Animal, Vegetable, Miracle

Posted by Katie Elzer-Peters
May 12th, 2009
Filed in Organic Book Reviews
Tags: garden, harvest, vegetables

I’m not even finished reading Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life, by Barbara Kingsolver, but I can’t wait to tell everyone in the entire world how much I love this book.  Plus, it isn’t the type of book you have to read all the way through to know if you love it.  It is a narrative non-fiction account of Kingsolver’s Family’s move from Tucson, Arizona back to her husband’s farm property in the Appalachian foothills of Virginia, and their switch from relying on mass market agriculture to eating what they, or their neighbors, grew or raised: fruits, vegetables, meat and dairy.  I’m in “October,” which is titled “Smashing Pumpkins,” but I have been in love since the first chapter.

Recipe Detour

The book has lots of fabulous recipes that I can’t wait to try, but the book itself, and its premise, inspired me to invent something yummy for lunch today, and I want to share that recipe with all of you. You’ll love it.

Ingredients:

1 cup cooked pasta

4 cups raw spinach leaves

1 teaspoon olive oil

1 teaspoon butter

1 tablespoon crumbled blue cheese

Direction:  melt the butter and olive oil together in a skillet.  Rinse the spinach leaves and add to skillet.  Cover and steam until they start to turn brilliant green.  Then add the pasta and a pinch of salt.  Stir until spinach is just wilting.  Pour into bowl.  Toss with blue cheese. Eat!

Total yumminess.  (I killed my blender after a month of smoothies, so the green smoothie monster is going back to its cave until I figure out what to do.  In the meantime, I have a LOT of spinach that I need to find ways to creatively eat.)

Back to Animal, Vegetable, Miracle

So, Kingsolver, you might remember, wrote The Poisonwood Bible, a runaway international best seller that everyone in their right mind has a copy of.  No? Really?  Well, go get one now, because it is a wonderful book-actually deserving of its bestseller status.  She grew up in Kentucky, but moved to the desert of Tucson after college.  She and her family alternated between school years in Tucson and summers at the farm for years, until they decided that the water situation in the desert made them nervous, at which point they moved home to the farm.  Their first year was spent fixing up the farmhouse to the point where it could serve as a full time residence, then outlining a plan for their new life.  Next, they quit industrial agriculture, cold turkey, and bought a bunch of (live) turkeys.

Eating What’s in Season

The “year of food life” described in the book chronicles the family’s switch from consuming anything they wanted at any time of the year to eating what was in season around their county.  That means: no oranges, no mangoes, no bananas.  No cucumbers or tomatoes in winter, no lettuce in August.  Sounds rough.  However, what that does mean is pure joy and gratitude to taste the first cherry of the summer.  Only just tiring of asparagus when it’s time to let the plant grow after two weeks of harvesting every day.  Eating zucchini in every way imaginable: pasta, bread, dip, cookies, sorbet, etc.  It means knowing where your food came from, and feeling good about every speck eaten.

“We’ll Only Kill the Mean Ones”

This is probably one of my favorite quotes of the book.  It comes from Lily, the youngest daughter, age six or seven during the year chronicled in this book.  She raised chickens in Tucson-laying hens-and will raise them again in Virginia.  Each chicken flock can only have one rooster, so a “ruling the roost” rooster audition commences once Lily’s new chicks are old enough to start showing their true feathers-male or female.  A good rooster needs to have protective tendencies, but also get along with its human caretakers, apparently.  Only one would make the cut.  Er, the job.  At first, Kingsolver didn’t think Lily would stomach raising chickens for eggs and meat.  Then, Lily decided she wanted a horse, and calculated that she could save up her half of the money faster by selling chickens in both forms.

A New View of Vegetarianism

I am not, and probably never will be, a vegetarian.  Some people are due to health reasons.  Others don’t eat meat on moral grounds.  I finished reading the chapter about chicken and turkey “harvesting” last night, and it has given me more to think about in terms of eating an omnivorous diet.  (My next read:  Michael Pollan’s The Omnivore’s Delimma )  Kingsolver argues that animals raised humanely–outside of containment agricultural facilities (prisons?)-are responsible food choices.  She brings up a point that I had never considered, but feel like I should have:  millions of insects, bunny rabbits, butterflies, moles, voles, birds and other animals are killed in large-scale commercial agriculture.  The food produced on those farms are no more environmentally friendly, whether organic or conventionally operated.  Mixed use farms, growing food for local residents, are more environmentally friendly, and produce healthier eating options.

Local or Organic-Which is better?

In the long run, the philosophy of organic growing-building the soil, planting mixed-use farms and gardens, and working with, not against, the local climate matters more than a USDA label slapped on a package of lettuce.  Locally grown produce uses less fuel for transportation, and is picked at the peak of freshness.  If you have to choose between buying local and buying organic, if you know your local producer practices organic methods, even if the farm is not certified, its better to go with local.

Why do I love this book so much?  The writing is beautiful.  I have learned a lot by reading it, but don’t feel like I am slogging through some wacky environmentalist rant.  It makes me want to eat Swiss Chard and kale by the basket-fulls.  It has inspired me to find more local food sources.  It might even get me out of bed at 8:00 am Saturday to get to the Farmer’s Market before everything good is gone.  It’s a great read.