Book I Read: Animal, Vegetable, Miracle

A few days ago, I finished "Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life" by Barbara Kingsolver.  Here's another book that I recommend! (You should probably know this now: if I don't like a book, I won't read it all the way through.  So if I'm sharing a book here on the blog, it's because I think it was good!)

Animal, Vegetable, Miracle follows a year of Kingsolver's life - the first year that she and her family decide to live only off local food.  Kingslover sums it up nicely on page 20:

"...Our family set out to find ourselves a real American culture of food, or at least the piece of it that worked for us, and to describe it for anyone who might be looking for something similar.  This book tells the story of what we learned, or didn't; what we ate, or couldn't; and how our family was changed by one year of deliberately eating food produced in the same place where we worked, loved our neighbors, drank the water, and breathed the air.  It's not at all necessary to live on a food-producing farm to participate in this culture.  But it is necessary to know such farms exist, understand something about what they do, and consider oneself basically in their court.  This book is about those things."

Kingsolver makes an interesting case for eating local foods (being a "locavore")-- and she demonstrates well how difficult that can seem at times. You also have to remember that you can only eat things when they are in season, unless you are eating food you preserved (she canned lots of her garden tomatoes and picked a lot of produce as well, all to get through the winter).  Living in Florida, I would actually have it a lot easier than many people would, but I think there are still things I love that I would have to give up.

I like the way that the book was set up.  It followed her year - each chapter covered one or two months.  She wrote about what they were planting, what was being harvested, preserved, etc during each time period.  I especially appreciated that they included some seasonal recipes at the end of each chapter that highlighted the produce that they were currently harvesting.  Many of the recipes seemed very simple but highlighted the food of the season.

All in all, this was a really interesting read.  It made me think a lot about how I eat, and what I feed my family.  I've formed a lot of new ideas and opinions lately - hopefully I'll find the time to share them here on the blog sometime.  If anyone else has read this book, I'd love to hear your thoughts about it!  Kingsolver also has a website that is dedicated to her book, you can see that here.