Animal, Vegetable, MIracle


finished 9/23 .......... contemp non-fiction/food ............. rating 7

Is it a memoir? A polemic for local eating? Something else? All of the above?

I really don't like romanticizing something that is totally boring and difficult but Barbara Kingsolver, whom I think of as being a knee-jerk liberal doing and going wherever the latest fad leads, manages to do it. At least she's not elitist like Michael Pollan in "The Omnivore's Dilemma." No, she's so down home and folksy here she could "charm the socks off a snake" as she says of her daughter, Lily.

Oh the joys of growing it all yourself and witnessing the birth and death of the food you eat. How romantic is the farmer's life. (sorry folks, that's bs or my folks would never have left the farm).

Quite a lot of the information, and there is a great deal of information, I knew already from Pollan's book and elsewhere. One very important thing is that it's not necessarily more fuel efficient to shop local. That depends on your definition of local and how other food is brought in. I can drive to San Luis (about 150 miles) and buy produce or I can let the Salinas organic farms ship it to me and my neighbors and all of us in one load. I'm no going to find those lovely lettuces and other greens around here grown local. I can get fruit and nuts and zucchini and tomatoes and chilies and so on but anything that requires both heat and water or cool and dry. I can get milk and dairy products locally but they are probably not going to be organic. The local beef, and there is a lot of local beef, is neither organic nor for sale to private parties.

Must be nice to be able to go to Canada and Italy on vacations in the same year as a farmer. But lest we forget, these people are really writers professionally, they're farmers by hobby.

A big irritation is nobody mentioned gophers. I live near a wildlife preserve. I've never been able to grow a garden because of the gophers. Even in containers the gophers climb over the containers and yank the food up. And speaking of animals, the turkey births seemed a bit contrived, coming at the end like that with the mandatory suspenseful buildup.

What did I like? I liked much of Kingsolver's style when she wasn't waxing romantic. I liked the recipes and a whole lot of the practical advice. I enjoyed some of her husband's contributions.

I'm somewhat tempted to try containers again - God help me.



Posted: Sun - September 23, 2007 at 06:42 PM        

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