“Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life” by Barbara Kingsolver
I read this in 2007 and still see its impact in the way we shop and eat.
Though it was a pleasure to read, it wasn't a read-straight-through kind of book. I had to stop to go find, buy, pot, and dither over heirloom tomatoes, and then stop again to locate, order, await, receive, and play with cheese-making supplies. This is the book that launched me into keeping chickens, and you see where that got me!
One of the many topics upon which Kingsolver educated me is the significance of heirloom fruits and vegies. I had heard the term prior to reading this book, but didn't really know what it signified.
. . . open pollinated heirlooms are created the same way natural selection does it: by saving and reproducing specimens that show the best characteristics of their generation, thus gradually increasing those traits in the population (p, 47).
Of course, the traits desired by the home-gardener (yumminess being at the top of my list) may differ greatly — Kingsolver explains — than the traits desired by commercial growers (easy to transport, uniform size, long shelf life, good looks). The produce in our grocery stores is from seeds selected for commercial needs, not necessarily for yumminess. It is wonder no one wants to eat their vegies as all the flavor has been bred out of them to make them docile little travelers in contrast to . . .
. . . heirlooms [which] are the tangiest or sweetest tomatoes, the most fragrant melons, the eggplants without a trace of bitterness (p. 48).
So, I'm sold on heirlooms now. And on local in-season produce:
Knowing the secret natural history of potatoes, melons, or asparagus gives you a leg up on detecting whether those in your market are wholesome kids from a nearby farm, or vagrants who idled away their precious youth in a boxcar (p. 10).
Part of her argument is that wholesome kids from nearby farms are yummier; her other point is that the ones in the boxcar spent more energy calories in fuel consumption (boats, planes, trains, trucks, etc.) getting to your market than they can deliver to your body. Buying auslander produce is running an energy deficit.
In high-school and college, my friends called me a “radical traditionalist”, as I really valued the role of of home-maker in a time where that is the one calling I was supposed to be liberated from. It was a joy to read this:
When we traded home-making for careers, we were implicitly promised economic independence and worldly influence. But a devil of a bargain it has turned out to be in terms of daily life. We gave up the aroma of warm bread rising, the measured pace of nurturing routines, the creative task of molding our families' tastes and zest for life; we received in exchange the minivan and the Lunchable. (Or worse, convenience-mart hot dogs and latchkey kids.) I consider it the great hoodwink of my generation (p, 126-127).
“Author Barbara Kingsolver and her family abandoned the industrial-food pipeline to live a rural life—vowing that, for one year, they'd only buy food raised in their own neighborhood, grow it themselves, or learn to live without it. Part memoir, part journalistic investigation, Animal, Vegetable, Miracle is an enthralling narrative that will open your eyes in a hundred new ways to an old truth: You are what you eat.” from GoodReads.
