Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life (P.S.) Reviews

• This is a fascinating informative book about food

  
  By AE31M52VLKOG6 on 2007-05-08
  It is possible to live off the land. The Kingsolver family are proof of that. They grew their own food for a year on a farm in Virginia's Applachian mountains. It only cost 50 cents a meal to feed the Kingsolver family of four for a year, and I found that to be amazing. It is much healthier to eat organic foods which are foods produced without chemicals. This is one of the main ideas of this insightful book. I love Camille's Kingsolver's contributions in this book. She is the college age daughter of the primary author. Camille's reflections about food are thoughtful, and her recipes sound delicious. I loved her essay about how she learned to love asparagus. I learned that asparagus is an excellent source of vitamin C, which I did not know before. There is a recipe in here for an asparagus mushroom bread pudding. I never thought of putting these ingredients together. Another interesting recipe in the book is one for zucchini chocolate chip cookies. The recipe sounds so unusual, I am tempted to try it. The recipe for pumpkin soup and sweet potato quesadillas sound yummy too. Everyone in the Kingsolver family contributed in this local food project. Barbara raised and bred turkeys, while her nine year old daughter raised her own chickens and provided the family with eggs for a year. They even made their own cheese.
  
  I also enjoyed the contributions of Steven L. Hopp in this book. He is a professor who teaches environmental science at Emory and Henry College. His short contributions in the every chapter are very insightful. He really compliments the main text written by Kingsolver. I enjoyed reading his thoughts about the popularity of agricultural education in public schools. This is a fascinating and informative book about food.
  
  

• Back to the garden!

  
  By A10G4BPT5MGBHY on 2007-05-05
  Three hundred and sixty-eight pages, no pretty pictures, and it's about food? Yes it is, and it's fascinating. Written by best-selling novelist Barbara Kingsolver, her scientist hubby and teenage daughter, "Animal, Vegetable, Miracle" chronicles the true story of the family's adventures as they move to a farm in rural Virginia and vow to eat locally for one year. They grow their own vegetables, raise their own poultry and buy the rest of their food directly from farmers markets and other local sources. There are touching human stories here (the family's 9-year-old learns a secret to raising chickens for food: don't name them!) but the book's purpose is serious food for thought: it argues the economic, social and health benefits of putting local foods at the center of a family diet. As Kingsolver details the family's experience month-by-month, husband Steven adds sidebars on the problems of industrial agriculture and daughter Camille tosses in some first-person essays ("Growing Up in the Kitchen") and recipes ("Holiday Corn Pudding a Nine-Year-Old Can Make").
  
  And it is all so well written! Kingsolver can veer way off topic -- wandering off into subjects like rural politics, even turkey sex -- and still, somehow, stay right on point. Her husband can say more in two pages than some professors I know can say in 200, and the daughter's writings... well I often couldn't tell who was writing what without checking for the byline.
  
  The book looks and feels great, too. The dust jacket has been pressed into the nubby texture of burlap. The pages have ragged edges, which makes them soft on your fingers.
  
  Reading this book, drinking my Phosphoric Acid Diet Coke and snacking on some Partially Hydrogenated Palm Kernel Oil Walt Disney World Hungry Heroes Yogurt Pretzels, I suddenly felt like I was a kid again, sitting in my bedroom in 1969 listening to that Joni Mitchell "Woodstock" lyric: "Time to get back to the land, and set my soul free." Now that song is stuck back in my head! Maybe it should have never left.
  
  

• More exposure of an American epidemic

  
  By A3N74RXBP7RAB on 2007-05-10
  Look what happened when the nation turned its attention to the tobacco industry. If only that would happen with the fast food/processed food industry. One can only dream.....
  
  Thank you so much, Barbara Kingsolver, for grabbing that attention and making it the focus of your new book. I loved it. It was so well written.
  
  I hope this subject really catches the attention of more and more people. For our familys conversion to organic and local, mindful eating it started with the movie, "Supersize Me," and went on to "Fast Food Nation, etc."
  Ms. Kingsolver points out in her book it is a slow process to weed yourself off that junk food.
  
  Ms. Kingsolver opens up the doors to her farm and family life to share how we can save our lives (literally) and the world by eating local, fresh and home grown. Put down that twinkie and pop! Pick up a hoe and educate yourself on the dangers of fast food and processed food!
  
  Blue jello? Come on! What part of that is natural, real food? But I dare you to eat a Christmas colored bean, like the one on the book cover.
  
  Ms. Kingsolver also shares about how rare it is to see/find true animal breeding in the modern world. She states in the book it was impossible to find modern resources and had to look to the past to find the answers.
  Nature has been bred out of the animals we eat. And she writes about it so eloquently!
  
  Sorry this review is all over the place! I was so excited to see Ms. Kingsolvers new book out; and it is on a subject that is near and dear to my heart. The narrative is incredibly well written. It is very inspiring.
  
  

• Unrealistic, sad guilt trip that has many flaws

  
  By A2IRGMGWZW45AS on 2007-10-23
  I bought this book thinking it would be something like "A Year Without Made in China" whereby the author gives their attempt at getting by without products made in China, and the failures and humorous anecdotes along the way. I thought maybe this book would be similar but instead Kingsolver (and her family as well) comes across as preachy and arrogant.
  
  First of all you must realize that if you are "eating healthy" by eating more fruits and vegetables, that is not enough. Nor is eating organic fruits, vegetables, and meats. Nooo, you must be eating locally grown organic (although not necessarily certified because that's just too damn expensive) fruits, vegetables, and meats. Really, you should have your own apple orchard, nut trees, vegetable garden, lambs, chickens, and turkeys. Ok, if you've stayed with me this far you're doing great.
  
  Now you know the entire food industry is in cahoots with the oil industry, right? I mean corn syrup for soft drinks, corn in your corn chips, corn grown with machinery that uses fossil fuels, shipped to you with fossil fuels is bad bad bad...I mean using fossil fuels for your food production is a major theme in this book, with Kingsolver harping over & over about it. But wait! She visits friends in Massachusetts that have fantastic tasting tomatoes that are grown far earlier in the season than anyone else in New England can dream of! How in the world do they do this!??? Well, by golly, they have a greenhouse! Wait, isn't it too cold in Mass. for the greenhouse? Well, they heat it with...wait for it...natural gas! You know that silly old fossil fuel that is we're running out of! Ok, sarcasm over, you get the idea. There are so many flaws in the book like this it's pathetic, I'll only mention the trip to Italy, the drive around the country, etc. The endless preaching wears thin but is perfect therapy if you grew up Catholic.
  
  Also, it seems incredibly hard to believe that the family had no failures. Everything was a success! Asparagus, tomatoes, potatoes, chickens,..no pests, no crop failures, no droughts. If you have ever had a garden in the summer you know this never happens.
  
  By the way, Mrs. Kingsolver, was the paper used to print the million copies of your book grown on locally harvested trees? Wait, the paper came from trees in Canada shipped to the U.S.A.? What were you thinking!?
  
  

• A frou-frou Yuppie look at the fad of "eating locally"

  
  By A1ERZIZ48CBCSB on 2007-09-07
  I am a fan of Ms. Kingsolver as a skilled fiction writer (Poisonwood Bible, etc.), and this scolding treatise on local eating is well written. But like all non-fiction works that take a hard line on some issue and then attempt to bludgeon the reader into compliance, it's frequently dull and has the tone of a lecture, rather than the lyrical look at a family farm that I think was the intention.
  
  Eating from local sources is ALWAYS a good idea, and many of us have ALWAYS done it, without politics or finger-waggling required. Any idiot (I hope) knows that a ripe homegrown peach is about 10,000 times more delicious than a rock hard, meally fruit from Chile and no more convincing is required than a single bite of ripe peach in peach season. But eating entirely locally is not a reality for most people -- for anyone who has to live in a city or a suburb, who has to work at a full-time occupation, who has to live and work in a desert climate, etc.
  
  Unlike nearly everyone else, Ms. Kingsolver and her husband inherited a nice little farm in rural Virginia. She's a famous (and well paid) author and he is a professor of biology at a local college. In other words, neither of them have to work at full-time ordinary jobs and neither of them has to commute to a miserable office job miles from their home. In fact, when they "feel like" moving from hot deserty Tucson to richly fertile Virginia, it's no-problemo, because they have the money and inherited farm to do so. As for the rest of us, we might as well be reading about how they sailed around the world on their inherited YACHT.
  
  The "Hopsolvers" (combo of Kingsolver and her husband's surname) also can afford fancy, fuel-burning trips to Italy, which seem at odds with her rigid theories on not expending fossil fuels for food (or pleasure). But OOPS, of course this was an, errr....fact finding trip for the book. As such, a total tax write off, food and all.
  
  I think I lost faith very early on, when Ms. Kingsolver decided to eat all local Virginia foods...EXCEPT coffee, olive oil, sugar, salt and all spices. HUH???? However, she bans, very vocally, simple things like bananas, orange juice, raisins and tropical fruits like pineapple and mango (all healthy foods). This is out and out stupid. Coffee comes from the same exotic locales as tropical fruit! Just because she likes (and presumably feels she "needs' coffee to wake up in the morning), why should that get a pass? Sorry Barb, but that's total hypocrisy.
  
  Taken to logical extremes, we'd be eating like our ancestors all right -- we'd have rickets and scurvy (without citrus). Our teeth would rot out of our heads by age 35. Some "neighbor" would raise or can food with botulism, or raise dirty animals with salmonella, trichonosis, etc. and we'd get sick or die from it. And in the years that were not so good, we wouldn't end the year with a few jars of spaghetti sauce -- we'd end the year STARVING. (In the Hopsolver's case, though, I think they would just skulk off secretly to the grocery store where they buy their coffee and imported olive oil.)
  
  I also agree with reviewers who find that the blissful family life of the Hopesolvers is hard to take, in a Seventh Heaven sort of way. No fights? No kids whining for candy or gum? Nobody who gets sick of the veggie-heavy fare? Nobody who wants raisin bran for breakfast or a banana in their corn flakes? Nobody who gets sick of butchering and gutting livestock? Hubby Steven never wakes up and says "hey I don't feel like kneading dough and baking organic bread all day -- IN THE SUMMER HEAT?" Just blissfully happy kids and spouse who are in 100% agreement with mom's extremist cooking fads (she USED to be a vegan, but now will eat homegrown meat, etc.). Frankly people, this is sci fi.
  
  Daughter Camille adds some sidebars about college life and some appealing recipes, but Dad Steven writes some boring scientific drivel that is best skipped over. In conclusion: good recipes, nice writing about the VA locale, but a basically myopic, yuppie, airheaded theory about "local eating" which is faddish and unsustainable in the modern world by us regular (farmless city) folks.
  
  (BTW: written while consuming a perfectly delicious, healthy, dead ripe Hawaiian pineapple and loving every bite of it.)
  
  
• Negativity abounds
  By A17EZCRGMXTT3B on 2008-02-08
  When referring to organic produce, the author asks who put the sanctimony into the phrase organic. If she has read her own book it should be crystal clear that it was none other than herself. Sanctimonious perfectly describes almost the entire book, Animal, Vegetable, Miracle. I say almost, because the portions added by her daughter and husband are actually informative and enjoyable. The book must not be aimed at the American consumers to which it would be sold, because the author does not have one nice thing to say about her fellow Americans. She has even trained her younger daughter to deny her American heritage by saying that she is American, but not really. You can't possibly hope to influence people's attitudes by attacking them and then explaining why you are so much better, and this is what Kingsolver tries to do. The sad thing is that she even attacks like-minded people. She criticizes a "starlet" for wanting to save farm animals, saying that her logic is flawed. Then the author proceeds to say that dairy cows are bred to produce milk and cannot live without being milked. She should check out her facts before ridiculing someone else for getting them wrong. If a milking cow is not milked, the milk will eventually stop being produced, just like it does for us humans. For large-scale dairy farming, the cow could be milked less and less until the milk dries up. So it is pretty ridiculous to giggle about the starlet's stupidity and then say something really stupid herself.
  
  Ms. Kingsolver repeats over and over in the book that America has no food culture. This is totally untrue. America is a melting pot and has the richest food culture of anywhere else. America absorbed peoples from every nationality and their food cultures along with them. She also avows that the French sample McDonald's, but they don't really eat there. I hate to break it to her, but there are McDonald's restaurants in almost every European city, and if you want to buy a burger there you will have to wait in line. France is no different. The lines are always nearly out the door. I live in a European city with a population of only about 100,000 people, and there are no less than 4 McDonald's here. They are never empty. Ever.
  
  It was difficult for me to get all the way through the book. Most of the factual material was no news to me, and I think the book was a big waste of my time.
  
  
  
• Compelling disussion on food choices
  By A3MHP82JXQQ1OI on 2007-06-19
  This is certainly a book that makes one take a careful look at one's eating practices. Kingsolver presents a compelling case for trying as much as possible to buy food that is locally and/or organically grown. The tone of the book can be a bit preachy. This could be rather irritating at a certain point. I often found myself talking back to her: sure, it's easy IF you live on a farm in a farming area that doesn't have long bitter winters, and you're a wealthy best-selling author with plenty of time to spend planting, weeding, harvesting and preserving. (I also lost her when she went on about the lovely lifestyle afforded by tobacco farming, mourned its becoming less profitable, and defended the practice because the farmers aren't making cigarettes; it's big corporations.) Still, we can all adapt some of her recommendations into our lives. The book tells us why we should and gives suggestions on how to do it. The stories of her family's adventures in food production are engaging. I'm nearly finished with the book, and I think it'll feel like a fascinating neighbor moved away when I'm done.
  
  
• Rich White People Pretend to be Farmers
  By A2GZ2IG4Y1WR4E on 2008-01-19
  I don't understand some of these customer reviewers' apparent surprise that a family can "live off the land"--of course they can (people have done that since the beginning of time). The problem is that not everyone can afford their own land in our country (let alone their own home these days, given the economy we live in). But Kingsolver's book does not address these issues at all; it is basically a pretentious display of self-congratulatory, self-perceived superiority, and offers very little useful information for people who DON'T actually own a large chunk of land in Appalachia. Frankly, the book even falls short on the touchy-feely side (there is not real growth, nothing learned, no actually problems, challenges, or difficulties faced).
  Although Kingsolver's message about eating locally is salient, and the book is an entertaining read at times, I would like to point out that people CAN eat locally without owning several gardens, traveling to Tuscany for inspiration, and breeding their own heritage turkeys and hens and making their own cheese. Kingsolver's book is basically a story about some rich white people playing at farming. Well, kudos to them, but spare us the mind-numbing boredom of your newly enlightened state, please!
  I would recommend that readers stick to Michael Pollan's excellent, informative books if they want useful information about local food. If they want to hear someone brag arrogantly about her own family, all the while insinuating (not so subtly) that every other American lacks culinary taste, food culture, and intelligence, read Kingsolver's book.
  
  
  
• Great, Now I Want Chickens
  By A3KN20R6VKVB6B on 2007-05-13
  Wonderful, insightful book about the importance of eating locally, and even more importantly, eating thoughtfully. Barbara Kingsolver details the year in which she and her family strive to live off of foods grown locally, but the book is much more than an interesting personal memoir; she, her husband and their daughter explain in great detail WHY they feel the need to do this.
  
  There is no vague talk or philosophy here, rather very thorough forays into biology, politics, history, education, and every other genre of study that explains how we, as Americans, eat-- which is generally pretty badly. The scientific background of both Ms. Kingsolver and her husband (who has essays scattered throughout the book) really shines through. The decision to eat locally (in this case, from their own garden or farms within the same county) is presented not as a throw-back to a better, earlier time but as the way forward, the beginning of a new and improved chapter. Instead of presenting this painstakingly-researched information in one overwhelming block, Ms. Kingsolver carefully intersperses it with the personal story in easily-digested bites. This keeps both the science and the garden-family-diary part in balance and makes the book very readable.
  
  The personal side of the story is excellent. Growing vegatables; raising poultry; making cheese at home(!!!); baking bread every day (the husband's responsibility in this case); canning, freezing, braiding, and otherwise storing the garden's bounty; each of these and more are a part of the grand experiment. "Deprivation" never sounded so fun or so fufilling. If you've ever dreamed of canning your own tomatoes or keeping chickens, this book will make your yearnings worse.
  
  Ms. Kingsolver and co. are refreshingly non-vegetarian, blithely describing Turkey-Harvest Day (what it sounds like, yes) and explaining both why "vegetarian" crops like corn kill more animals via thresher and pesticide than meaty "crops" like chicken, and why the idea that the world would be better off with more vegetarians is deeply flawed. Vegetarians may be perturbed by their findings, but I think it would still be worth reading with an open mind.
  
  The glimpses into her family life, too, are fascinating-- kids who are more interested in chickens and tomatoes than Playstation and cable? Huh. The book includes several essays by Kingsolver's elder daughter, Camille, who provides an interesting perspective: as both an interested member in this "new" lifestyle and a college freshman, she is a bridge between these cultures.
  
  Like any garden/farm narrative, I suppose, Animal, Vegetable, Miracle is very regional and it really captures the flavor of its paticular locale--Virginia. I am a recent transplant to Virginia myself (this is my first spring/summer here) and the book answered some of my questions about this new place, like "Why does my front yard smell like onions? Are those chives growing wild all around the neighborhood?" Apparently they are "ramps". Who knew? Not this Texan. That sudden retreat to freezing last month is a "dogwood winter". I realize that to most readers of this review it's not important, but I felt a sudden thrill of recognition to realize that this farm and author are probably within a hundred miles from here-- to realize that she is describing my newly adopted environment.
  
  My only bone to pick is a very small one. Near the end of the book, Ms Kingsolver expresses surprise that her pet topic of eating locally has suddenly mushroomed from a secret underground movement, to the mainstream. As far as I can tell, this isn't true. Yes, the Times (or whatever it was) has a cover story on eating locally. But I was learning about it back in college (2001-ish) at the University of Vermont. My environmental classes covered the costs of shipping tomatoes and included a trip to the local CSA. That CSA, as well as the one I've joined here in VA, have been around for a while-- at least 5-10 years I think. Ms Kingsolver mentions several upscale restaurants (and one diner) that serve only local foods, and cookbooks. So clearly, this trend/idea/philosophy has been gaining steam for at least a decade, and didn't just pop out of the ground as the book was going to the publisher. But, as I said, small quibble. The book is fantastic, I'd reccommend it to anyone interested in changing the way they eat, gardening, farming, chickens...
  
  
• A Total Rip Off
  By A1KBN834HTVQZM on 2007-07-15
  I was foolish enough to order this book thinking it would give me some practical advice on organic gardening--WRONG!!! The book is poorly organized, and as another reviewer stated "meandering". In reality the book was just a rambling and not too well thought out political statement. I found it not to have one iota of useful information.I also found the book to be insulting toward Ms. Kingsolver's Appalachian neighbors who have fed themselves for many generations without the help of this arrogant outsider coming into their lives with her superior attitude.
  I just want to warn others from buying this truly stupid book.
  
  
• A Member of the Industry
  By A2737QBRLYEI5R on 2007-06-14
  I work in large-scale, corporate agriculture. Over the years I have worked for chemical companies, seed companies, grower-shippers and allied industries. I have recommended Kingsolver's novel "The Poisonwood Bible" to many of my colleagues. I have also endorsed Pollan's "Ominovore's Dilemma", having bought several copies and distributed them around. I very much enjoyed Kingsolver's "Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life". It contained all the wit and humor I would expect from one of this nation's finest novelists. I think this book as well as Pollan's are a bit weak in the plant science area and I think both lack some of the insights into the machinations that really drive some of the food production industries. Then, again their intended audience is not the readers of TAG: Theoretical and the Applied Genetics, it is the populace at large. I very much agree with the sentiment of eating local, of shopping local, and of the slow food movement. It puts money back into the local community, it fosters a sense of community and it improves the quality of our diets. What is local though? Many of the fruits and vegetables eaten during Kingsolver's year of eating locally do not have Virginia as their center of origin. Some purists might cry foul. But, I think the focus needs to be on breaking the transport chain. People need to rediscover what a fresh peach or tomato is supposed to taste like, and their proper season. The bulk of the 'civilized' world buy their food at a chain grocery store dominated by one of the multinational grocery conglomerates. You think you have a choice when you walk into the store? You do not. That choice was made by a buyer probably at some regional DC (distribution center) who purchased the fruit from a packing shed sight unseen, and certainly did not taste it. And, their main concern was not taste, it was making sure the fruit had a minimum level of sugar, since it is picked under ripe, and that it was firm enough to withstand many hundreds of miles in a truck. It is too bad, because I know the farmers want to produce a high quality product. And, I know the shippers want to ship fruits and vegetables that taste good. But they must bow to the buyers and market forces. In the California cherry industry, about half the fruit is exported each year, but it accounts for well over half the revenue because it is a 'high value' market. By my recent calculations, it takes 7.75 calories of fuel for every calorie of cherries flown from SFO to Tokyo. That is just the flight, it does not include any other production or transportation energy costs. Does that sound like sustainable agriculture? Do you really need those Chilean cherries or that asparagus from Peru in December?
  
  
• Well-intentioned but often insufferable
  By A2VTK2UGJA7U3L on 2007-08-11
  I love Barbara Kingsolver's novels, but the whole tone of this book is insufferably condescending. It doesn't take living on a farm to understand that, yes, fruit grows on trees, and potatoes come from plants that have leaves. Her assumption that the majority of people are staggeringly ignorant as to where food come from is as foolish as it is largely incorrect, and it makes her look both conceited and smug. Having said that, there are some wonderful things in this book, and on the whole, I would recommend it. Camille Kingsolver is a fresh and charming voice (it would be nice if the recipe links on the related web site actually worked, though); the book is filled with interesting statistics and information, and it makes a valid and timely point about the petroleum consumption embedded in most of the foods we eat. It's a shame that it's wrapped in the self-important tone of Dana Carvey's SNL church lady. I would have liked to hear a lot more about how the family ate and grew their foods, and a lot less of the moral righteousness. While I, too, make a great deal of effort to eat locally, I would never suggest with any seriousness that local eaters should be accommodated at someone else's table in the same way that those with religious taboos or dietary restrictions would be. (As an add-on, the audio book, read by the author, is equally pompous. Oddly, Ms. Kingsolver seems to miss the humor and charm in her own writing.)
  
  
• Overly long and preachy
  By A2C48P8LPIUFXM on 2007-09-02
  I'm surprised by the many glowing reviews and agree with Karen Shanley who said it should have been a magazine article. I agree with Kingsolver's premise (buy locally-grown food when possible, and, of course, grow your own if possible)but I don't think hundreds of pages are necessary to make that point. Check this book out of the library before buying it.
  
  I frequent my local farmer's market in season (June through October) and I don't agree with Barbara Kingsolver that locally grown produce always tastes better than supermarket produce. I've bought plenty of bitter local berries and plenty of sweet ones grown in CA. I think the vine-ripened tomatoes available in my supermarket in the winter are red, juicy and tasty, not pink and mealy as Camille wrote.
  
  She also puts down ubiquitous party appetizers (i.e. a shrimp ring and veggies with dip) in favor of locally grown food. I guess my palate is just not as sophisticated, as I always enjoy the standard party appetizers. To each their own.
  
  
• self-satisfied
  By A2IIYEWAHIGBBB on 2007-11-25
  Having read most of Kingsolver's books, and having heard so much about this one, I was disappointed to find this one preachy and Pollyanna-ish. I'm a solar-powered organic grower myself, so I obviously hold many of the same viewpoints as she does, but I found her description of their year to be smug and, as other reviewers noted, without any of the mishaps and unforeseen circumstances that are a part of every grower's life. Lighten up already!
  
  
• Another view
  By AJT9MFDNJ2RXP on 2007-07-14
  When Barbara Kingsolver writes, I read. I'm sometimes frustrated by the non-linear, meandering style in her fiction and nonfiction; it's Kingsolver's eloquence, creativity and political outlook that draw me.
  
  These attributes abound in Kingsolver's latest book, Animal, Vegetable, Miracle. Yet I found myself slogging through it with growing irritation.
  
  As has been said, a nonfiction book like Animal, Vegetable, Miracle begs for an index. I can't imagine the conversation the editors had in order to brush this off, especially in a digital age when it couldn't have been that difficult to produce.
  
  Any parent reading the book will have a difficult time imagining such a perfect family life. I think there was one passing ode to a difficult moment with the youngest child; Kingsolver's family life is portrayed so harmoniously, it lacks credibility.
  
  One of the most frustrating aspects of Animal, Vegetable, Miracle is the convoluted reasoning in it. A tense episode in which a friend of Camille's asks for bananas at the store is used to highlight the folly of edible imports, yet the book details Kingsolver traveling in Italy and the family zig-zagging the nation in their hybrid. This kind of arrogance and hypocrisy advance nothing.
  
  Likewise, the author boasts family meals that only cost 50-cents-per-person (no appendix: is the electricity used for canning factored in?); Kingsolver isn't saving money with all of her hard labor because she spends freely otherwise. I think it's less expensive, more responsible and more fun to grow a small garden, support our local CSA's, ride a bicycle and vacation on the continent by bus or train. Canning and butchering require back breaking labor. It's much more tedious than fun. There are ways to save money and eat locally without turning one's kitchen into an inferno or the yard into a blood bath.
  
  Also, Kingsolver's promotion of appliances, namely slow cookers and bread machines, surprises. They've been replaced by the hay box, solar cookers and cob ovens in more progressive circles.
  
  I also take issue with the diet extolled. For all her obsessive record keeping, Kingsolver would do well to include her family's cholesterol counts. Claiming that home raised animals have less cholesterol than those factory produced doesn't erase the issue. A regular diet of cheese, eggs and meat isn't healthy: think Pritikin Longevity Center.
  
  And just when you think the book is finally over, there's a chapter tacked on with a tedious account of turkey sex.
  
  There are more concise and consistent essays and books about local economies, growing your own and a return to domesticity. There are better books about healthy diet and more realistic overviews of family life. If Kingsolver's book is excused for its flaws, it remains an often enjoyable and thought-provoking read about a family's agrarian efforts in modern times by one of my favorite writers.
  
  
  
• Eat Locally, Preach Globally
  By A3E36QYO7ONXLB on 2007-06-06
  I liked this book a lot. Kingsolver (and clan) are great writers, and the project they describe is inspiring and worthwhile. The part about turkey breeding alone was worth $25.
  
  I'm a little astonished by the reviewers who found the book not preachy; the one thing I found off-putting was the smugness of it all. The barbs against urban people grated on my nerves. I live in a town (Portland, OR) that practically has a farmer's market in every neighborhood. You can find one every day of the week, and they're well attended. People here care deeply about food, and how and where it's grown, and supporting farmers. I know many people in NYC who feel the same way. I grew up on a farm, and I've lived in several regions of the U.S., and no place has a lock on ecological purity. Country folk eat Cheetos, too. (And Frito pie!) And refusing a teenage houseguest a banana? That made me shudder.
  
  It helps to read this as a book about food, not about people. The family life depicted here, apart from Lily and the chicken-horse problem, is a little spooky. The Little House books reveal more character and human conflict. Was there no one who ever woke up cursing the heat, the snakes, the bugs? A child who rebelled against all that weeding? A moment of homesickness for Tuscon? You don't learn a lot about the people here, except that they work hard and eat very, very well. Don't expect a Barbara Kingsolver novel, just an inspiring food diary spanning a year.
  
  
• Three Stars for the Work involvled
  By A1G54HVVO9BDST on 2007-07-26
  What I am getting from Kingsolver's book - as I plow through this wordiness - is something like this -
  
  "It's the simplest idea in the world, really: a restaurant selling food produced by farms within an hour's drive. So why don't we have more of them? For the same reason that that statue down the street clings to his hammer while all the real stonecutters in this granite town [Vermont] have had to find other jobs, in a nation that now imports its granite from China."
  
  No, Barb, your reason is not enough of an answer for me. I so dislike my peers stating some 'obvious' truth to them - like operating a restaurant only using food produced by farm's within an hours drive - when in the real world it does not work that way . . . and when you look into this restaurant in a trendy Vermont town, you read that the restaurant family has a smoked meat/sausage business also. I mean to say that when you look into some of these simplistic and singular reasons why something is done or not done, you see the devil is in the details.
  
  I bristle at an attitude behind the sentences by Barb. I don't quite know how to put my finger on it - but I am irritated by the tone of the whole book. Fact by fact, or idea by idea - these are not bad ideas in theory - but Barbara and her family can afford to pay more for organic, have the time/land for huge gardens, live where chickens and turkeys can be raised and a whole lot of other assumptions of privilege including acting as if they were the farm folk. And then to take a snotty stance that 'of course it is so - you too dumb to see it' and read my book [which I am trying to do].
  
  I won't do you harm by recommending this book.
  
  
• Would have been better as a magazine article.
  By A26H17W5A8SALY on 2007-08-19
  As a book, it's uneven, contrived and politicized, with some major contradictions and inconsistencies.
  
  Here's the message in a nutshell: To become a more responsible (and self-sufficient)citizen of the world, consider the true cost of your food: the cost of fuel to ship; the cost to the underpaid farm laborer; the cost to the land in clear-cutting, over-use, and chemicals. Better to learn how to grow your own food organically, and buy locally what you can't grow.
  
  That's it.
  
  The rest of the 350+ pages is filled with Kingsolver and family finding ever more ways to repeat that message, interspersed with anecdotes about their year of growing, along with several long distance trips (including one to Italy) in part, to offer more field research. Said field research could have easily been accomplished locally or by phone or internet. If one were to take the jaded view, there's a lesson here on how to have great vacations for free -- write a book including them and get the tax write-offs.
  
  In any case, while clearly Kingsolver feels passionate about getting people on board with being "locivores" (local growers and consumers), she hasn't quite made the leap herself to being more conscious in her consumption of travel fuel. One step at a time for all of us, I guess.
  
  Bottom line -- if becoming a locivore is a totally new concept to you, you'll find a convincing (albeit repetitive) argument for change. If you're already on your way and were hoping to read a detailed account of how someone else did it, you won't find it in this book.
  
  
• Great Message, Awful writing
  By A31ITL406NL3S5 on 2008-01-17
  I have always liked Barbara Kingsolver's books but I am really disappointed in this one. Her message (eating locally, eating organic, staying away from animals treated with growth hormones and antibiotics, etc.) is one that the general public needs to hear and think about. Her tone, however, is so smug and self-righteous that I find it really hard to read. I find it hard to concentrate on the message because she is so conceited. And the excerpts by her daughter are equally smug and self-righteous. I wish that Ms. Kingsolver had taken a different approach to this book because she is going to turn off a lot of people that would otherwise have read this book. I just regret buying the book. Don't buy this book... Get it from the library.
  
  
• Animal, Vegetable . . . Miserable??
  By A56AA52NMMKYQ on 2007-06-25
  This book extols the virtues of eating locally grown produce and food and is a sustained attack on agribusiness. Part of my issue with this book is its schizophrenia. Does it purport to be a food adventure, a recipe book, or a public policy commentary? It attempts to be all of the above in different places, which I think undercuts the unity of the book, which occasionally reverts to a rather preachy tone. With three different authors collaborating with in the same family, the book also occasionally exhausts the reader.
  
  Reading about locally grown produce does make part of the book delicious and mouth watering. Of course, not everyone lives out in the country with multiple acres to till.
  
  Nevertheless, Team Kingsolver succeed in getting the reader buying and consumption in a more thoughtful manner, questioning the wisdom of wasting so much fossil fuel in transporting foreign produce to markets everywhere so that the notion of seasonality becomes almost extinct.
  
  
  
• disappointing
  By A3F5BBNLJAKSLC on 2007-08-09
  I purchased this book after hearing a review of it on Radio 4. I have to admit one of the reviewers did find it somewhat 'pompous' and I have to agree. The family return to an old farm, previiously purchase by Dad when he was single. thereupon they aim to grow or buy local produce and use only what is in season.
  I was eagerly awaiting a thorough description of what they planted, when and how. That is in there, but there is so much 'stuff' you really feel is written to pad the book out. It is full of it's own importance and I struggled to get through so many pages, such was the self-praising nature and pompous tone of the book.
  
  
• A love story about food, land, and our earth.
  By AE6BZWB9OA4GC on 2007-11-09
  Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life
  By Barbara Kingsolver, Steven L. Hopp and Camille Kingsolver
  
  "Animal, Vegetable, Miracle" was given to me by some friends early last June, just as our garden was starting to flower. I was a little hesitant to give it a read since some of Barbara Kingsolver's other writings had failed to inspire. However, I had just finished another very compelling book about the state of food in America: Michael Pollan's "The Omnivore's Dilemma". I was interested to see what Ms. Kingsolver had to add to the discussion. According to the jacket of the book, she and her family were willing to commit to a year of eating only locally grown food, and in these days of peak oil and economic uncertainty, I was intrigued to find out how such an experiment would work out. So, in between weeding the garlic and picking string beans, I dove in to "A Year of Food Life".
  
  The day's work done, it was with great pleasure that I would sit down on quiet and peaceful summer evenings to connect with the Kingsolver's as they explored what life is like when you are committed to being part of your local food-o-sphere. It definitely requires a huge shift in attitude if you, like me, have grown up expecting to be able to eat anything you want, anytime you want it. The Kingsolver's not only had to change their expectations about food availability, they actually had to change their address! They had lived for many years in Tucson, AZ, a place that, as it says in the book, "might as well be a space station" in terms of human sustenance. Every morsel of food comes from far away, and every drop of water comes from a nonrenewable and quickly disappearing source. So, after years of planning and discussion, they packed their bags and headed to the old family homestead in southern Appalachia, where, in the immortal words of Sam Kinison, "the food is". Water falls from the sky, green things grow, and people are not so far removed in time from the era when all food was both local and organic. Ah yes, I said to myself, it sounds an awful lot like New England, and the more I learned about the Kingsolver's story, the more convinced I became that we New Englander's could learn to live locally (again), too.
  
  The book chronicles the family's experiment in local food; from the move to their new home, the first spring day when they broke free from the industrial food web, and the days and weeks of planting, weeding, harvesting, and storing the bounty of their land and their neighbor's land. They planned to eat only what was available within a 100 mile radius, with a few small exceptions. Before you say, "Hey, I can't live without bananas!", know that each family member was able to choose a special food item that might break the 100 mile rule. Barbara's partner Steven, a man after my own heart, chose coffee. As I imagined how I might survive on a local only diet, I have to admit that Ethiopian coffee, Costa Rican chocolate, and French wine would all be very hard to part with. Tropical fruits would be sorely missed as well. Should I leave everything behind and move to Costa Rica where the food grows all year, the coffee is respectable, and I could indulge in chocolate guilt-free? I have to admit, it is a question that still haunts me, but if the experience of the Kingsolver's is any guide, then our unique spot on the planet can provide everything we need and more. And, I don't have to worry about bullet ants and eyelash vipers.
  
  In between learning about how her daughter started an egg and chicken business, and how long a row of potatoes they dug, one of the most important points that Barbara Kingsolver makes in this book is that the current system of agriculture and food distribution in this country is not only incredibly wasteful, but completely unsustainable. It is rather frightening to learn that americans consume about 400 gallons of oil a year per person for agriculture. Most of that is used in transporting food: each food item in a typical meal has traveled 1500 miles! Facts such as these are interspersed throughout the book in informative sidebars, many of which offer positive steps to take in the direction of a sustainable future. For instance, one of Steven's sidebars notes that "if every US citizen ate just one meal a week composed of locally and organically raised meat and produce, we would reduce our country's oil consumption by over 1.1 million barrels oil every week." Impressive, but according to the US Government's Energy Information Agency, we profligate denizens of north america use almost 21 million barrels of oil each day. Worldwide thirst for oil: over 83 million barrels a day. Amount of oil needed to put fresh kale on my dinner plate almost every night for the past 4 months? Unknown, but miniscule, since I only had to use electrically pumped water to water the garden occasionally. Of course, I can do much better with some of my other food and lifestyle choices, and this book has inspired me to do so. For example, I learned how to can grape jam made from the concord grapes that grow along the edge of our property, and my freezer is full of tomato sauce from our garden. I've also become obsessed with fermented foods, and at our learning center we are studying chemistry in part from the perspective of safe food storage.
  
  OK, you say, you know all that, so why should you read this book? Because, in my opinion, "Animal, Vegetable, Miracle" is truly a pleasure to read. Plenty of hard facts for the analytic side of the brain, wonderful imagery and mouth-watering descriptions of fresh food for the right side of the brain, and woven throughout a romantic love story between the people and the earth that provides so bountifully. I think that's what kept me coming back for more, because as the book described each micro-season of the year (such as the day the asparagus is ready), I was gaining more and more appreciation for the garden in my backyard and the community of people in this area who are striving to bring about a more sustainable food life for all of us. This is a very inspiring story, and has gained an esteemed position on the short list of books that has made a huge impact on how I live my life.
  
  
• Botany ad Naseum
  By A1UE15X3SNLJ57 on 2007-05-24
  If you are expecting the caliber of writing found in Poisonwood Bible don't get your hopes up and rush out to buy this one. It is a non fiction work describing in painful detail things like the life cycles of asparagus and acting as though you should be hanging on every word. For anyone other than a vegetable garden fantasist the only good purpose for this book is that maybe you won't need your Lunesta.
  
  
• Animal, Vegetable, Miracle
  By A2D7B67VYOQGMO on 2007-08-11
  This book is one that I have not been able to put down, inspired me , and I recommended it to my three sisters. So why the one star... I'll get to that disappointment in a minute. For the first 280 pages I have loved this book. I loved the webpage. Talked about it nonstop with my husband and vegetarian in-laws. It shows how the local movement of food is necessary and needed by Americans. It inspired me to finally think of a way to use my 15 acres of unused pasture- heritage animals. I loved the commentary and at points laughed out loud. So the problem? On page 205 when Ms. Kingsolver pointed out the organic farmers "probably fo to church on Sunday but keep thier religion to themselves". This was not the problem. Unfortuately, she can not apply the same thing to herself and became offensive about the birth of Christ on page 280. Too bad. I will not read another page. Glad it was a library book. I can not recommend this one to anyone ever again.
  
  
• Wolf in Sheep's Clothing
  By A3TDCI8LED12X5 on 2007-10-18
  This book was absolutely horrifying. I kept flipping back and forth, and couldn't believe what I was reading. While bringing about thoughts for a great cause--buying local; making your own; sustainability; etc., Kingsolver, with sadistic humor, walks us through the process of killing innocent animals for food. It's is absolutely shocking and sickening. In this century, the practice of killing animals for food is barbaric, and she proves where she stands on this issue. There are plenty of plant foods to sustain us all, without being cruel. Two thumbs down for Barbara Kinsolver. I used to be a fan. After reading this, I don't want to be associated in any way with this author.
  
  
• A vomitorium of opinion and emotion.
  By A1BDJAP468IEMN on 2007-05-30
  If you are into this type of book-Mother Earth style organic guilt trip-then by all means buy it and enter into an emotional, ultra-biased flood of earth worshiping brain drano. If not then don't waste your money on this pretend manifesto. Buy some facts not some stream-of-conscious land-fill fodder.
  
  
• Fascinating and educational narrative (review by former biochemist)
  By A1J93EGDYK0IWA on 2007-06-09
  I'm a former biochemist and was also a teaching fellow in physiology at a university. Currently, I work in the field of psychology and I am particularly interested in issues relating to health, stress and modern life. This book sheds light on all of these in an engaging, imaginative and fascinating way. It shines a bright (and rather incriminating light) on our modern cultural context and makes the point that good food really counts and our idea of good food might be miles away from what is REALLY good food and good eating. Another excellent read along these lines is Healthy at 100: The Scientifically Proven Secrets of the World's Healthiest and Longest-Lived Peoples. This provides the hard scientific evidence and references that back up a lot of the points made in this book. While I don't agree with everything in this book, it certainly points to some important cultural, health and pace issues. An additional point I would like to make is that most of us in modern culture are under almost chronic stress, this makes eating well and eating good fresh food even more important. As a culture, we are miles away from eating as our ancestors once did. Fortunately, we have modern medicine to clean up some of the mess we get ourselves into, but wouldn't prevention be even better?
  
  
• Can't see the veggies through all the smug
  By A7NLBOV89DK1Z on 2008-01-15
  Over the last few years, I have become more and more of a "foodie." Whenever possible, I buy local and organic and hope to someday have a garden of my own (city living makes it difficult). That said, I was excited to read this book, and I love the idea of living off of your own land.
  
  Unfortunately, this book is more political than experiential. After about 100 pages, I became frustrated by the self-righteous tone: the wonders of their hybrid car, the constant asides berating the American people for eating processed foods that have to travel miles on gas guzzling trucks, the praise for other cultures as superior to our own.
  
  It is also easy for her to criticze. She is able to live on her own farm without having to work. She and her family have the time and the financial resources to conduct this experiment. Most of us do not, and I began to resent the air of superiority.
  
  There are some good things about this book, and I agree that it is a shame (and perhaps a liability) that many people don't know where their food comes from or how to survive without Safeway. Ultimately, though, the exaltation of anti-industrial politics became so heavy that I no longer cared about the veggies. It just confirms my belief that environmentalism is closer to religion than science.
  
  So, if you are looking for a book that will tell you some things about growing your own food while making constant references to environmental and energy policy, this is for you. If you just want to learn about farming and good food, look elsewhere. This was a big disappointment.
  
  
  
• Local is possible
  By A1OM1ORZYCZ8VY on 2007-06-22
  What a delightful book this is! It is about food, of course, but also about much more. Kingsolver very skilfully combines an entertaining memoir of her family's year of living on local provisions, mostly home grown on their farm in southern Appalachia, with humorous and serious reflections on rural life, the food industry, the environment, health and local farmers' economics. Given her science background and success as a fiction writer, she is best placed to captivate her audiences.
  
  Roughly following a monthly rhythm, we learn what crops to plant and when, how to mix and match what grows best together in the fields and how to deal with the vegetable abundance at one time or another. She shares the ups and downs of yearlong fieldwork in a personal and charming way that even non-gardeners will enjoy the walk. There are birds to observe, chickens to raise and Bourbon Red heritage turkeys to nurture without being adopted as the mother hen. Kingsolver and her family literally dig in to realize the growing plans they had made to ensure feeding themselves throughout the year. The periods of abundance when canning and drying and other methods of preservation become essential, are followed by less rich harvest when they have to rely on the pantry and eat what they have saved. For one month the kitchen may be covered in red: it's tomato season, another one in green when the surplus of zucchini results in experimenting with daily new recipes. Daughter Camille brings to book and the table a delightful range of easy to follow recipes that celebrate the fresh produce from their garden and fields. She also adds her own personal touch with reflections of a young person experience on family life on a farm. Friends, neighbours and the local farmers' market play an important role in any hobby farmer's life. There are produce to exchange or buy and there are experiences and lessons learned to be shared. The values of family togetherness and neighbourly community take center stage in the description of their experience. Without these ingredients, the experiment would probably not have succeeded.
  
  While describing the ups and down of living through the year on their farm with wit and warmth, both Kingsolver and husband Hopp address some serious questions regarding the food we choose to eat. Issues range from protection local seeds and biodiversity to industrialization of our food system and the environment impacts that we are facing today and in the future. We also are encouraged to ask ourselves some fundamental questions about our own approach to food, where it comes from, how far it traveled to reach us, and how we make important economic and environmental as well as health choices every day. References to reading sources and useful organizations as well as a website with all the recipes and more complement the book. It should be widely read and enjoyed. [Friederike Knabe]
  
  
• I'm a locavore!
  By ATJV9TWMRNF8K on 2007-07-16
  The more I read about the watering down of organic standards, the more I've been rethinking my food choices. It seems that most organic food is being produced by huge corporate farms and megacorporations. Those are not the industries I want to support with my food dollars. In the last year, I've been buying as much as possible from local farmers who may not be certified organic but who grow their crops using organic and sustainable methods. I feel I'm getting a better quality food and supporting my own community - and hopefully contributing less to global warming since my food doesn't have to travel miles to get to me.
  
  So when I heard Barbara Kingsolver (one of my favorite authors) had a new book out and it was about eating locally, I knew I had to read it. And it did not disappoint.
  
  Kingsolver and her family left their Arizona home to move to a farm in southern Appalachia. They no longer wanted to live in a state where virtually all the food and water was trucked in from somewhere else. They chose Virginia because (among other reasons) they wanted to live in a place that could feed them. A place "where rain falls, crops grow, and drinking water bubbles right up out of the ground."
  
  After nearly a year of settling in, fixing up the house, and planting their gardens, they embarked on their one-year mission to eat only food they grew themselves or what was raised in their own neighborhood. Kingsolver takes us through the work of raising a garden that would feed them throughout the year. We see the work involved in weeding and caring for the plants, harvesting, and preserving them. This book is a great lesson on when various foods are in season (hard to know if you shop at supermarkets).
  
  The family also raises laying hens, as well as chickens and turkeys for meat. Kingsolver and her family have for many years eaten only non-factory farmed meat and felt good about raising their own animals. They would give their animals "freedom on an open pasture that's unknown to conventionally raised poultry." Kingsolver also responded to a Slow Food USA campaign to bring back heritage turkeys. Unlike the conventional Broad-Breasted White Turkey commonly raised in industrial settings, the heritage turkeys can actually support their own weight and reproduce naturally. In addition, these birds retain more of their wild ancestors' sense about foraging, predator avoidance, and are more disease resistant.
  
  Kingsolver's husband Steven L. Hopp's short essays provide information throughout the book on subjects such as the fossil fuel used to produce and ship our food, world hunger, genetically modified foods, family farms vs. industrial farms, industrial animal food production, paying the price for cheap, industrial-grown foods, the effectiveness of using pesticides and herbicides, mad cow disease, and much more. He provides resources to get more information as well as ways to take action. Kingsolver's college-aged daughter, Camille provides recipes and anecdotes about the experience from a teenager's point of view.
  
  This book was inspiring. I was encouraging to hear about people who care about what they eat and how it's produced. To find people who care about the environment and how our choices affect it and others. I don't know if I'm ready to spend my summers hoeing, weeding and canning on a full time basis, but I will certainly take the time to seek out local farmers and support stores who carry local products.
  
  

• The Omnivore's Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals
• In Defense of Food: An Eater's Manifesto
• Home Cheese Making: Recipes for 75 Delicious Cheeses
• The Art of Simple Food: Notes, Lessons, and Recipes from a Delicious Revolution
• Plenty: One Man, One Woman, and a Raucous Year of Eating Locally