Book Review by Heather Anne McIntosh
I’ve always hated
eating my vegetables. As a child, my parents forced me to eat them almost every
night; the rule was that I must eat one for each year of my age, plus one more.
After everyone else finished their dinner, I’d sit at the table for hours staring
at rows of peas or brussels sprouts on my plate. One at a time, I’d put them in
my mouth, chew, then swallow. The bitter taste would linger, no matter how much
water I drank to wash it out. “You really do like them!” my mother would shout
at me from the kitchen.
More than three decades later, I still flinch
when I see a vegetable on my plate. But after reading Animal,
Vegetable, Miracle by Barbara Kingsolver, I’m ready to give vegetables
another try. In her hybrid of memoir, self-help, cookbook, and political
manifesto -- Ms. Kingsolver paints a vivid and compelling picture depicting the
beauty of natural foods, and the abysmal state of our food culture in America
today. Ms. Kingsolver begins by chronicling her family’s decision to move to a
farm in the Appalachians, and eat only locally grown foods for an entire year.
There are many reasons behind their decision – philosophical, political, and
financial- but the main one was Ms. Kingsolver’s obvious love for farming and
cultivating her own food. “That longing is probably mixed up with our DNA,”
writes Ms. Kingsolver. “Agriculture is the oldest, most continuous livelihood
in which humans have engaged. It’s the line of work through which we promoted
ourselves from just another primate to Animal-in-Chief. It is the basis for
successful dispersal from our original home in Africa to every cold, dry, high,
low, or clammy region of the globe. Growing food was the first activity that
gave us enough prosperity to stay in one place, form complex social groups, tell
our stories, and build our cities.”
Could
I have a hidden love of gardening tucked away in my DNA? As I read this book, I
found myself longing for my own land - overflowing with green stalks glinting
in the sun, sturdy fruit trees and mushrooms sprouting in shady corners.
Farming is a seasonal vocation; Ms. Kingsolver and her family had to plan their
lives (and menus) around the different seasons. They could only eat what had
been grown recently (or picked and stored in the freezer). This was a tall
order in the winter and early spring months, but even with a limited selection,
this family more than made do. Contrary to what one might assume, their family
lifestyle provides an abundance of delicious, healthy and varying food all
year. The recipes included in this book are organized around the seasons. Late
winter and early spring recipes include: Eggs in a Nest (made with chard),
Asparagus and Morel (wild mushroom) Pudding, twice-baked potatoes, frittatas,
and pizza with dried tomatoes and feta. Yum. “Vegetables are gorgeous,
especially spring greens, arriving brightly as they do after a long winter of
visually humble grains and stored root crops,” writes Ms. Kingsolver.
Ms.
Kingsolver is a gifted storyteller, and one of my favorite novelists. Her
craftsmanship is obvious in this book’s skilled combination of personal
narrative, educational content, recipes, and short articles by her husband and
daughter about related topics. The premise of this book is that Americans are
eating too much food, and that the food has been stripped of its innate
nutrition and variety by large, corporate, agricultural conglomerates. “Woe is
us, we overfed, undernourished U.S. citizens – we are eating poorly for so very
many reasons,” writes Ms. Kingsolver. “A profit-driven, mechanized food
industry has narrowed down our variety and overproduced corn and soybeans. But
we let other vegetables drop from the menu without putting up much of a fight.”
It’s true. Since
reading this book, I’ve become an expert at scrutinizing ingredient lists.
Almost everything we Americans eat is made from corn or soybeans, and is
produced by either Monsanto or DuPont. These companies genetically modify their
crops mainly to increase shelf life and resistance to insects or other parasites.
These modified crops, widely known as Genetically Modified Organisms (GMOs),
might last longer - but they are inferior in taste and nutrition. Worse, many
of the minerals and vitamins that have been part of these plants for thousands
of years are lost in the process.
Before
reading this book, I’d read articles and seen signs at Whole Foods about
the importance of purchasing locally grown foods. But I really didn’t
understand the point until now. Many people would be shocked to realize that
most of their food has traveled thousands of miles in a truck before it is
served to them. This is wrong for so many reasons. Obviously, the cost of
travel and fuel is wasteful. Also, the food on the trucks must be altered in
some way so that it survives the trip. This dramatically decreases any
nutritional value. Often the added preservatives can be dangerous for the
consumers – humans and animals alike. We just weren’t meant to eat this kind of
food, nor can our culture afford it. “Concentrating on local foods means
thinking of fruit invariably as the product of an orchard, and a winter squash
as the fruit of an early-winter farm. It’s a strategy that will keep grocery
money in the neighborhood, where it gets recycled into your own school system
and local businesses.” Ms. Kingsolver points out that in order to change our
way of thinking, Americans will have to redefine how we view our food. Eating
strawberries in January should be seen as the absurdity that it really is. At
most, it should be a rare luxury and recognized as such. This thinking requires
an awareness of where the strawberries came from, and how many miles they
traveled before they arrived on the plate. I wonder if we’re ready for this
change.
Farming is not easy
work, and any reader of this book will become intimately aware of the sometimes
tedious, always time-consuming daily ritual that is involved. Rising before the
sun each day, dressed in layers, clad in boots and gloves, the Kingsolvers
scatter about their farm to perform the necessary work. They milk cows, gather
eggs, plant seedlings, weed gardens (an extremely time-consuming and physically
uncomfortable task), and hunt for wild mushrooms on “the first warm day after a
good, soaking mid-April rain.” This is a very different lifestyle than most of
us city-dwellers can imagine. To me, it sounds extraordinarily enticing.
Ms. Kingsolver’s
writing is intimate, and as a result I felt like a trusted friend. I
longed to meet her for coffee, and talk about parenting and her favorite
heirloom crops. I wanted to flip through the seed catalogs with her, a thousand
years of evolution described on each page. Ms. Kingsolver writes: “I have seen
women looking at jewelry ads with a misty eye and one hand resting on the
heart, and I only know what they’re feeling because that’s how I read the seed
catalogs in January. I swoon over names like Moon and Stars watermelon, Cajun
Jewel okra, Gold of Bacau pole bean, Sweet Chocolate pepper, Collective Farm
Woman melon, Georgian Crystal garlic, mother-of-thyme.” Who cares about a shiny
new necklace when you could be eating a Sweet Chocolate pepper?
We Americans have
forgotten about the joy of cooking our own food. There is an innate
satisfaction that comes from growing the ingredients, planning the menu, and
creating each course of a meal for your family. “Households that have lost the
soul of cooking from their routines may not know what they’re missing: the song
of a stir-fry sizzle, the small talk of clinking measuring spoons, the yeast
scent of rising dough, the painting of flavors onto a pizza before it slides
into the oven.” Ms. Kingsolver describes the sights, sounds and smells of
cooking exquisitely. It is a strong and sensual experience, and contrasts
vividly with the typical American meal of greasy food wrapped in thin paper.
My
children are always asking questions which stop me cold. “What right do we have
to kill an animal?” my daughter asked me a few days ago. “Is it only OK if
you’re planning on eating it?” I was stunned. We are a family that eats meat,
yet our children have never experienced the killing side of this habit. This is
yet another aspect of our “easy-food” culture which Ms. Kingsolver deftly
examines. “If we draw the okay-to-kill line between ‘animal’ and ‘plant,’ and
thus exclude meat, fowl, and fish from our diet on moral grounds, we still must
live with the fact that every sack of flour and every soybean-based block of
tofu came from a field where countless winged and furry lives were extinguished
in the plowing, cultivating, and harvest. To believe we can live without taking
life is delusional.” This subject is much more complex than we choose to accept
and talk about. We cannot escape the fact that, as humans, we need to eat.
Eating includes the growing of live food - plants or animals. We must kill this
food for our survival. Clearly communicating this fact to a child is another
matter altogether, and should be done carefully, honestly and with much
forethought.
Dedicating
a year toward the eating of one’s own locally grown food seems, at first, to be
an extreme measure. Initially the reader is forced to question the author’s
rationale, as well as her sanity. I now realize how sane this choice actually
is. It’s possible we all should consider living this way. At the least,
Americans need to re-evaluate and reform our food culture. Ms. Kingsolver
writes that “the point of being dedicated locavores for some prescribed length
of time, I now understand, is to internalize a trust in one’s own foodshed.
It’s natural to get panicky right off the bat, freaking out about January and
salad, thinking we could never ever do it. But we did. Without rationing,
skipping a meal, buying a corn-fed Midwesternburger or breaking our vows of
exclusivity with local produce, we lived inside our own territory for one good
year of food life.” It really is a miracle, as the title promises.
