Try it – Animal, Vegetable, Miracle
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Confession: I am a book worm. I’m not ashamed of my dorkhood, but rather, I embrace it. I started off with my nose buried in Amelia Bedelia, which I quickly outgrew and moved on to adventures with Ramona Quimby and the Boxcar Children. I got through puberty, unscathed, thanks to my good friends Alice and Margaret. And soon I was introduced to some of my favorite authors, Jane Green, Jennifer Weiner, Jodi Picoult, Barbara Kingsolver, Sue Monk Kidd, Emily Giffin, Audrey Niffenegger, and, yes, admittedly…Stephanie Meyer. I love getting swept away to another world with new characters (especially Edward Cullen!) and their colorful stories.
But I never really dabbled in the non-fiction. No, that section was always overlooked (er, avoided). Why read about ‘real stuff’ when I was having so much fun in the field with Edward Cullen?
Well, it was one of my favorite fiction authors, Barbara Kingsolver, that managed to lure me in — with her memoir (?), Animal, Vegetable, Miracle
I had heard reference of her book a few times, but always forgot to seek it out…or perhaps I was just always distracted by the shiny new covers that my beloved FICTION section had to offer.
But after my mom and I finished reading the trashy magazines (what? Don’t pretend you don’t care who’s sleeping with Lindsay Lohan this week!) a few weeks ago, I ventured into the racks to find Kingsolver’s non-fictional offering.
After reading “This book will change your life,” printed on the cover, I was sold — what can I say, I’m a marketer’s dream 
Now, I consider myself pretty ‘in-the-know’ when it comes to the food industry and how produce, meat and other grocery store offerings get to our tables. I know that local is best and I’m aware that organic trumps pesticides.
That being said, I still learned SO MUCH by reading this book and was sucked right in to Kinsolver’s experiences.
The book starts with Kingsolver and her family making the decision to move from their home and community in Arizona, to the area where Kinsolver grew up — a farm in Appalachia. They commit to a rural life, “and vow that for one year, they’d only buy food raised in their own neighborhood, grow it themselves or learn to go without it.”
I loved the candid and honest words of Kingsolver and felt as if I were right beside her, getting my hands dirty with Mother Earth. I especially enjoyed the excerpts from her daughter that followed each chapter, always including a recipe utilizing the vegetables that were in-season (noting the Vegetannual).
Vegetannual
I must have said “I want a garden!” more than 100 times, each time countered by the Mister with “we don’t have a yard, Shannon.” (what a scrooge!)
This book was so inspiring and really does drive home the fact that you are what you eat. As I was reading, I underlined some tid-bits that I thought you’d find interesting.
“U.S. farmers now produce 3,900 calories per U.S. citizen, per day. That is twice what we need, and 700 calories a day more than they grew in 1980…And here is the shocking twist: as farmers produced those extra 700 calories, the food industry figured out how to get them into the bodies of people who really didn’t want to eat 700 more calories a day.”
“Today’s generation of children are predicted to be this country’s first generation to have a shorterlife expectancy than their parents.”
“Corn is a vegetable, right? Good, because on average we’re consuming 54.8 gallons of soft drinks, per person, per year.
“Bizarre as it seems, we’ve accepted a trade off that amounts to : Give me every vegetable in every season, even if it tastes like a cardboard picture of its former self.” You’d think we cared more about the idea of what we’re eating that what we’re eating. But then, if you examine the history of women’s footwear, you’d think we cared more about the idea of showing off our feet than about, oh, for example, walking. Humans can be fairly ridiculous animals.”
“You can’t save the whales by eating whales, but paradoxically, you can help save rare, domesticated foods by eating them.”
“Our gardening forbears meant watermelon to be the juicy, barefoot taste of a hot summer’s end, just as a pumpkin is the trademark fruit of late October. Most of us accept the latter, and limit our jack-o-lantern activities to the proper botanical season. Waiting for a watermelon is harder. It’s tempting to reach for melons, red peppers, tomatoes, and other late-summer delights before the summer even arrives, But its actually possible to wait, celebrating each season when it comes, not fretting about its being absent at all other times because something else good is at hand. — If many of us would view this style of eating as deprivation, that’s only because we’re grown accustomed to the botanically outrageous condition of having everything, always.”
I really enjoyed reading this book and I look forward to continuing my education and broadening my mind with other non-fiction works.
What about you? Do you read non-fiction, health/food related books? Any favorites?
8 Responses to “Try it – Animal, Vegetable, Miracle”
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