Download Animal Vegetable Miracle A Year of Food Life Barbara Kingsolver Camille Kingsolver Steven L Hopp 8601300336411 Books
Download Animal Vegetable Miracle A Year of Food Life Barbara Kingsolver Camille Kingsolver Steven L Hopp 8601300336411 Books
Product details
|
Animal Vegetable Miracle A Year of Food Life Barbara Kingsolver Camille Kingsolver Steven L Hopp 8601300336411 Books Reviews
- I have been a fan of Barbara Kingsolver for years. I am amazed that this book slipped under the radar for me 10 years ago. I am so glad I just newly discovered it just a month ago. I have a great grandfather whose family were multigenerational farmers on the outskirts of Rome for many years. They were one of many small farms who did and still do feed Rome with low intensity “hand made†food production. I am an urban architect in San Diego and am now trying to incorporate small scale urban farming to some of our new projects so the next generation can understand where there food comes from. These are net zero, affordable housing and projects from a fossil fuel standpoint. This book is a perfect resource for my projects.
- Kingsolver invites us to her family's garden and table as they spend a year eating pretty much only what they or people they know in their area grow. I first read this years ago thanks to a book club suggestion, and I keep recommending it and buying more copies for friends who are interested in knowing more about sustainable living. The format works -- Kingsolver writes the main narrative, with her husband writing sidebars for facts and figures of the big picture of American agribusiness and her daughter writes recipe sidebars -- that are good, too! Chew on this book for a while, and you'll find yourself making different and more informed choices about your own food -- and, as Stephen assures us in one of his sidebars -- even one local meal a week for every American family would decrease fossil fuel use and increase local farmer -- and your own family's -- health.
- I didn't think I'd like this book, but I should have known that Ms Kingsolver would rise to the occasion. I truly enjoyed the tongue in cheek criticism of urban dwellers who don't know where their food comes from especially since I was one. Since moving to my parent's farm in my near thirtys then having to move away I have come to miss the farm life and the peace and security of being able to walk out your back door and feed yourself.
Thank you for reminding me of probably the best times of my life. - This was a wonderful book that will change the way you look at food, how it is grown, processed, transported and satisfies our nutritional and emotional needs.
- This book is a story of the transformation of one family from a supermarket driven life to the life of a locavore, celebrating local food, eating in rhythym with the seasons and relishing the changing bounty of the land. I know a lot about growing my own food, sustainable eating and am spoiled by the glorious bounty of the Bay Area in Northern California. Had I read this book years ago when it first came out this might be a 5, but now I give it three stars, the concept is good but it lacks focus, leaving out the recipes we crave that would make real the beauty and depth of locally sustainable flavors. There is a choppiness to the narrative that lessens its power. I appreciate the concept, but I find myself wishing this book had been more of what I wanted, a vehicle to make me ache with all my heart for the possibilities I feel looking down at local vegetables on my kitchen counter and my heart opening to a world of memory and possibility.
- I borrowed this book from the library initially, our CSA was having a February "book club" read, and this was the book. My husband and I have gardened to one extent or another since we married almost 40 years ago, and he grew up on a working farm. When our 30 something children were young we had 3,000 square feet under cultivation in vegetables to eat, freeze, can, sell to the local food co-op and give away.
Now we're on our second round of children. We are older, tired and we'd moved away from our fertile loamy soil to sand, acidity and bands of marauding white-tailed deer. We hardly gardened the past 3 years.
Then we found this incredible, life altering book. Actually, the book is not incredible. Barbara Kingsolver's lyrical prose, written with wisdom, humor and truth, was able to bring my husband and I back to the path that led to the local farmer's market, a local CSA (community sustainable agriculture)and gardens of our own again. Her words, and those of her daughter and husband, brought us back into the kitchen, they brought us back to the table, together again as family, to prepare and eat meals together, to talk, to be happy and to be relaxed with one another.
We were able to get the book on CD Animal, Vegetable, Miracle CD, and my husband and I listened to it every evening, enraptured with every chapter, every story, every success and every failure. We felt as though we were living through the Kingsolver family's year of local food and living with them. As the story progressed, so changed our family. We started baking bread again with this fun book Healthy Bread in Five Minutes a Day 100 New Recipes Featuring Whole Grains, Fruits, Vegetables, and Gluten-Free Ingredients ordering organic, locally grown and produced meats, poultry, vegetables and fruit from local growers through the West Michigan Food Co-Op and even going together with other friends to order organic grains and legumes in bulk through a local distributor.
I could write forever the ways this book has changed our family, really fundamentally changed the way we think about food, our local farmers, our earth and sustainability and our community. Much of what we learned, we knew already, but in disjointed news-bites and fragmented memories of our young married (gardening) life. "Animal, Vegetable, Miracle A Year of Food Life" gave us new facts, refreshed old ones and pulled all the information into a beautiful story book, a wonderful primer for living. Thank you to Barbara and her family for showing us the way.
Additional Note I've purchased copies of the book for my boss, my adult children, siblings and myself since that first copy I read was from the library! - One of the most important books to read about how we are providing nutrition for ourselves and our families.
Post a Comment