Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life

This book came into my hand at a time when I was thinking gardening and farmers markets and “what is so great about organic, anyway?” - that is to say, at a time when I was very receptive to the book's message. Fortunately Nick picked up this book (while I was in the middle of it, oh well), which opened his eyes to food issues as well. In fact, some of our best conversations about how we want to actually live in this world started out as conversations about this book. So what I got out of this book was a new resolve to pay attention to seasonality in my fruits and veggies; a willingness to buy the more expensive local and organic foods, because that is not an area of life to be chintzy about; and new adventures in cooking, making food, and gardening on a teeny tiny Manhattan balcony.

I agree with people who say this book is preachy. It is absolutely intended to make you feel depressed about how you live and eat, and realize that her family is better than yours. The upside is that she gives really practical advice about how to change, and you can either hate and envy her or take the advice and make things better - I think people either love or hate this book depending on which of these they choose. The sections written by Camille Kingsolver are the worst, just insufferably holier-than-thou, so I simply stopped reading those parts. Much better that way.

Living outside of Virginia for the first time in my life, I get nostalgic for it (although I already know I'll miss Utah's mountains when I leave, and that's years away). So it's hard to separate my general love of Barbara Kingsolver's writing with my adoration of the rolling green hills of, for example, Nelson County in July. Which is pretty close to where Kingsolver's family's year of eating locally unfolds. But I'm not sure those feelings need to be separated; part of Kingsolver's point is that many of us have allowed ourselves to forget (or be ignorant of) where our food comes from, and that both eating and living thoughtfully include an awareness of place, and our relationships to it. It's not preachy, though, it's just plain beautiful.

I can imagine that a lot of people DO find the book preachy, but I guess what I would say to them is this: beautiful as this book is, thinking about industrial agriculture, a bottom-line-driven food industry, and our implicit (sometimes even enthusiastic) support of both is really, really challenging. It can be scary, and it can make you feel guilty about buying a bell pepper in February anywhere other than in California. Fear and guilt are okay–they are okay, if not desirable, because we have things to be scared and feel guilty about (plus, she's right...no February bell pepper from CA tastes quite the way a bell pepper from the farmer's market in the middle of summer does). That's where I think the real power of the book comes in–we open ourselves up to experience the joy of food when we allow ourselves to examine all the ways (some small, some big) that we can choose not to have anything to be scared or feel guilty about.

Animal, Vegetable, Miracle makes me excited about my farm share this summer, excited to cook, and excited to eat. Nothing quite like reading the writing of someone in touch with their own capacity for joy.

Barbara Kingsolver and her family move to a farm in Virginia and attempt to eat local foods, mostly foods they have grown themselves. The chapters are a month by month account of the family's struggle. Here and there, Kingsolver, with help from her daughter and husband, toss in scary stories of the food we put into our mouths every day. But the family also shows what a great experience it can be for a family to work together to grow, preserve, and cook their own food.



I finished the book and called my dad. He promised to come till up my
garden for the fall. I also e-mailed all my gardening friends with
the url for Seed Savers Exchange. And I decided to visit the local
farmers' market before school starts. One convert for Kingsolver.

I really enjoyed reading this! Also it made me hungry and gave me the delusion that when I go back the US I'm going to start making my own cheese. SHE MAKES IT SOUND SO EASY AND FUN, YOU GUYS. Also I admire how non-smug she and her family come across. It is really hard to talk about organic local foods without sounding smug! Hoorays.