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4.1 AVERAGE
4.1 AVERAGE
I expected to like this a whole lot more than I did, as Barbara Kingsolver is one of my favorite authors. The premise of the book is fascinating, and it definitely got me thinking about how much effort (and expense and fuel, etc) goes into carting food all over the world. Our household already gardens and produces some of our own foods, eats "clean" most of time and tries to avoid overly processed foods (though we certainly have room for improvement on all of these items). This book definitely has me looking more closely at origin labels, I'm inspired to make more trips to the farmer's market versus the grocery store, and am putting more focus on meal-planning around what's in season. There are some excellent points made in this book, and for those alone it is worth the read.
However. There IS a preachy tone to her writing in this book that just rubbed me the wrong way. It's true that many of us are far removed from the food chain and lack knowledge about where our food comes from. But a good amount of people TRY to make informed decisions when it comes to what we put in our bodies, and the narrative in this book assumes the opposite. Also, as someone who doesn't eat most meat (which is treated as an absolute oddity by the author, who assures the readers that if they only knew that where and how the animals were raised was done in a humane way, surely we would have no problem with eating them), I really didn't enjoy the many parts of the book that focused on "harvesting" poultry. I don't have a problem with other people eating meat, and agree that if you do, it's best to support local farms/places where you ensure the animals are being treated humanely, but I could have done without talking about slaughtering turkeys ad nauseum.
However. There IS a preachy tone to her writing in this book that just rubbed me the wrong way. It's true that many of us are far removed from the food chain and lack knowledge about where our food comes from. But a good amount of people TRY to make informed decisions when it comes to what we put in our bodies, and the narrative in this book assumes the opposite. Also, as someone who doesn't eat most meat (which is treated as an absolute oddity by the author, who assures the readers that if they only knew that where and how the animals were raised was done in a humane way, surely we would have no problem with eating them), I really didn't enjoy the many parts of the book that focused on "harvesting" poultry. I don't have a problem with other people eating meat, and agree that if you do, it's best to support local farms/places where you ensure the animals are being treated humanely, but I could have done without talking about slaughtering turkeys ad nauseum.
I really enjoyed listening to this book – it was a great balance of anecdote and information and representative of a beautiful relationship with land and people. But I did have one thing that I kept tripping on, which was that even though the point of the book was to describe their family’s *personal* experience with growing their own meat and vegetables and buying directly from local farmers, I felt like there was not enough acknowledgment of how difficult it would be for most American families to live like this, especially those living in “food desert” areas, below the poverty line, and/or working long hours/multiple jobs. Growing your own food, including meat, or even just buying primarily from local farmers is just not as accessible as making a different choice–sometimes the choices just aren’t there (yet). I’d really like to try to find the 10th anniversary edition now and see if this is something that the authors have addressed in their added reflections.
Thought provoking and lyrical, Ms Kingsolver's book shows us a way toward better eating that we can all take something from. You don't have to live on a farm to live a little closer to the land.
Well, that escalated quickly.
I bought this book because I was interested in the premise, so Kingsolver should have had a very easy time wooing me as a reader. I was expecting useful information, realistic challenges that the family had to meet and overcome, a discussion of how to live your life in a more local manner, and maybe some general troubleshooting tips on this kind of lifestyle. That is NOT what this book was.
WHAT THIS BOOK WASN'T ABOUT: Local eating over the course of a year, that year/timeline being chosen by the author and her family. The author used food that she had put up from before the experiment, which felt to me like cheating. She used food that wasn't local (rice noodles, rice paper wrappers, olives, olive oil, brown sugar, balsamic vinegar, white vinegar, wheat, vanilla extract, salmon, soba noodles, chocolate chips, many (if not all) of her spices, and I highly doubt her tortillas, whole wheat pasta, orzo, baking soda, lemon peel, Tabasco sauce, Gouda/Jack cheese, Parmesan, Brie/soft cheese, or walnuts were local). The whole point of these experiments is to see how closely to "X" lifestyle or goal you can reasonably live. While I understand the idea of keeping a few indispensable items on your grocery list that are not local, it honestly didn't seem like the author or her family really cared about sticking to the experiment if it inconvenienced them/if they didn't want to. Rice noodles, chocolate chips, olives and the like are clearly not staples but indulgences that the author and co. partake of frequently per their own writing.
WHAT THIS BOOK IS ABOUT: This book was about how awesome the authors are and how awful/stupid everyone that thinks or does things differently from them are. Here are some of the positions that Kingsolver and co. take throughout the book: Americans are passive self destructive sheep who have no food culture, and are just ridiculously clueless as to why the way that they eat makes them terrible people. Women were duped out of doing nice household tasks, and need to force their spouses and kids to participate in food making to foster a good family dynamic. Women should be happy to go home from work and cook/provide for their families. Men as a rule can only be expected to hang out and play football while the womenfolk work on dinner and family memories. People are bad parents if they feed their kids processed or fast food. If you don't regularly cook together your family is unhealthy and non-cohesive. If you don't voluntarily sacrifice a large portion of your free time to cooking and eating the way that she does (and to liking it to boot), you are a lazy jerk who is selfish. Are you a vegetarian or vegan? Well then you are malnourished and have to take supplements because these diets are inherently limited and bad for you. You should laugh at and dismiss people who are eating this way due to ethical concerns. Are you daunted by the prospect of making your own cheese? Then you are hypocritical and ridiculous and limited. Are you able to eat lactose? Then you are a freak who has "deviant" genes, who "nurse. From a cow." and that people who are lactose intolerant eat "grown up human foods". Etc., ad infinitum.
Basically, the moral of the entire book is that people that don't eat or live the way that we (the authors) do are ignorant and selfish. We, the authors, are superiors human beings. Honestly, the whole thing comes across as a smug denouncement of people who choose to live their lives differently, with an almost complete lack of self awareness (especially about her own privilege; it is nice that you have farmer friends, a farm, and the money to buy rare heirloom poultry and hire chefs, but that is not true of the VAST majority of people). A flawed, boring, unrealistic experiment, from flawed, boring, unrealistic and mean people. I gave it two stars for the food porn.
I bought this book because I was interested in the premise, so Kingsolver should have had a very easy time wooing me as a reader. I was expecting useful information, realistic challenges that the family had to meet and overcome, a discussion of how to live your life in a more local manner, and maybe some general troubleshooting tips on this kind of lifestyle. That is NOT what this book was.
WHAT THIS BOOK WASN'T ABOUT: Local eating over the course of a year, that year/timeline being chosen by the author and her family. The author used food that she had put up from before the experiment, which felt to me like cheating. She used food that wasn't local (rice noodles, rice paper wrappers, olives, olive oil, brown sugar, balsamic vinegar, white vinegar, wheat, vanilla extract, salmon, soba noodles, chocolate chips, many (if not all) of her spices, and I highly doubt her tortillas, whole wheat pasta, orzo, baking soda, lemon peel, Tabasco sauce, Gouda/Jack cheese, Parmesan, Brie/soft cheese, or walnuts were local). The whole point of these experiments is to see how closely to "X" lifestyle or goal you can reasonably live. While I understand the idea of keeping a few indispensable items on your grocery list that are not local, it honestly didn't seem like the author or her family really cared about sticking to the experiment if it inconvenienced them/if they didn't want to. Rice noodles, chocolate chips, olives and the like are clearly not staples but indulgences that the author and co. partake of frequently per their own writing.
WHAT THIS BOOK IS ABOUT: This book was about how awesome the authors are and how awful/stupid everyone that thinks or does things differently from them are. Here are some of the positions that Kingsolver and co. take throughout the book: Americans are passive self destructive sheep who have no food culture, and are just ridiculously clueless as to why the way that they eat makes them terrible people. Women were duped out of doing nice household tasks, and need to force their spouses and kids to participate in food making to foster a good family dynamic. Women should be happy to go home from work and cook/provide for their families. Men as a rule can only be expected to hang out and play football while the womenfolk work on dinner and family memories. People are bad parents if they feed their kids processed or fast food. If you don't regularly cook together your family is unhealthy and non-cohesive. If you don't voluntarily sacrifice a large portion of your free time to cooking and eating the way that she does (and to liking it to boot), you are a lazy jerk who is selfish. Are you a vegetarian or vegan? Well then you are malnourished and have to take supplements because these diets are inherently limited and bad for you. You should laugh at and dismiss people who are eating this way due to ethical concerns. Are you daunted by the prospect of making your own cheese? Then you are hypocritical and ridiculous and limited. Are you able to eat lactose? Then you are a freak who has "deviant" genes, who "nurse. From a cow." and that people who are lactose intolerant eat "grown up human foods". Etc., ad infinitum.
Basically, the moral of the entire book is that people that don't eat or live the way that we (the authors) do are ignorant and selfish. We, the authors, are superiors human beings. Honestly, the whole thing comes across as a smug denouncement of people who choose to live their lives differently, with an almost complete lack of self awareness (especially about her own privilege; it is nice that you have farmer friends, a farm, and the money to buy rare heirloom poultry and hire chefs, but that is not true of the VAST majority of people). A flawed, boring, unrealistic experiment, from flawed, boring, unrealistic and mean people. I gave it two stars for the food porn.
This was a reread for book club, and came at a good time. Time for a reset on the way we eat and to be more thoughtful about our diets’ effect on not only our health, but the health of our economy and environment.
I feel despondent at times about the minuscule efforts I make to protect the environment, so one of her closing passages was soothing to me: “It’s the worst of bad manners... to ridicule the small gesture. These earnest efforts might just get us past the train-wreck of the daily news, or the anguish of standing behind a child, looking with her at the road ahead, searching out redemption where we can find it: recycling or carpooling or growing a garden or saving a species or something. Small, stepwise changes in personal habits aren’t trivial. Ultimately they will, or won’t, add up to having been the thing that mattered.”
I feel despondent at times about the minuscule efforts I make to protect the environment, so one of her closing passages was soothing to me: “It’s the worst of bad manners... to ridicule the small gesture. These earnest efforts might just get us past the train-wreck of the daily news, or the anguish of standing behind a child, looking with her at the road ahead, searching out redemption where we can find it: recycling or carpooling or growing a garden or saving a species or something. Small, stepwise changes in personal habits aren’t trivial. Ultimately they will, or won’t, add up to having been the thing that mattered.”
Honestly this is more of a 3.5 star read, but since Goodreads does not allow for half-stars, I rounded this up to 4. I think too much of the book had Kingsolver talking down to readers and acting as if those of us not working the land are less than those who do. I rounded up though mostly because when Kingsolver focuses on the history of the vegetables or animal husbandry in this book it makes it something special. If she left off her limited world view of politics this wouldn't have irked me so much.
"Animal, Vegetable, Miracle" is a memoir written by Barbara Kingsolver. I guess she was one of the leading voices in the whole eat local movement. I kind of laugh about that since I grew up in the 90s, my whole family ate locally. Most people I know did in PA. We had farms nearby and we would get our meat and milk from them but my whole family had "kitchen gardens." My grandmother, aunt, and mother would can vegetables during the summer and put things away in our cold basement so we could have vegetables during the winter. This is a pretty long-winded way of saying black people been eating from the land since slavery. Kingsolver without meaning to though makes the whole book about a small predominantly white town she lives in, in VA and focuses on farmers. I don't know why the US has this weird view of farmers as salt of the Earth, real Americans, but we tend to fetishisize them along with soldiers.
Kingsolver also at one point she brings up red states and blue states and defends conservatives and my eyes would not stop rolling. Yeah, conservatives to me in the US means, okay with racism as long as it does not affect their day to day life. I know this was written in 2007, but this was the 10 year anniversary of the book which means this got republished after the rise of Trump which shows that she saw what was going on with farmers getting screwed and still kept some of the tone-deaf text without editing. I can't even talk about her comments about Katrina and her whole what about the farmers that made me drop my jaw.
You are now probably going, well Blue why did you keep reading this? Well because of the writings from her daughter and husband. Those two at least realize that eating from the land/locally is not an easy thing to see. Kingsolver's own daughter goes into telling poor people to eat healthier without providing a way for them to do so is just ridiculous. Her husband points out the many ways the US has ignored ongoing issues with regards to farming, and how we process meat and vegetables in our country. When Kingsolver focuses on the history of a vegetable like asparagus and the best time to plant it and harvest it is when the book sang to me.
"Animal, Vegetable, Miracle" is a memoir written by Barbara Kingsolver. I guess she was one of the leading voices in the whole eat local movement. I kind of laugh about that since I grew up in the 90s, my whole family ate locally. Most people I know did in PA. We had farms nearby and we would get our meat and milk from them but my whole family had "kitchen gardens." My grandmother, aunt, and mother would can vegetables during the summer and put things away in our cold basement so we could have vegetables during the winter. This is a pretty long-winded way of saying black people been eating from the land since slavery. Kingsolver without meaning to though makes the whole book about a small predominantly white town she lives in, in VA and focuses on farmers. I don't know why the US has this weird view of farmers as salt of the Earth, real Americans, but we tend to fetishisize them along with soldiers.
Kingsolver also at one point she brings up red states and blue states and defends conservatives and my eyes would not stop rolling. Yeah, conservatives to me in the US means, okay with racism as long as it does not affect their day to day life. I know this was written in 2007, but this was the 10 year anniversary of the book which means this got republished after the rise of Trump which shows that she saw what was going on with farmers getting screwed and still kept some of the tone-deaf text without editing. I can't even talk about her comments about Katrina and her whole what about the farmers that made me drop my jaw.
You are now probably going, well Blue why did you keep reading this? Well because of the writings from her daughter and husband. Those two at least realize that eating from the land/locally is not an easy thing to see. Kingsolver's own daughter goes into telling poor people to eat healthier without providing a way for them to do so is just ridiculous. Her husband points out the many ways the US has ignored ongoing issues with regards to farming, and how we process meat and vegetables in our country. When Kingsolver focuses on the history of a vegetable like asparagus and the best time to plant it and harvest it is when the book sang to me.
informative
medium-paced
A decent look at the locavore movement for it’s time. I appreciated the included meal plans, which is not something that’s been a part of other food books I’ve read.
Awesome book about one family's year of self-sustained eating. Includes recipes. It inspired me to go plant something. If you've ever dreamed of being a farmer, this book will be a satisfying read.