READS-TO-GO : [bookclub kit for animal, vegetable, miracle: a year of food life

From Publishers WeeklyStarred Review. [Signature]Reviewed by Nina PlanckMichael Pollan is the crack investigator and graceful narrator of the ecology of local food and the toxic logic of industrial agriculture. Now he has a peer. Novelist Kingsolver recounts a year spent eating home-grown food and, if not that, local. Accomplished gardeners, the Kingsolver clan grow a large garden in southern Appalachia and spend summers "putting food by," as the classic kitchen title goes. They make pickles, chutney and mozzarella; they jar tomatoes, braid garlic and stuff turkey sausage. Nine-year-old Lily runs a heritage poultry business, selling eggs and meat. What they don't raise (lamb, beef, apples) comes from local farms. Come winter, they feast on root crops and canned goods, menus slouching toward asparagus. Along the way, the Kingsolver family, having given up industrial meat years before, abandons its vegetarian ways and discovers the pleasures of conscientious carnivory.This field—local food and sustainable agriculture—is crowded with books in increasingly predictable flavors: the earnest manual, diary of an epicure, the environmental battle cry, the accidental gardener. Animal, Vegetable, Miracle is all of these, and much smarter. Kingsolver takes the genre to a new literary level; a well-paced narrative and the apparent ease of the beautiful prose makes the pages fly. Her tale is both classy and disarming, substantive and entertaining, earnest and funny. Kingsolver is a moralist ("the conspicuous consumption of limited resources has yet to be accepted widely as a spiritual error, or even bad manners"), but more often wry than pious. Another hazard of the genre is snobbery. You won't find it here. Seldom do paeans to heirloom tomatoes (which I grew up selling at farmers' markets) include equal respect for outstanding modern hybrids like Early Girl.Kingsolver has the ear of a journalist and the accuracy of a naturalist. She makes short, neat work of complex topics: what's risky about the vegan diet, why animals belong on ecologically sound farms, why bitterness in lettuce is good. Kingsolver's clue to help greenhorns remember what's in season is the best I've seen. You trace the harvest by botanical development, from buds to fruits to roots. Kingsolver is not the first to note our national "eating disorder" and the injuries industrial agriculture wreaks, yet this practical vision of how we might eat instead is as fresh as just-picked sweet corn. The narrative is peppered with useful sidebars on industrial agriculture and ecology (by husband Steven Hopp) and recipes (by daughter Camille), as if to show that local food—in the growing, buying, cooking, eating and the telling—demands teamwork. (May)Nina Planck is the author of Real Food: What to Eat and Why (Bloomsbury USA, 2006). Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. From School Library JournalAdult/High School–This book chronicles the year that Barbara Kingsolver, along with her husband and two daughters, made a commitment to become locavores–those who eat only locally grown foods. This first entailed a move away from their home in non-food-producing Tuscon to a family farm in Virginia, where they got right down to the business of growing and raising their own food and supporting local farmers. For teens who grew up on supermarket offerings, the notion not only of growing one's own produce but also of harvesting one's own poultry was as foreign as the concept that different foods relate to different seasons. While the volume begins as an environmental treatise–the oil consumption related to transporting foodstuffs around the world is enormous–it ends, as the year ends, in a celebration of the food that physically nourishes even as the recipes and the memories of cooks and gardeners past nourish our hearts and souls. Although the book maintains that eating well is not a class issue, discussions of heirloom breeds and making cheese at home may strike some as high-flown; however, those looking for healthful alternatives to processed foods will find inspiration to seek out farmers' markets and to learn to cook and enjoy seasonal foods. Give this title to budding Martha Stewarts, green-leaning fans of Al Gore's An Inconvenient Truth (Rodale, 2006), and kids outraged by Eric Schlosser's Fast Food Nation (Houghton, 2001).\_–Jenny Gasset, Orange County Public Library, CA\_ Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

bestselling Author Barbara Kingsolver Describes Her Family's Adventure As They Move To A Farm In Southern Appalachia And Realign Their Lives With The Local Food Chain.

When Kingsolver And Her Family Move From Suburban Arizona To Rural Appalachia, They Take On A New Challenge: To Spend A Year On A Locally Produced Diet, Paying Close Attention To The Provenance Of All They Consume. Our Highest Shopping Goal Was To Get Our Food From So Close To Home, We'd Know The Person Who Grew It. Often That Turned Out To Be Ourselves As We Learned To Produce What We Needed, Starting With Dirt, Seeds, And Enough Knowledge To Muddle Through. Or Starting With Baby Animals, And Enough Sense To Refrain From Naming Them.

animal, Vegetable, Miracle Follows The Family Through The First Year Of Their Experiment. They Find Themselves Eager To Move Away From The Typical Food Scenario Of American Families: A Refrigerator Packed With Processed, Factory-farmed Foods Transported Long Distances Using Nonrenewable Fuels. In Their Search For Another Way To Eat And Live, They Begin To Recover What Kingsolver Considers Our Nation's Lost Appreciation For Farms And The Natural Processes Of Food Production. American Citizens Spend Less Of Their Income On Food Than Has Any Culture In The History Of The World, But Pay Dearly In Other Ways -- Losing The Flavors, Diversity And Creative Food Cultures Of Earlier Times. The Environmental Costs Are Also High, And The Nutritional Sacrifice Is Undeniable: On Our Modern Industrial Food Supply, Americans Are Now Raising The First Generation Of Children To Have A Shorter Life Expectancy Than Their Parents.

Believing That Most Of Us Have Better Options Available, Kingsolver And Her Family Set Out To Prove For Themselves That A Local Diet Is Not Just Better For The Economy And Environment But Also Better On The Table. Their Search Leads Them Through A Season Of Planting, Pulling Weeds, Expanding Their Kitchen Skills, Harvesting Their Own Animals, Joining The Effort To Save Heritage Crops From Extinction, And Learning The Time-honored Rural Art Of Getting Rid Of Zucchini. Inspired By The Flavors And Culinary Arts Of A Local Food Culture, They Explore Farmers' Markets And Diversified Organic Farms At Home And Across The Country, Discovering A Booming Movement With Devotees From The Deep South To Alaska. Part Memoir, Part Journalistic Investigation, And Complete With Original Recipes, animal, Vegetable, Miracle Makes A Passionate Case For Putting The Kitchen Back At The Center Of Family Life, And Diversified Farms At The Center Of The American Diet.

the Washington Post - Bunny Crumpacker

this Is A Serious Book About Important Problems. Its Concerns Are Real And Urgent. It Is Clear, Thoughtful, Often Amusing, Passionate And Appealing. It May Give You A Serious Case Of Supermarket Guilt, Thinking Of The Energy Footprint Left By Each Out-of-season Tomato, But You'll Also Find Unexpected Knowledge And Gain The Ability To Make Informed Choices About What -- And How -- You're Willing To Eat.

Bestselling author Barbara Kingsolver returns with her first nonfiction narrative that will open your eyes in a hundred new ways to an old truth: You are what you eat."As the U.S. population made an unprecedented mad dash for the Sun Belt, one carload of us paddled against the tide, heading for the Promised Land where water falls from the sky and green stuff grows all around. We were about to begin the adventure of realigning our lives with our food chain."Naturally, our first stop was to buy junk food and fossil fuel. . . ."Hang on for the ride: With characteristic poetry and pluck, Barbara Kingsolver and her family sweep readers along on their journey away from the industrial-food pipeline to a rural life in which they vow to buy only food raised in their own neighborhood, grow it themselves, or learn to live without it. Their good-humored search yields surprising discoveries about turkey sex life and overly zealous zucchini plants, en route to a food culture that's better for the neighborhood and also better on the table. Part memoir, part journalistic investigation, Animal, Vegetable, Miracle makes a passionate case for putting the kitchen back at the center of family life and diversified farms at the center of the American diet."This is the story of a year in which we made every attempt to feed ourselves animals and vegetables whose provenance we really knew . . . and of how our family was changed by our first year of deliberately eating food produced from the same place where we worked, went to school, loved our neighbors, drank the water, and breathed the air." When Kingsolver And Her Family Move From Suburban Arizona To Rural Appalachia, They Take On A New Challenge: To Spend A Year On A Locally Produced Diet, Paying Close Attention To The Provenance Of All They Consume. 'our Highest Shopping Goal Was To Get Our Food From So Close To Home, We'd Know The Person Who Grew It. Often That Turned Out To Be Ourselves As We Learned To Produce What We Needed, Starting With Dirt, Seeds, And Enough Knowledge To Muddle Through. Or Starting With Baby Animals, And Enough Sense To Refrain From Naming Them'-- Called Home -- Waiting For Asparagus : Late March -- Springing Forward -- Stalking The Vegetannual -- Molly Mooching : April -- The Birds And The Bees -- Gratitude : May -- Growing Trust : Mid-june -- Six Impossible Things Before Breakfast : Late June -- Eating Neighborly : Late June -- Slow Food Nations : Late June -- Zucchini Larceny : July -- Life In A Red State : August -- You Can't Run Away On Harvest Day : September -- Where Fish Wear Crowns : September -- Smashing Pumpkins : October -- Celebration Days : November-december -- What Do You Eat In January? -- Hungry Month : February-march -- Time Begins. Barbara Kingsolver, With Steven L. Hopp And Camille Kingsolver ; Original Drawings By Richard A. Houser. Organizations: P. [358]-363. Includes Bibliographical References (p. [355]-357). Called Home Waiting for Asparagus: Late March Springing Forward Stalking the Vegetannal Molly Mooching: April The Birds and the Bees Gratitude: May Growing Trust: Mid-June Six Impossible Things Before Breakfast: Late June Eating Neighborly: Late June Slow Food Nations: Late June Zucchini Larceny: July Life in a Red State: August You Can't Run Away on Harvest Day: September Where Fish Wear Crowns: September Smashing Pumpkins: October Celebration Days: November-December What Do You Eat in January? Hungry Month: February-March Time Begins 353 355 358 364