A Localtarian's Library: "A Life Unburdened" by Richard Morris and "The Compassionate Carnivore" by Catherine Friend

Some book suggestions from the latest Edible Chesapeake newsletter:

A Life Unburdened by Richard Morris

"In A Life Unburdened, Richard Morris writes about 'getting over weight and getting on with my life.' The twist is that he shed more than 150 pounds by reevaluating his (and society's) relationship with food, returning to the unprocessed foods of his childhood, and embracing foods grown locally using the methods that have sustained healthy human populations throughout history. Morris stays away from preachiness in sharing his real-life success story, which is inspiring in part because it truly can be repeated by just about anyone in manageable, incremental steps."

The Compassionate Carnivore

"The Compassionate Carnivore by Catherine Friend is a funny-because-it's-true look at what it takes to get factory-farmed meats off the table and replace them with humanely raised meats that have lived healthy lives and make healthy food. Friend finds this a challenge even though she has moved to a farm to raise lamb for meat. She speaks to those of us who live in urban areas as well as those who live in proximity to farms."

A Localtarian's Library: Guest Blogger Jamie Thornton on "Animal, Vegetable, Miracle" by Barbara Kingsolver (PART 2)

In the second part of a two-part review (read the first part here), guest blogger Jamie Thornton offers some thoughts on Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, Barbara Kingsolver’s newest non-fiction book.

My first concept of season directly affecting the way my food tasted didn’t happen until I was 22 years old. (Before this I believed, like I think many Californians do, that everything is in season all the time in the sunshine state). Helping set up for a party at a friend’s house up in the Pasadena Hills of Southern CA, my husband and I noticed a solitary orange tree heavy with fruit at the edge of the friend’s property line.

Knowing my obsession for oranges, my husband asked if we could pick some of those dangling jewels. Our friend gave him a weird look and said go ahead, “but I wouldn’t trust those oranges, planes fly overhead and with all the Pasadena smog - I don’t know what’s in the dirt. Nobody picks them so they just fall and rot. It’s gross.”

I took in the wooded hillside, the nearest house not even visible. We figured we would chance it, whatever ‘it’ might be … I’d never eaten an orange picked straight from the tree and these looked so ripe, picked wasn’t the right word – they just fell into my hands as soon as I touched them. And I thought, were we too late, had the oranges already crossed over to the dark side of rottenness?

My husband and I carried these golden orbs inside, stopping at moments to pick up one that had dropped from our overloaded arms, and stood over the kitchen sink as we peeled. These were the kind of oranges that necessitated a full torso bend with elbows extended to keep the juice from running down our arms. We ate seven of them between the two of us and argued over whether the last one had been split exactly in half. It felt almost sinful, enjoying those oranges together in the kitchen while our friend snacked on the ‘safe and clean’ sodas and chips. Yet even though we gushed and ranted and raved and practically moaned, not one of our friends tried the homegrown oranges – though granted, people were dressed for a party and these were messy good.

Eating local, including eating fruit from a tree grown in your own backyard, needs to become the trendy thing to do, then it needs to become normal. Now I may have just offended some of you by using ‘eating local’ and ‘trendy’ in the same sentence. You might be thinking eating local is not about being trendy, that it should be about our global world and how we treat our fellow man; that it should be a moral choice, made with conviction and sacrifice, in order to be good stewards of mother earth.

But if that is what you believe, if eating local (among many other ethical choices), is your small way of saving the world one day, and one vegetable, at a time, then eating local must become trendy, and at the danger of being diluted, must go mainstream.

Take the “I am not a Plastic Bag” phenomenon at Whole Foods. In July of this year Whole Foods sold a limited edition, reusable grocery bag designed by Anya Hindmarch. They sold out, within hours, for $15 each and some are now being resold on Ebay for over $150 (as of 9pm PST). Is that because all these people realized at the same moment how important reusable grocery bags are to saving the environment?

Some of you may be nodding your heads in agreement and some of you may be cringing, and some of you may be doing both because you understand, but may not like, that this is how the world works sometimes.

American pop culture is about making things cool, and the coolest way to do it is to take something that is so not cool – like growing your own food, in dirt, or buying a hybrid car (does anyone remember when this was the epitome of uncool?) - and find a way to make it a fashionable must-have. As a side effect, make it good for the environment.

This is the brilliance of Barbara Kingsolver’s book Animal, Vegetable, Miracle. She turns the idea of eating local into something that will pamper you and your family. It becomes a matter of prestige, luxury, privilege. By chronicling her year of growing and eating local in this way, she has the potential to reach a much larger audience that just those ‘freak’ liberals who grow their own food and don’t use antiperspirant (no offense to those of you reading this blog who may fit into that special freak liberal category – I’m sending love your way). She makes a point of describing the importance of not just eating locally, but also sustainably, because eating organic is not enough anymore.

Her argument could have gone something like this: if you don’t eat local, what kind of person does that make you? Destroyer of the environment, destroyer of the small farmer, destroyer of yours and your children’s health, etc.

Guilt. Guilt. Guilt.

How does Kingsolver do it in her book? Sure, she gives you the dirty facts (though she more often lets her husband say it in sections separate from her own words), but the majority of her writing concentrates on describing the memories of novelty and happiness that her family made together by eating local and sustainable food.
And why wouldn’t you want food to taste better? To know that the orange is at its juiciest, that the tomato is at its reddest (and with no help from food dye)? Why wouldn’t you want to indulge in the richness of ripe and local produce all year long? Don’t you and your family deserve the best?

If you plan to read Animal, Vegetable, Miracle and also enjoy novels, make sure to pick up Prodigal Summer, Barbara Kingsolver’s novel about life and ecology in Appalachia – parts of it could be read as a fictionalized version of what she’s written in Animal, Vegetable, Miracle. To keep up to date on what is going on around Barbara Kingsolver's farm now that the book is finished, check out her website at http://www.animalvegetablemiracle.com/. Guest blogger Jamie Thornton can be found http://www.jamiethornton.com/.

A Localtarian's Library: Guest Blogger Jamie Thornton on "Animal, Vegetable, Miracle" by Barbara Kingsolver

In a two part review, guest blogger Jamie Thornton offers some thoughts on Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, Barbara Kingsolver’s newest non-fiction book. This book has been one of my biggest inspirations for this year of eating locally, and I think you’ll find Jamie’s review a unique and fresh take on it. Jamie graduated from UCLA with a B.A. in Anthropology and won several academic awards for her nonfiction. She is an aspiring novelist and is currently working on Rhinoceros Summer, a novel based in Africa. To keep up-to-date on Jamie’s writing efforts, check out http://www.jamiethornton.com/.


I am in love with oranges.

At halftime soccer games in Junior High, I ate orange wedges to excess. I bought the novel Oranges are not the Only Fruit because of the title (it was an excellent read). I refuse to drink pulpless orange juice. I consider Sunny Delight a product created by the devil.

When the use of colored dye in fruits became common practice, finding an ‘orange’ orange no longer guaranteed a great taste experience. So I developed my own important test – I’d find a quiet space of urban sidewalk after purchasing the orange, press one of my fingernails into the skin, and make a slit to peel back the first strip.

I would begin my judgments: Does the skin come off too easily? Is it one of those inch-thick varieties that can be pulled off in one long winding spiral (which means it’s going to taste dry and stringy and deflated, like orange-spritzed water that’s sat on a shelf for four years)?

Or.

Is the mottled skin thin, maybe a millimeter thin, so my nail pierces through to the pulp beneath? So the juice wells up and spills onto my thumb? And I’d know, this is going to be good, orgasmic good. I’d lick my thumb, unwilling to lose one drop of this ripe thing, knowing it would take some delicate surgery and several full minutes of careful peeling; bits flaking off, strips ending short, more pulpy piercings, more juice lost, before I could pop a slice into my mouth. Because it was bursting – bursting with ripeness.

The journey on which Barbara Kingsolver takes her readers in her new book Animal, Vegetable, Miracle is one bursting with new ripeness for every month of the year. It is about her family’s experiment in growing and eating local, it’s a behind the scenes look at the life of a bestselling author. It’s also an exposé of how fruit and vegetables are supposed to look and taste, of seasons, of delayed gratification. Of true food luxury, of the pleasures one can find working in a garden.

With chapters divided into each month of the year, Kingsolver shares dozens of her family’s stories alongside each month’s ripening food bounty. She uses such lyrical and sensual prose, I dare anyone to read it and not try at least some of Camille’s (Kingsolver’s oldest daughter) recipes. Or want to eat ‘same-day’ asparagus drizzled with olive oil before you die.

Instead of making the reader feel bad for not eating our vegetables correctly, Kingsolver concentrates on how delicious local and sustainable food can taste, and she does this with story. She creates a narrative – a time, a setting, and beloved characters facing hardship, overcoming it, and being the better for it. She does not deny the difficulty in finding local and sustainable food, in growing some of what one eats, or of taking the time to cook fresh meals. But her argument seems to ask the reader, don’t you deserve the best in life? Don’t you deserve food this good?

Kingsolver’s book is one to read, if not for the content, then for the pure sensuality of her words and stories. She reveals the inside dynamics of her all-American family who happens to sometimes receive live chickens in the mail and bake zucchini into chocolate chip cookies. She gushes over the products of her garden; she’s in love and not afraid to describe it. That the objects of her love are fruits and vegetables, and that she manages to help the reader fall in love as well; I’d say a writer with that kind of skill is well worth the bookstore price.

Return for Part II next Friday when Jamie will share her thoughts on the deceptively simple way Kingsolver argues for why people should eat local and sustainable food.

A Localtarian's Library: Guest Blogger Diane Lytle on Michael Pollan's "Omnivore's Dilemma"

Guest blogger Diane Lytle offers some thoughts on "Omnivore's Dilemma" by Michael Pollan, a book that if ever I were to offer a class in eating locally would be one of the required texts. Diane has a Master's Degree in Education and has spent many years teaching future teachers and ministers how to teach others (not a small task!) at a small college in South Africa. She has published numerous articles on education in the past 20 years. An avid cook and baker, Diane has recently returned to the States where she is becoming reacquainted with the U.S. food system, for better or for worse.

I have just finished reading “Industrial Corn,” the first third of The Omnivore’s Dilemma by Michael Pollan. What a fascinating read!

I grew up in the mid-fifties and sixties in a small Illinois town that was literally surrounded by corn fields. I remember discovering as a child that most of the corn around us was “feed corn” that was fed to farm animals and not “sweet corn” that we bought at the local farm stand. I don’t think I thought much about it again until reading this book. I must admit that a subheading titled “Corn Sex” did catch my attention. (That may have made my high school biology class more interesting!)

The chapter on the feedlots where most of our country’s beef is raised was a real eye-opener. My grandfather was a butcher, and my father was a meat department manager for A&P, so we grew up with lots of meat on our table. I always thought corn fed beef was the sign of a good cut of meat. I never realized that cattle’s stomachs were never meant to digest corn and that the side effects of this diet are some of the reasons that cattle need antibiotics and other additives in their diet.

According to Pollan, the government policies that subsidize the corn crop have resulted in such a surplus of corn in this country that the industry is constantly looking for ways to use it up. As a result, they take real food, break it up into its different parts, and then reassemble it into copies of real food or what we call “processed” food. Thus the reason for products like Cool Whip as a replacement for cream, juice drink instead of fruit juice, and Cheez Whiz for real cheese. Yes, those are all made from corn!

Who would have thought that over one hundred pages of information about the history and uses (or misuses) of corn could be so remarkable? I may even get this book for my dad for his birthday!

When Michael Pollan referred to Organic Gardening and Farming magazine in “Pastoral Wheat,” the second section of The Omnivore’s Dilemma, I was immediately transported to my grandparents’ living room, where multiple copies sat on their end table. At the time, I thought that they were the weirdest people on the planet for not using modern scientific methods on their small farm. Later, as a member of the hippy generation, I viewed organic farming as an anti-establishment political statement. For my grandparents, it was just their way of life.

Pollan’s diary of the week he spent on a “beyond organic grass farm” was much more enjoyable to read than his expose of industrial agriculture. How amazing to see a farmer who had rejected the monoculture farm model in favor of one that viewed his whole piece of land, including the forest, as one ecological system!

The description of the farmer moving his cattle each day to a new piece of pasture, then three or four days later moving his chickens to the same spot was intriguing. You have to read for yourself the detailed explanations of how these animals, including his pigs, worked together to fertilize the grass so that it would be just what they needed at the right time. The farmer even put corn in between the layers of cow manure in the barn so that later the pigs would dig through it and stir up the compost!

I was intrigued by the idea that farming does not have to be a zero sum proposition: if the animals and crops are used in the way the good Lord intended, we would not have to lose ground (excuse the pun) year after year. If we used renewable solar energy and grass rather than fossil fuels and corn, the journey from the farm to the table could be shortened tremendously.

Unfortunately, since the lower achieving students are often steered away from college and towards agriculture, we have ended up with many D students running our farms – and not doing a very good job. Along come the large corporations with their great ideas about planting only one crop and having less work to do, and many farmers go for it. But is organic better? All evidence is pointing in that direction, but the government is in the business of promoting big business, so organic is more expensive. That’s where we all need to decide: Is it better enough to spend the extra money?

As I finished off the last section of Michael Pollan’s book, The Omnivore’s Dilemma, I didn’t want it to end! This section, entitled “The Forest,” was the farthest removed from my personal experience, but it revealed more of the author’s own journey during his research for the book.

I appreciated Pollan’s transparency as he worked through the ethics of eating animals. I found myself relating to his confusion as he battled with this issue and conceded to some points of the vegetarian argument. He concluded, though, that while at first glance it may seem more humane not to eat animals, especially those who have suffered in CAFOs during their short lives, we must look at the bigger picture: if all humans (and all animals, if it were up to some of the animal rights crowd) stopped eating animals and animal products, eventually our whole ecosystem would deteriorate, affecting even the plant kingdom.

Picking up some pork chops (meat) at the supermarket is not quite the same as killing, dressing, and butchering a pig (an animal) yourself, though! I’ve never had much trouble understanding how a hunter, like my brother-in-law, would enjoy the contest of the hunt itself, but the actual killing of a living animal has been hard to get my head around. The author’s candid account of his emotions during his first hunting experience, ranging from curiosity to elation to disgust and eventually to acceptance of its place in the world was enlightening.

Overall, The Omnivore’s Dilemma was a delightful read and opened my eyes to many of the issues in the world of our food – what it is, where it comes from, and how it gets to us. Highly recommended!

An end note: For those of you who are more visually minded (isn't that just about everyone these days?) or those who just want to know more, a new documentary, King Corn, is coming to a theater near you (hopefully!). With contributions from Michael Pollan, it's the story of two college buddies that buy an acre, plant it with corn, and try to follow the corn trail through America's food system. View the trailer here. I can't wait!

A Localtarian's Library: "Plenty" by Alisa Smith & J.B. MacKinnon

Alright, so it's been a bit heavy around here lately with all the philosophical discussions about the deeper meaning of eating locally. Would you like to just sit back with an entertaining read? In that case, don't hesitate to pick up "Plenty" by Alisa Smith and J.B. MacKinnon, although I must warn you, you may be inspired into thinking about these deep philosophical questions yourself.

Smith and MacKinnon are the creators of the hugely successful 100-mile Diet. Since their one-year experiment to eat within 100 miles of their home in Vancouver, British Columbia (recorded first in a blog and now in this short book) they've become true eat local activists, traveling around North America to promote wise eating.

While admitting that their "actions are abstract and absurd, and they are neither saving the rain forests nor feeding the world's hungry," they also make a convincing claim for eating locally. I was at first put off by their vegetarian, bike-riding-in-the-snow-to-save-on-gas mentality, and I almost dismissed them as, um, just the sort of people you would expect to undertake such a crazy experiment in Vancouver. They grew on me, though, and by the end of the book I was cheering for them enthusiastically.

For this couple, the whole experience was powerfully personal. As MacKinnon says in the May chapter, "I could relate to each item not only to its place but to its specific farm and to the faces of those farmers." It was a way to connect to the heritage of their city as well as the history of their families. The book is a masterful balance of brutal honesty (relationships have their hard times), informative commentary (ever wondered how to separate chaff from wheat?), and hilarious moments ("Some people have a stockbroker or a drug pusher; I now have a fisherman.")

Deconstructing Dinner (my new favorite podcast) interviewed the couple back in January. You can find it here.

A Localtarian's Library: What I'm reading...

I've amassed a bit of a stack of to-reads on my desk. The librarian and I are becoming very well aquainted indeed! If you're interested in reading one of these titles and offering your own short review, please let me know! (I have more coming...) I will be working my way through them and letting you know what I think as I go. In the meantime, if you're trying to find me, be sure to check the living room couch - I'm bound to be there with a book in hand!