing them is Lily's only choice if she wants a horse, and that that's the choice she should make. The grown-up choice. What sort of message is that to raise a child with? You have to kill, harm or otherwise sacrifice what (or in this case who) you love to get the things you want. You should ignore, suppress, and otherwise avoid being guided by your values and your internal moral compass when it gets in the way.
She told the story with a knowing parental chuckle, but I found it chilling, and I shed a couple of tears in the reading. -
I have liked Kingsolver's books in the past and I am easily obsessed with sustainable farming/living/eating issues. So, why didn't I love this book? Several reasons:
- Preachy, preachy, preachy. Yowsers, if I wanted to be depressed I'd watch daytime TV, not read a book. It's a lot of doom and gloom, particularly from Kingsolver's husband (uber downer).
- Self-righteous, Party of Four. She and her family spend a lot of time planting seeds, celebrating food, pointing fingers, and patting themselves on the back. Nobody likes that.
- No emotional engagement. I ended up feeling more like oh-come-on-and-just-go-to-a-supermarket than cheering for the do gooders. They just didn't seem that fun. And what is life if you suck all of the fun out of it?
Ok, maybe that's all a bit harsh. But I had high expectations because of the writer and the topic. I did learn interesting things about farming, seeds, living simply, and thinking twice (or three times) before buying food that has been shipped. I also learned that eating locally and growing your food are not necessarily as romantic in real life as they are in my head.
All in all, I give it a C+. -
I enjoyed spending time with this book and the thoughts of the author. Barbara and her family decided to do an experiment and only eat what they raise and what is grown locally while it is in season for a year. It sounds so cutting edge and yet just 50 or so years ago this was the normal in the country. What a difference a half century makes.
She really made me think about my food. I thought I eat healthy, but I eat things out of season and from all over the world. I have a huge carbon footprint with my food. I eat things all times of the year. I think not having a farm makes this difficult to do, but maybe that is all in my head.
She has some amazing stories. Did you know that Turkeys have pretty much forgotten how to mate? It has been breed out of them. That seems crazy and it makes me feel the world will end soon. At these industrial farms all the animals are artificially inseminated. Crazy. She does help her Turkeys get their groove on.
I love the way she gave food personality. I liked how she spoke of vegetarians. I didn't know this, but 1,000s of animals die from the pesticides used to grow plants, so you can't eat anything that isn't local which doesn't kill animals in some way.
Listening to her book made me want to spend a year eating locally. I doubt it will happen for a while, but it sounds great. I learned so much about our food in this country. Farming is difficult and rewarding.
Some conservative magazine put Barbara on the 100 most dangerous people trying to destroy America list. She talks about it in the story as she is making dinner covered in farm goo. A women living off the land really doesn't sound that dangerous. Maybe her ideas seem dangerous to those with their head in the sand - I don't know.
This was a fantastic book and I can't live up to its message. I am glad the message is out there and maybe it will inspire more people to buy local. I know at least I can go to my farmers market now more often. -
3.5★
It wasn't that I didn't like this book - I found Kingsolver's message far more palatable as non fiction, rather than using her fiction as a soapbox. & I do think if I ever finish this book, I'll agree with a lot of Kingsolver's conclusions.
She is my sister's favourite author, so I gave Trish this book last night. If I don't get it back or can't get the book from another source I will move it on to my dnf shelf.
Edit 29/11/16 This book is preaching to the converted with me. Still don't feel any desire to search out another copy. Moved from "in hibernation" to "read." -
If you have ever grown asparagus, thought about growing asparagus or picked wild asparagus, you will enjoy the Waiting for Asparagus chapter. If you adore heirloom tomatoes that have a limited season, taste like real tomatoes, and probably have to be bought at your local farmers market, you will enjoy the chapter Springing Forward where you will not only read about heirloom seeds and their ilk, but also hear the author rant about genetically modified and hybrid corn and soybeans that have been developed to make money for large agribusiness companies. Also be prepared to listen up about hybrid tomatoes that have been genetically modified to travel and pack well; taste is totally secondary.
And the book goes on with personal experiences of the Kingsolver family as they experimented with limiting themselves to local food, that is, to become locavores, and to learn about the history of agriculture and the things that threaten it today. It is a combination of storytelling that Barbara Kingsolver does very well and the nonfiction of food politics.
You will read, probably with some disbelief, as Kingsolver tells about how she “grew up in a tobacco county” and goes on not only to defend but to support (maybe idealize is not too strong a word) the family farms that survived by growing a small cash crop of leaf tobacco. You will likely find other information that will surprise and confound and annoy you in the pages of this book. I think that encouraging thinking and debating is one of the good things about this book.
The book presents a lot of introductory information. For the details you can go to the resource pages at the end of the book. Things you will get to read about in small doses:
Mail order chicks
Raising turkeys for food
CAFOs (concentrated animal feeding operations)
Vegetarianism
Morels
Amish dairy farming
Farm subsidies
Harvesting farm animals
Fair Trade products
Global warming
Food in school cafeterias
Yes, as promised, turkey sex
At the end of the book you will find pages of organizations and resources about the issues and ideas raised in the book complete with URLs (internet addresses) so you can go investigating without any delay. There is also a web site for the book at
http://www.animalvegetablemiracle.com/ . Kingsolver encourages you to learn and she believes that her knowledge and experience of being a locavore will serve you well, literally. She can be a little pushy and does have a disability of thinking she is right much of the time on this topic. She most likely is right! But some readers have felt she demeans them with her tone and certainty and facts. I mostly took it to mean that she is most dedicated to and enthusiastic about the politics of food and wants you to share both her concerns and excitement. One of the cook books she recommends is
Local Flavors . And don’t miss the Locavore Reading List on GR:
http://www.goodreads.com/list/show/46...
I have had a few brushes with farm and locavore life so found the book reminiscent of days past in my life. This created a special enjoyment even though my experiences were all relatively short term and some time ago. I enjoyed reading Animal, Vegetable, Miracle enough to give it four stars. I think it will increase my desire to buy local food at the community market in season and to give more consideration to organically grown local food. Regrettably the local natural food store that has been in the Lynchburg area for the past two decades just closed, a victim of the down economy. However, the community market here is fairly substantial for seasonal produce and has local free range meat year round. -
I received this book in the mail as a recommendation from my dear friend Fievel. The kind gesture was much appreciated.
I initially found myself enjoying this book, though I struggled with Kingsolver's assertion that anyone of any income level could participate in her "locavore" (eating local and organic) diet. Putting aside Kingsolver's complete disregard for her privilege, I was intrigued by her tales of gardening and interested in some of her recipes.
However, Kingsolver totally lost me when she began making snarky and degrading comments about vegans and a vegan diet. She calls vegans out for a diet containing grain produced on large scale farms - farms that inevitably take the lives of those small creatures living and nesting in the grain at the time of harvest. This critique seems not only uninformed but considerably out of place considering the omnivorous diet she maintains. Kingsolver says that vegans ignore the fact that the lives of small creatures living in grain fields are "plumb wasted" and goes on to assert that, as she puts it, without the human harvesting of animals, domestic livestock "would never have had the distinction of existing" (pg.222). (As though by bringing livestock into a miserable, inhumane existence through completely artificial means, humans are bestowing a great privilege on these animals.)
Kingsolver almost raised herself to throwing-the-book-across-the-room-never-to-be-picked-up-again status (and only avoided this reaction by virtue of my proximity to the end of the book) with this lovely gem:
(In regards to Thanksgiving, which Kingsolver sites as belonging to her people...)
Oh, yes, I know the Squanto story, we replayed it to death in our primitive grade-school pageantry ("Pilgrim friends! Bury one fish beneath each corn plant!"). But that hopeful affiliation ended so badly, I hate to keep bringing it up. Bygones are what they are. Pg.284.
Yeah, sure. Bygones.
As much as I appreciate the message that Barbara Kingsolver intended to disseminate by producing this book (that adopting a local diet will benefit not only your health and your local economy, but can have greatly positive effects globally as well), I have lost a significant amount of respect for her after reading this book. I can not recommend it. -
I was so excited to finally get my hands on this fantastic story about one family's year long experiment in growing & raising most of their own food. I love reading about people who think differently, act differently and live differently than the norm.
I think the grow your own philosophy of this family is extreme for our culture but I am so attracted to it because it's a life lived with intention and deep conviction. In comparison I found our own family's efforts in supporting our local agriculture fairly piddly. This was a reality check since I can sometimes get on my high horse because I belong to a CSA and visit the weekly summer farmer's market.
My basic criticisms of the book are two. Firstly, Kingsolver spends a fair amount of time writing about being a working mother. How she's managed to have a career and still can tomatoes. But from my farm & gardening experience I have a hard time believing that during the course of their grow-your-own year both she and her husband worked full time, yet she leaves readers with that impression. Or at the very least she doesn't exactly expound on her daily goings on except for what she's picking from the garden and special events celebrated with family and friends. What I want to know is how do you raise animals, plant, weed, pick, can and preserve the garden, butcher the animals and cook a home cooked meal every night? All while parenting, cleaning house, doing laundry, running errands, ya-da, ya-da, ya-da AND working full time?? These questions are never answered. And yet growing at least some of your own food is presented as achievable for the American family. I believe that unless the average American family undergoes a shift in priorities to spend less, drive less and work less the grow your own mentality is largely unrealistic. But hopefully books like Animal, Vegetable, Miracle will be a part of the movement that changes our popular fast food, fast life culture. So that realistically more families will choose to grow more gardens and shop for local, in season food.
That brings me to the second criticism or perhaps observation. As a plant based eater living in Northern New England if I chose to eat only locally grown foods I'd eat a lot of potatotes and go crazy with summer blueberries (not a bad thing). Our family has chosen to base our diet on plants for improved immediate health and longevity, we want to be hiking with our grandkids. Eating a variety of foods from around the globe (at times) makes this possible. And for many, many people the only way to achieve the health they want in northern latitudes is to eat fruits and vegetables grown elsewhere. A bit of a conundrum if you believe in local sustainable agriculture - which I do. So, I'm thinking this one through. Trying to think of all the healthy foods which are grown here, how we can maximize our consumption of those and perhaps decrease the food we eat that is shipped from long distances.
Overall, the book was a fantastic read . Kingsolver is engaging, funny, convincing and just an all round excellent writer. The book is an eat your local veggies & meat mantra but the narrative of her family keeps it personal and interesting. -
I give this book 5 stars because its cause is very close to my heart. It is an excellent primer for sustainable, local food sourcing: it provides a good overview of the issues (including problems faced by small farms and the many dangers to global food supply and health posed by the industrial food complex) and a plan for gradually incorporating local and sustainable foods into your life (small steps, recipes, food plans, resources for learning more, and advice for approaching farmer's markets, CSAs, and even your supermarket). It covers the reasons why the country's foodways face imminent disaster, how you can help, and, most importantly for newbies, the many, many pleasures that can be had from responsible eating.
Barbara Kingsolver chooses to take as pleasant, nonjudgmental and nondidactic approach as one can take to such important topics, because she is hoping to persuade people who are ignorant of or hostile to the issues.
There are plenty of times I choose industrial food over sustainable--because I'm working too hard, broke, tired, craving Lays potato chips--but these are feeble excuses--and they are *immoral*. If you consider yourself a Democrat, liberal, environmentalist, humanist--or for that matter, a conservative who cares about the future of his or her children--you simply cannot rely on industrial food--including organic industrial food--for the majority of your diet. It is wrong, and there's no way to get around it. It was wrong to support the Iraq war (did anybody follow the news a few years ago that it has been made illegal in Iraq to save seeds? Iraqi farmers have been doing it for like thousands of years, growing crops from seed saved from previous harvests. But the U.S. has introduced a number of patented GM seeds, making U.S. farmer's aid dependent on use of the patented seeds, and made it illegal to save them. This creates a dependency on further purchases of seeds, as well as the chemicals needed to sustain them, and endangers nearby farmland that *hasn't* bought seed but gets contaminated by cross-pollination. We know that this has already happened on a huge scale in the U.S.), it was wrong to vote for Bush, and it is just as wrong to do most of your shopping at the supermarket--including Whole Foods--when you have alternatives--and in New York, at least, we DO have alternatives. It makes me furious to see this happening, and to do it myself when I lapse, in a way that should be more common--we should be angry, and we should talk about it, and we should not let ourselves off the hook. So obviously I'm passionate about this.
Oh, back to the book. So, I think it's an important book, and I have Kingsolver's essay "Lily's Chickens" to thank for introducing me to these issues a few years ago. I learned some useful things abut aspects of food policy with which I was unfamiliar, and a lot of gardening tips. And I found it inspiring, and guilt-inspiring in a GOOD way, that is, the way that makes you change for the better, and not the way that makes you whine about how you have good reasons for being the way you are and that it's unfair of other people to expect you to change....anyway, I've already improved my buying habits since starting the book. But because I'm familiar with some of the material already, some things did stand out to me as mistakes. Her arguments about the bias against rural people, and her explanation of rural hostility to newcomers and difference as a protection against exploitation, were interesting and compelling, but her failure to acknowledge that we are not all white middle-class families, and that our "difference" can be construed in entirely different ways, as indeed a failure. (I'm not saying that only country people are racist or homophobic. But you can't defend the hinterlands as protective of some kind of essential American identity.) Her arguments in favor of meat eating, when she concentrated on the environmental benefits of sustainable grazing in nonarable land, were very good; they were NOT good when she defended meat eating as part of "civilization," and therefore okay. -
Although I didn't plan it,
Animal, Vegetable, Miracle seemed like the perfect book to be reading close to Earth Day. Barbara Kingsolver, her husband Steven Hopp, and their children Camille Kingsolver and Lily Hopp moved from Arizona to live at their farm in Southern Appalachia (Virginia). Their goal was to spend one year as locavores--eating local, organic food by growing it themselves and buying it at farmers' markets. In addition to harvesting their gardens and orchards, they raised chickens and turkeys, and bought lamb and dairy products. There were a few things like coffee, whole wheat flour, olive oil, and some spices that were not available locally, but were bought from fair trade farmers. Eating local foods helps by reducing our use of fossil fuels, and supports the efforts of farmers on small farms. "Each food item in a typical U.S. meal has traveled an average of 1,500 miles. In addition to direct transport, other fuel-thirsty steps include processing (drying, milling, cutting, sorting, baking), packaging, warehousing, and refrigeration."
It was a big plus that both Barbara and Steven are biologists, come from farming families, and had established orchards and gardens which they enlarged. Barbara wrote the bulk of the book detailing her family's experiences. Steven wrote sidebars about global food problems, pesticides, politics, and agricultural subsities from the government. He also emphasized raising animals using humane conditions rather than in CAFOs (concentrated animal feeding operations). Eighteen-year-old Camille was very interested in nutrition, and featured a recipe section after each chapter. I especially enjoyed reading about them making mozzarella cheese. Younger daughter Lily raised chickens and sold eggs, hoping to buy a horse someday with the funds.
The book was packed with information, sometimes getting a bit preachy, but including witty stories too. Their effort seemed a bit too harmonious considering the amount of back-breaking work involved maintaining the gardens, and canning and freezing the food, while also working other jobs.
Many people may not have the time, money, land, health, or transportation to follow the suggestions in this book in a big way. But we could start by buying local ingredients for a few meals weekly, saving fossil fuels. Farmers' markets are a good source of local foods. We can also read the signs and labels in grocery stores. For example, I live in the Northeast with three apple orchards nearby so it doesn't make sense to buy apples from Washington State, but it's appropriate to buy olive oil from California. The Kingsolver-Hopp family should be commended for their locavore experience, and their thought-provoking book. -
“This is the story of a year in which we made every attempt to feed ourselves animals and vegetables whose provenance we really knew. We tried to wring most of the petroleum out of our food chain, even if that meant giving up some things. Our highest shopping goal was to get our food from so close to home, we’d know the person who grew it. Often that turned out to be us, as we learned to produce more of what we needed, starting with dirt, seeds, and enough knowledge to muddle through.”
In the mid-2000s, Barbara Kingsolver and her family moved from Tucson to southern Virginia to live on the family farm, where they conducted a year-long experiment to produce their own food. It provides a wealth of information on the health, economic, and environmental benefits of becoming a locavore. It includes articles written by her husband, Steve Hopp, and teenage daughter, Camille, along with a number of recipes. Younger daughter, Lily, age nine, contributes by raising chickens.
I liked the fact that the author does not push everyone to become a farmer or gardener but focuses on the small changes in dietary and purchasing habits that can make a big difference if done by enough people. I enjoyed the humorous anecdotes. It is well-written and informative. If you are interested in gardening, farming, healthy eating, or reducing your carbon footprint, this is a good book to pick up. -
I wanted to like this book. I expected to like this book. And I did like it. I liked about a third of it, to be exact.
In this book, Barbara Kingsolver is preaching to the choir as far as I'm concerned; I agree with the importance of local, sustainable eating. That's one of the big reasons I expected to like this. But let's go back to that word "preaching" - I used it advisedly, because, wow, does she. She spends at least a third of her own part of the book preaching, using a tone anyone who has spent any time with a recent religious convert will recognize only too well, and then she brings in her husband (for more factual, less condescending preaching) and her older daughter (for basic recipes and some of the worst preaching of all, since Camille doesn't quite have her mother's knack for writing), too.
The thing is, that's not what I was expecting from this book. I was expecting the tale of how one family ate locally and off their own land for a year. If the entire book had been like the bits that actually discussed that - ideally, like the part with the turkey breeding, which was truly the highlight of the book for me - I'd have been fine with everything else. I would have been happy with the insane levels of privilege, the sexism-is-alive-and-well-and-living-in-Virginia, the random contradictions, all of it, if she'd just left the lecturing to her husband and daughter.
But she didn't. So I wasn't. And even though I totally agree with her, I really, really wanted to tell her to shut up. Or, more to the point, I wanted her to stop telling and start showing. When she finally does, the book is great. But you have to wade through a huge manure heap of the worst kind of telling to get there. -
Bullet Review:
A good message with some beautiful writing, though Kingsolver and her daughter, Camille, can adopt a rather preachy, self-important tone. And I'm sorry, but I've never encountered the "farmer stigma" that apparently runs rampant over the US.
5 stars for content; 2 stars for delivery.
Full Review:"If every US citizen ate just one meal a week (any meal) composed of locally and organically raised meats and produce, we would reduce our country's oil consumption by over 1.1 million barrels of oil every week."
This one quote, in essence, provides the entire premise for the book. Kingsolver and family want to be more environmentally conscious so they embark on a year of being a "locavore" - a person who eats locally. ("Local" in their case means about 120 miles away from where they live, though the distance is just a rough guesstimate, not a hardline number.)
Reading books like
Fast Food Nation,
The End of Overeating: Taking Control of the Insatiable American Appetite,
The Omnivore's Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals, and even
Eat to Live: The Revolutionary Formula for Fast and Sustained Weight Loss coupled with my own weight loss have really buoyed my desire to A) keep the weight off (Duh), but also B) eat more naturally and more in tune with the environment. One of my Goodreads friends had already recommended this, so when this was suggested for Book Club, I heartily voted for it. When the motivation to eat right is flagging (and with a Burger King on every corner, it will flag), it's always great to turn to books and movies and documentaries and such to tell yourself that yes, this was a good choice.
Like
The Omnivore's Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals before it (of which, this book notes as a source), this book showcases the problems with the current industrial farming system. If you've read any books on this or seen any documentaries, this will not be new information.
But honestly when you have quotes like this:"Obesity is generally viewed as a failure of personal resolve, with no acknowledgement of the genuine conspiracy in this historical scheme [human being's built-in weakness for fats and sugars]."
and this:"We have...a string of fad diets convulsing our bookstores and bellies, one after another, at the scale of the national best seller."
I can't really rag on the author for repetition because this stuff is SO IMPORTANT you can't repeat it enough.
But hands-down, my favorite quote is this (emphasis mine):""...a perception of organic food as an elite privilege is a considerable obstacle to the farmer...Raising food without polluting the field or the product will always cost more than the conventional mode that externalizes costs to taxpayers and the future."
So sure, you can pop into McD's for one of their dollar menu items. But you can be sure you'll be paying for it later with cholesterol problems, more poverty-level people, and an overreliance on oil.
On top of that, Kingsolver has a beautiful way with words. Her prose is really enjoyable and makes me regret that this is the first work of hers I've read.
So, I know the question: "If you have so many wonderful things to say about this book, Crystal, why the 3 stars?"
You know that person who converts to such-and-such religion or political viewpoint and won't SHUT UP ABOUT IT? Who claims that EVERYONE should convert and believe what he or she does because it is SO AWESOME? And who can't understand WHY anyone would be stupid enough NOT to believe what, in his/her mind, is obvious?
That's the impression I got of Kingsolver and her daughter, Camille. Kingsolver says outright at the beginning she doesn't expect everyone to follow this plan to the T - but then she has this condescending tone to people who don't follow this plan. As for Camille, well, the phrase "pampered child" comes to mind.
(NOTE: Kingsolver ends up revealing that she and her family did NOT 100% follow their own rules, going out to eat at restaurants that didn't abide by the locavore law or eating at friends' homes, thereby being more than a little deceptive.)
It's easy for a woman, who basically inherits a farm and whose job is EXTREMELY flexible (she works from home most of the time and is a famous author), to be able to take up the second full-time job of farmer. And that's what she was for this year: a full-time farmer/farmer's wife (what with all the canning, preserving, and freezing).
This, like Joel Fuhrman's 2 pounds of vegetable plan, is very unrealistic for a lot of people. I live in an apartment, travel A LOT, and have no interest in gardening whatsoever. Other people are single parents, or hell, just parents, who don't HAVE the time between all the other responsibilities.
The other thing I wasn't fond of was the author's perceived notion that farmers are stereotyped as "harebrained hippies" and looked down upon by everyone else. To this I must say: is she not familiar with the bajillions of movies and TV shows and books where the entire premise is how some person goes BACK to the farm/countryside where everything is perfect and idyllic?! Many times, the city person is made a joke, because he or she is so "stuffy" and doesn't "really work" and would be clueless without the farmer (the latter being very true, but still rude).
And let's face it: whining that the farmers are looked down upon, making it into an "us vs. them" argument isn't what we need. Farmers need us cityfolk to get off our @$$es and start buying their produce. We need farmers to educate us on good foods. WE NEED EACH OTHER. Fighting about who gets looked down upon and made a joke helps NO ONE.
But...on the other hand, all this DOES make me want to frequent farmer's markets more. All this DOES make me want to exert a better effort for buying local foods in season (I already don't buy strawberries/raspberries/blueberries out of season unless it's an emergency). And really, the PREMISE of this book, the emphasis on QUALITY and LOVING YOUR FOOD - how could I NOT love that?
Maybe I'm just a bitter, crotchety city girl who is too lazy to attempt to give gardening a chance. Maybe I'm just overly sensitive to people's tone. I can overlook that to 100% support Kingsolver's biggest idea:
Love your food enough to know what you're eating. And eat well. -
I am so sorry I read this book. I used to love Kingsolver, and now I don't. One chapter in and the preachiness was already killing me. She is just so gosh darned pleased with herself for being above the every day riff-raff who (gasp!) BUY their food in a supermarket. I grimly forged ahead and it didn't get much better.
The basic premise is that Kingsolver and her family decide to spend one full year eating only foods that are locally grown, either raised in their own garden or nearby. So they pack up their belongings and move from Tucson to a small farm in Virginia that they owned. What's that you say? You don't already own a small farm in VA, complete with charming authentic farmhouse, large vegetable garden, AND guest cottage? Well, then, we already know that the Kingsolver-Hopp family is better than you.
The passages in which she describes things she learned are okay, and the plain gardening parts are good, but the rest of it ... No. It's just FILLED with proselytizing and ridiculous assumptions of superiority.
One cashier wishes for no rain for one day, and she extrapolates that to mean ALL non-farmers are completely out of touch with the earth.
The family goes on vacation and stops at a diner to eat, and we are immediately informed "A handmade sign let us know the jukebox take is collected at the end of every month and sent to Farm Aid." Oh. So she doesn't stop at just ANY diner. Oh no. She goes to a diner that is just so freakin' awesome and better than the rest of us that they even give their jukebox profits to charity. And not just ANY charity, but a FARM charity. Whoo. Hoo.
She takes a quick cheese-making course while on vacation and comments "Okay, I know. You were with me right up to that last one. ... What kind of weirdo makes CHEESE?" That's just one example of how Kingsolver is constantly, annoyingly, assuming what her reader already knows and thinks. Does she not realize that most people who would read her book WOULD find cheese-making interesting? I'm willing to bet that a significant percentage of her readers already make their own cheese.
I just don't understand why Kingsolver doesn't realize that she's preaching to the choir here. Most people who are motivated to read this book ALREADY know that "potatoes have plant parts" (she met ONE friend who did not know this and she really crowed about it) and which fruits are in season when. Michael Pollan covers this same ground without talking down to the reader.
In one passage, Kingsolver describes the farmers who supply organic produce for Appalachian Harvest: "Red Wing work boots, barbershop haircuts, Levi's with a little mud on the cuffs, men and women who probably go to church on Sunday but keep their religion to themselves as they bring a day's work to this packing house inside a former tobacco barn. If sanctimony is an additive in their product, it gets added elsewhere." It's interesting that she understands that sanctimony is unattractive and downright off-putting, but yet she can't seem to keep herself from being incredibly, insultingly sanctimonious.
Right now, I'm wondering how she feels about her own book, since it's not locally-printed - I mean, think of all the petroleum used to produce and ship all these books! all the trees needlessly chopped down! thank heavens I'm at least reading a library book.
This is one of the longest reviews I've written, because I had such high hopes for this book and I'm so completely disappointed!
***
I did finally finish this book, and I'm glad I did, because the passages about her trip to Italy and her experiences breeding turkeys were enjoyable. But they weren't enough to save it. -
Good Reads is becoming the place I write what I thought what a book was going to be about and then either come back disappointed or pleasantly surprised.
In this case, it's mild disappointment. When I heard about this book and read the review, I thought it would be more like a diary. A multi-person diary about difficulties, triumphs, and oddities of a family living as "locavores" for a year.
Kingsolver and family move to their Virginia farm with the intention of eating local for a full year. They have to stretch the definition in some places, make a few concessions to personal additions (coffee, for example), and off they go.
They plant a huge garden, buy mail-order baby chicks and turkeys, begin to haunt the local farmer's market, and, from the sounds of it, buy freezers, food dehydrators, and other food-storage materials.
This seems like it would be ripe for funny stories about eating nothing but dehydrated tomatoes in January and being overwhelmed with zucchini in July (which they are and the story is mildly funny).
The book ends up being more diatribe than diary, however. Every page casts judgment on those who buy bananas, don't go to the farmer's market, and eat meat from unknown sources.
It's not that I don't applaud the effort of making your own cheese and bread and breeding your own turkeys (and slaughtering them), it's just that I didn't want this book to be all judgment and no fun.
Having said all of that, I did spend a good portion of my time in the grocery store on Sunday determining where my foods came from and am redoubling my efforts to use all the vegetables from my own personal CSA (my in-laws). I'm even planning on making a recipe from the book. I just don't really want to move to the country and start farming!
