Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life (P.S.) by Barbara Kingsolver, Camille Kingsolver, Steven L. Hopp Summary and Reviews
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Book Reviews of Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life (P.S.)
Book Review: Thank you Barbara
Summary: 5 Stars
Written in her beautiful and often humorous style, Barbara and her equally eloquent daughter are able to inspire and touch us to live better. Supported by her husband's well-documented facts revealing the truth about the shocking history and current practices of American commercial farming. Barbara's ordinary American family were able to sacrifice and make changes in their lives which in turn improved their own lives and helped make the planet a better place. A model for any family, they are living testimonies that we can do it! Book Review: Local is possible
Summary: 5 Stars
What a delightful book this is! It is about food, of course, but also about much more. Kingsolver very skilfully combines an entertaining memoir of her family's year of living on local provisions, mostly home grown on their farm in southern Appalachia, with humorous and serious reflections on rural life, the food industry, the environment, health and local farmers' economics. Given her science background and success as a fiction writer, she is best placed to captivate her audiences.
Roughly following a monthly rhythm, we learn what crops to plant and when, how to mix and match what grows best together in the fields and how to deal with the vegetable abundance at one time or another. She shares the ups and downs of yearlong fieldwork in a personal and charming way that even non-gardeners will enjoy the walk. There are birds to observe, chickens to raise and Bourbon Red heritage turkeys to nurture without being adopted as the mother hen. Kingsolver and her family literally dig in to realize the growing plans they had made to ensure feeding themselves throughout the year. The periods of abundance when canning and drying and other methods of preservation become essential, are followed by less rich harvest when they have to rely on the pantry and eat what they have saved. For one month the kitchen may be covered in red: it's tomato season, another one in green when the surplus of zucchini results in experimenting with daily new recipes. Daughter Camille brings to book and the table a delightful range of easy to follow recipes that celebrate the fresh produce from their garden and fields. She also adds her own personal touch with reflections of a young person experience on family life on a farm. Friends, neighbours and the local farmers' market play an important role in any hobby farmer's life. There are produce to exchange or buy and there are experiences and lessons learned to be shared. The values of family togetherness and neighbourly community take center stage in the description of their experience. Without these ingredients, the experiment would probably not have succeeded.
While describing the ups and down of living through the year on their farm with wit and warmth, both Kingsolver and husband Hopp address some serious questions regarding the food we choose to eat. Issues range from protection local seeds and biodiversity to industrialization of our food system and the environment impacts that we are facing today and in the future. We also are encouraged to ask ourselves some fundamental questions about our own approach to food, where it comes from, how far it traveled to reach us, and how we make important economic and environmental as well as health choices every day. References to reading sources and useful organizations as well as a website with all the recipes and more complement the book. It should be widely read and enjoyed. [Friederike Knabe]
Book Review: Inspiring
Summary: 5 Stars
I've never felt moved enough to review a book before but this one is outstanding. It's such a wonderful mix of fact, story-telling and delicious recipes that you can't fail to find something to interest you. The story had me gripped all the way, and I'll never look at a turkey quite the same way again! I'll be making a far greater effort to shop locally from now on. I'm already finding myself rather overwhelmed and slightly horrified by a trip to Tesco. Be warned, once you start on this your life is going to change :-)Book Review: an exuberant inspiring book
Summary: 5 Stars
Although the context is North American, and very different from Britain, nevertheless this exuberant tale of growing, preserving, and eating locally grown and home grown food is inspiring. Immense hard work, a determination to stick to the principle come what may ( such as what fruit can you get in february - oh yes, rhubarb! ) and an immensely cheerful disposition gets this family through.We also learn disturbing facts about commercial food production, at least in the States. A wonderful, inspiring book.Book Review: Choose Food to Enhance Life
Summary: 5 Stars
If you read only one book about food in 2008, I suggest you make it this one.
Barbara Kingsolver, her husband, Steven Hopp, and her daughter, Camille, present selecting, growing, producing, harvesting, storing, preparing, sharing, and eating food as a way to enhance their own lives and those of others. It's a life-affirming approach that I found quite intriguing.
Let me give you a few examples. Ms. Kingsolver decided it would be interesting to breed turkeys as well as raise them. Now, this isn't done very often. Turkeys don't have the necessary equipment and habits to be very good at mating and raising their young so most growers use artificial insemination and incubators. The result is a fascinating story of discovery about turkeys and herself.
Her family also decided to almost totally limit themselves to the food they could produce or purchase as locally grown (within about 250 miles) for a year. So you don't eat strawberries in January with that approach unless you freeze some from the summer, have a greenhouse, or live in southern California. This family lives in Virginia so the options are heavily constricted by the limited growing season. As a result, you'll find lots of recipes in the book to use the seasonal bounties of foods that are easy to grow in quantity like zucchini and tomatoes.
The book is also informative about food and how it is produced. I realized that I knew many of these things because my dad grew up on a farm and my mom on a ranch. They also grew a lot of our food when we were growing up. But I'm sure my children have no idea about these things. Ms. Kingsolver does a great service by transmitting this increasingly scarce and important information to another generation.
My own consciousness about food was raised when I realized that I've been ignoring many wonderful local food choices to supplement my tiny garden. Next spring, I plan to do things much differently.
More significantly, this book makes the challenges of the small organic farmer clearer to me. I see that I need to buy more local organic food to help make this offering available and to help those who want to do that kind of work.
For those who are concerned about food quality and environmental sustainability, this book contains much valuable information and advice.
The book's style is very accessible. There are sidebars written by Professor Hopp and Ms. Camille Kingsolver that give the book a nice change of pace. There are also lots of interesting recipes. Ms. Barbara Kingsolver also uses a narrative style that allows for lots of anecdotes and extended stories. Her pleasant novelist's touch gives the book a warmth and glow that you don't find in many books about food.
I was very sorry when the book ended. I could have kept on reading for another five years. Perhaps they will write an update at some point. I hope so!