the kitchen reader: animal, vegetable, miracle

The August selection for the Kitchen Reader was Animal, Vegetable, Miracle by Barbara Kingsolver, chosen by Karen of Shortbread South.

Kingsolver is usually a novelist, probably best known for writing The Poisonwood Bible, but this was the first book of hers that I have read.

The non-fiction work subtitled “A Year of Food Life” begins in a convenience store in Arizona with a situation that resonates with me more after moving to the Southwest. Kingsolver, her husband, and two daughters are stocking up on snacks for a car trip that will move them from Tucson to Appalachia. As a rainstorm threatens for the first time in over 200 days, the gas station cashier grumbles that the first rain in months could ruin her only day off.

Kingsolver’s book tracks the year-long journey of her family from desert-dwelling suburbanites to self-sustaining farmers in Virginia. It’s a family project, not taken on lightly. Kingsolver’s husband, Steven Hopp, interjects in the way of small sidebars on various topics. Then-19-year-old daughter Camille adds her perspective plus recipes. Even the youngest daughter, Lily, makes a sizable contribution.

The plan? To only eat food grown and produced locally. They start at the farmer’s market in town, gradually shifting to their own large garden plot as the season wears on. They plant seeds, weed beds, and raise chickens. It isn’t a project in deprivation or perfection, and they are allowed some items like spices and coffee that can’t be grown everywhere — but they keep it organic and fair-trade.

What I love about this book (other than the quality of writing which is lovely) is that it doesn’t sugar-coat the experience. Do they learn a lot? Yes. Are the lessons valuable? Yes. Is it easy? No. Kingsolver acknowledges that it is an experiment and a challenge, they have struggles and failures, but they learn and grow.

Kingsolver also includes plenty of information on food miles, factory farming, and other debates about the locavore movement. She is quick to point out that the extreme example of her family is not a normal goal for most people and she does not expect it to be. Instead she focuses on what they learned from the experience both as a family and as individuals.

While acquiring/producing food is one challenge, making meals of it is another, and both are part of the book. I really enjoyed young Lily’s participation in raising chickens and selling eggs. Working out seasonal menus was another interesting facet. A chapter that really struck me was called “Six Impossible Things Before Breakfast,” chronologically referencing the June of their year-long experience. Kingsolver writes about her experience as a modern working mother, relying on pre-packaged convenience foods to save time. There is so much I love about this chapter I could quote about four pages, but I’ll limit myself to just one.

“Full-time homemaking may not be an option for those of us delivered without trust funds into the modern era. But approaching mealtimes as a creative opportunity, rather than a chore, is an option. Required participation from spouse and kids is an element of the equation. An obsession with spotless collars, ironing, and kitchen floors you can eat off of — not so much. We’ve earn the right too forget about stupefying household busywork. But kitchens where food is cooked and eaten, those were really a good idea.”

The book provides great research and information about farming and food systems, a wonderful narrative and personal account of a year in the life of a family, and some wonderful insight into the experience and reasoning behind taking on such a project. I could blather on longer, but you should give up on me and get a copy of this to read yourself.

Have you read Animal, Vegetable, Miracle? What did you think?

For other opinions check out the blogroll at The Kitchen Reader for more reviews.

the kitchen reader: in defense of food

This post should have gone up on July 31 except that I totally forgot to write and post it. Here it is!

July’s selection for the Kitchen Reader was chosen by Margaret of Tea and Scones. She selected In Defense of Food: An Eater’s Manifesto by Michael Pollan.

A few years ago I actually chose and read this book for my book club in Minnesota and really enjoyed it. However, I don’t own it and always get the contents confused with another good Pollan book, The Omnivore’s Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals. Pollan is a supporter of the Slow Food (as opposed to fast food) movement and is featured in the movie Food, Inc. and many other books about local, seasonal, sustainable food.

If the reader is to absorb anything from this book, it should be seven words: “Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants.”

Pollan argues against nutrition science which studies nutrients in isolation as opposed to as whole foods as a way for food manufacturers to make false health claims. He touts following a few simple rules for eating, such as:

Eat food. Not food products. Things that are grown, not manufactured.

Don’t eat anything your great-grandmother wouldn’t recognize as food. This is not a semantic argument about your Norwegian ancestors not knowing what a mango is, this applies to things like Flamin’ Hot Cheetos.

Avoid food products with more than 5 ingredients or ingredients you can’t pronounce. If it’s got that many syllables, it’s a chemical, not a food. And this doesn’t mean homemade dishes with multiple ingredients, it’s talking about shelf-stable food with added salt and stabilizers.

Avoid food products that make health claims. Drugs need government approval to make health claims, foods do not. Check your cereal box (a common offender). It may cite a study which supports the claim that it reduces your risk of heart disease, but you may want to find out who funded that study.

Shop the periphery of the grocery store. The outside edge of the grocery store tends to have produce, bulk bins, dairy, meat and fish counters, and the bakery. The inside aisles often have cereal, snacks, soda, and candy. Never entering the middle aisles make it easier to resist.

Get out of the grocery store. Pollan suggests shopping at farmer’s markets or specialty shops for better quality, sustainable, seasonal foods. Can’t argue there.

Are there flaws with some of Pollan’s arguments? Of course. Many accuse him of being elitist (see a recent article where he touts paying $8 for a dozen eggs) and advocating a diet which is unattainable and too expensive for many people. Like Food Matters by Mark Bittman I still think the basic information is valid even without directly addressing socioeconomic issues. One of the other main points of the book is that “cheap” food isn’t actually cheap, it’s a subsidized commodity which keeps prices artificially low which is bad for farmers and farm workers as well as people’s health.

I highly recommend reading this book for an eye-opening look at our food system. For a concise version, Pollan also wrote Food Rules: An Eater’s Manual, a slim volume featuring 64 rules that flesh out specifics of “Eat food, mostly plants, not too much.”

Have you read In Defense of Food or another Pollan book? What did you think?

For other opinions check out the blogroll at The Kitchen Reader for more reviews.

the kitchen reader: food matters

The June selection for The Kitchen Reader was Food Matters: A Guide to Conscious Eating by Mark Bittman, chosen by Elizabeth from Spike Bakes.
Mark Bittman is probably best known as the author of the New York Times Minimalist column and his How to Cook Everything cookbooks. My preference is markbittman.com which features his articles and guest posts on food politics and news. He also recently started writing a column for the revamped Cooking Light magazine (it makes more sense after reading this book). Love him or hate him (sorry Kimberly), Bittman is all over the place.

In Food Matters Bittman describes a personal journey that began at the intersection of personal health, rising food prices, global climate change, and animal cruelty. He claims that the health of the population and the planet can be improved through food choices. This is not an earth-shaking assertion — which he acknowledges, even providing page numbers so readers can skip over his reasoning if they already agree and just want the recipes.

Forging on, however, the author lays out his case for shifting his own consumption paradigm. Industrial livestock production is bad for the animals and bad for the planet. Eating too many calories is bad for people’s health. People should eat less meat and fewer calories by increasing intake of plant-based foods. He calls this approach “sane eating,” not a diet of restriction, but a lifestyle change that’s healthier for your body and the world. He advises us to “eat as though food matters,” because it does.

“If you embrace moderation, eat whole foods instead of junk, live within your physical, monetary, and environmental budget rather than constantly exceeding it, as so many of us do, you will lose weight, tread more lightly on the planet, and gain satisfaction from these things.”

It took me a while to get into this book and at first I didn’t understand why. I absolutely agree with the ideas set up in the book, it’s not a huge departure from how I eat myself, it justifies some of my own choices with research… and it’s exactly the information that I’ve been reading on my own and now for my health coaching program. It’s not Bittman’s fault that he wrote about the topics I’m currently studying and I didn’t read his book first. Also, he gave me ample opportunity to flip past his arguments, but he didn’t know he had to persuade someone who couldn’t even bear to read Choose Your Own Adventure books out of chronological order for fear of missing something.

What I like about this book is that it’s pragmatic. It offers good reasons to shift away from the Standard American Diet and cites Michael Pollan, Dr. Marion Nestle, and Peter Singer, among others. It’s not about willpower or judgment or “good” and “bad” foods, it’s about eating more nutritious foods which have less negative impact on the world. It addresses the challenges of navigating nutrition studies (many sponsored by food companies) and misleading marketing which are definite obstacles to many people’s health.

A few snippets that stuck out to me:

• Cutting back on animal protein is among the most important environmental contributions you can make.
• The meat industry has tried so hard to make “protein” synonymous with “meat.”
• It takes 40 calories of fossil fuel to produce 1 calorie of beef protein.
• More than 50% of the corn grown in the U.S. the fed to animals. Soy and corn account for over 50% of the total U.S. harvest.
• The U.S. does not actually grow enough fruits and vegetables to provide the government-recommended servings per day to each person.
• As a nation we get 7% of our total calories from soft drinks.
• Eating every time you feel hunger is like like sleeping every time you feel tired.

Bittman doesn’t just leave it there. After providing the reasons behind his dietary shift, he also outlines the framework for “sane eating.” He walks through stocking a pantry, cooking basics, and a month of meal plans. Over half the book is recipes, many of which look pretty good. Though he advocates substantially reducing meat consumption, many of the recipes are not vegetarian.

Once I actually got into it (again, my fault, not his), I liked the book because it logically offers up a truly reasonable way of eating. I’m actually trying to convince my husband to read it because I’m interested in his perspective as someone who hasn’t been studying the topic — if Bittman is “preaching to the choir” in me, my darling spouse is more of a grudging choir concert attendee.

Have you read Food Matters? Go see what the other Kitchen Readers thought of the book.

the kitchen reader: tender at the bone

This month’s selection for the Kitchen Reader was Tender at the Bone: Growing Up at the Table by Ruth Reichl, former restaurant critic for the New York Times and editor of Gourmet magazine.

{ Side note: If you like Ruth Reichl and Anthony Bourdain whose book we read for the Foodie Book Club last month, check out their hilarious Twitter morph, Ruth Bourdain. Now with Tumblr page, too. }

Tender at the Bone is Reichl’s memoir. Her childhood is tumultuous, both enviably privileged and sadly tough. Being sent off to boarding school may sound luxurious, but it was also lonely and difficult. Having cooks and housekeepers may sound glamorous, but being cared for by others instead of her bipolar mother was not. Any pangs of jealously over trips to Paris were tempered by tales of Reichl working her way up the food(ie) chain.

She had a very interesting path to food and I was definitely drawn in by her interesting experiences as well as her storytelling ability. I didn’t expect to read about years spent in a commune or waiting tables. Retrospectively it’s obvious that her path led her to where she is now, but it was impressive how much that path wound about indirectly. My favorite moment of the book was when she was reviewing her first restaurant and her past mentors’ lessons flooded her. It was a poignant way to bring all those threads together.

It was a good read — well written, interesting content, and enough mystery for me since I didn’t know much about Reichl’s past. Someone hit our power transformer with an SUV so I actually read it mostly in one sitting and partially by candlelight. It didn’t have the same heart-to-heart feeling of A Homemade Life, but I definitely felt more sympathy for Ruth Reichl than I did for Paula Deen. Some of her other books are now on my to-read list. The only thing that bothered me, ironically, was her honesty. In the preface to the book she says that while all the events are true, it is not always factual (or something to that extent), which left me wondering at the end which characters were composites of multiple people. If I hadn’t read the introduction, I might never have known.

the kitchen reader: eat, memory

The March selection for The Kitchen Reader book club was Eat, Memory: Great Writers at the Table, a Collection of Essays from the New York Times edited by Amanda Hesser.

This book is a compilation of 26 essays which originally appeared in the New York Times Magazine. Editor Amanda Hesser published a series of stories by accomplished writers about an important moment in their lives involving food. Divided into sections titled Illusions, Discoveries, Struggles, Loss, and Coming Home, the essays cover a wide variety of styles and topics which all relate (somehow) to food.

While I didn’t love every single essay, I enjoyed the book overall. The short sections made for a quick read that was easy to put down and pick back up, and any of the stories I enjoyed less were over quickly. While not every chapter ended with a recipe, many did, several of which were tempting. Sadly, I had to return the book to the library before I had to chance to copy any of the recipes down let alone make them.

Why food essays? In the introduction the editor, Amanda Hesser, explains that “we spend most of our time at home in and around the kitchen — because food is the most familiar and universal medium in our lives.” The stories in this book are not the trite odes to Grandma’s cooking, but they all approach food in a way that reveals something about their lives.

Chef Dan Barber’s account of living up to the hype of a new ingredient at his restaurant is at once a confession, an action-adventure, and a study on the placebo effect. Yiyun Li extols the marketing prowess of Tang, the powdered orange drink that became like a Holy Grail of status in Beijing. Novelist Ann Patchett recounts the argument with her now-husband which overrode a gourmet meal in Paris. Billy Collins was another contributor to the book. The former U.S. Poet Laureate is my favorite poet and I very much enjoyed his inclusion in the collection.

(This is when my notes ended and I had to return my book. Apologies to the authors of chapters I enjoyed but cannot name.)

One essay that struck me talked about going home to cook for the author’s mother who was dying of cancer. Going through the motions of cooking while being there was the important part, even though the food wasn’t being eaten. Food is about nourishing on many levels, for both the person who cooks and the person who eats. The story resonated with me.

Though a few chapters were lost on me, the majority worked. When I finished the book I was a little disappointed that it was over and wanted more. My copy was from the library, but I could imagine pulling this book off the shelf and reading a few select chapters over and over again. That the essays are memories from the authors makes the book more classic, I think, and though I am not much for re-reading books, I would consider taking this one for another spin.

the kitchen reader: it ain’t all about the cookin’

On a bit of a whim a few weeks ago, I decided to join The Kitchen Reader, an online book club for food bloggers. Each month we read a food-related book, then each member posts their review on their blog on the last day of the month.

What I enjoy about book clubs is the opportunity to read books I wouldn’t normally choose myself and to hear what other people thought about the same material. The former point definitely applies to my first reading for the group, Paula Deen: It Ain’t All About the Cookin’. One shiny new San Diego library card in hand and off we go!

If you’re not familiar with Paula Deen, she hosts a handful of shows on the Food Network about Southern home cooking. A common joke about Paula’s recipes: take a stick of butter, and mix it with some butter, then fry that in butter, and pour some butter on top. It Ain’t All About the Cookin’ is her autobiography, published in 2007.

I had heard of Paula and possibly seen a few parts of her show, but didn’t know much about her and don’t consider myself a fan. Southern cooking is more foreign to me in some ways than most international cuisines. After reading her book, I still wouldn’t consider myself a fan. While the book is an interesting glimpse of her life, motivations, perseverance, and some business tips, it didn’t make me like her. Respect, perhaps, but not like. Perhaps if I had already been a fan I would have felt differently, but with the book as my first major exposure to her, she didn’t win me over.

The book documents her growth from birth to a forty-two year old divorcee. That’s when she starts a catering company selling bagged lunches made in her own kitchen with $200 and the reluctant help of her two sons (don’t worry, it turned out OK for them). Catered events led her to open her first restaurant until that lease ended, propelling her to a larger space in partnership with her two boys in their still-popular Savannah restaurant, The Lady & Sons.

From there, her success translates into several TV shows, best-selling cookbooks, appearances on Oprah, sponsorship deals and cookware, and a second marriage. It’s a pretty impressive curve from the beginning of her story. The ambition and hard work that resulted in her success did not make for a fun and friendly lady. While her honesty is appreciated (and she never sugar-coats the challenge of succeeding in the food business), it isn’t always personally endearing.

When we catch up to her present life she veers into a few chapters on how she managed to open her restaurants. She gives advice that is cautious and encouraging, but shows that it’s hard work and not for everyone. I thought those chapters were interesting, but the transition was a bit rough.

Overall, I thought the book was an interesting peek into the story of someone I didn’t know much about. Part of her charm is her unrepentant Southern-ness, but I got tired of the colloquial chatty writing after a while. The book was toned down from the introduction, and her personality definitely came through, but it was a bit much at times.

If you’re a Paula Deen fan, it expounds nicely on her short biography found online. If you’re a fan of Southern home cookin’ check out her cookbooks. If you’re neither of those… skip it.

Do you like food and books? Consider joining The Kitchen Reader!