I greatly enjoyed reading about how Barbara Kingsolver and her (extended) family spent a year producing and growing their own food. The book goes into great detail about why the Kingsolver family came upon the decision to try and be self-sufficient for a whole year and how they carefully researched every aspect of food production and animal raising. The beginning of the book starts out with the Kingsolver family making the treck back to their family farm in the Appalachian countryside. The book gave me a very eye-opening look at how food in America is processed and made me think more about where food and specifically what I buy at the store comes from. I like how Kingsolver does not talk down to the reader and tries to enlighten with many facts and resources- and even provides quite a few tasty recipes along the way. The section about how the family decided to raise turkeys was quite interesting. I would have never figured that turkey farming today was so “mechanical”. But I did find that some of the sections of the book that talk about breeding turkeys and also slaughtering animals were quite graphic. This could be possibly because as a whole (we) are so removed from how out food is produced today and only seem to see the final processed product in the frozen foods section of the grocery store. I think that once you read this book you will not look at the way you shop for food again in the same way. The last few times I went to the grocery store I was even wondering where all the local produce was considering it is summer here.
I was unable to locate the book on the HarperCollins Canada website, so have provided a link to the Chapters bookstore listing instead. http://www.chapters.indigo.ca/books/Animal-Vegetable-Miracle-Year-Food-Barbara-Kingsolver/9780060852559-item.html?ref=Books%3a+Search+Top+Sellers
Details Format: Hardcover Published: April 19, 2007 Dimensions: 384 Pages, 6.5 x 9.38 x 1.25 in ISBN: 0060852550 Published By: HarperCollins Canada
I highly reccomend this book and would hope that every school and library have several copies (as most people never see how their food is produced).
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1 comment:
Alexandra said...
I read the book too and found it interesting, although I did have all sorts of criticism about it.
However, if you are interested in the topic, try reading Michael Pollan's The Omnivore's Dilemma. It is much better in my opinion, written from an investigative journalism rather than personal perspective, and definitely thought-provoking.
August 28, 2007 8:09 AM
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