Book report: Animal, Vegetable, Miracle:: A Year of Food Life, by Barbara Kingsolver, with occasional essays by her husband, Steven L. Hopp, and a few thoughts from teenage daughter Camille Kingsolver
In Michael Pollan’s most recent book In Defense of Food: An Eater’s Manifesto, he recommends among other things avoiding foods your grandmother wouldn’t have heard of. That expands the first segment of his slogan — “Eat food. Not too much. Mostly Plants” — and it refers to recent additives but mainly to the modern American concept of “food products,” like designer yogurt, not just with active cultures of the various Lactobacilli but lab-created probiotic (good) bacteria that even have been trademarked.
Pollan discusses the trend of trying to eat foods raised nearby in the sense they’re more likely to have few chemicals, as opposed to mega-farms for crops and livestock (mammals and birds), whose shipment uses so much fuel. He doesn’t imply however, bending over backwards and trying to recreate some mythological time when all families, even townies, had truck gardens and plenty of free time and shelf space to can.
Moving food over great distances is not some post-World War II conspiracy of teamsters and truck firms, like defense factories moving from armaments to agricultural chemicals. Columbus was sent by Spain for commercial reasons. Vikings were seeking barter partners and Marco Polo better spice routes. Trade must be as old as humanity.
In a not-too-serious, not-too-dogged or -dogmatic approach, which is how I understood Pollan’s intent, I’ve made happy improvements to my daily diet, including regular yogurt with live cultures. Still, I doubt you could find any yogurt at a Fort Smith grocery in about 1950.
Moving into fanaticism is so easy in food, to the point of ignoring inconvenient history, not to mention common sense. It’s where the romantic notions of slow food and buy local run aground, unless one has resources, specifically extra cash and free time. Or perhaps a pending book contract.
Thus I found I could not tolerate another disk of Barbara Kingsolver’s audio version of her screed-memoir Animal, Vegetable, Miracle. After 2 1/2 of the 12 CDs I want to stifle her faux-girly smirk, as well as that of her almost sneering self-righteous husband who contributes essays full of patronizing facts, with organic cotton socks.
The famous fiction writer moves her family from Arizona to rural Virginia, the native area of her husband, for a one-year experiment of living where food grows more naturally than the Tucson area (irrigated desert). They buy as much as possible from farmer’s markets, which are pretty bare except for a few summer months. The drama if I cared to finish it must have been: Will they starve, or invade McDonald’s? They plan to grow — the book is chronological — as much as they can in vegetable gardens, do lots of canning. Load up a big freezer.
As Kingsolver extols the moderate climate and waxes nostalgically for the desert city, she notes the former is hardscrabble and not, say, the farmland of flatter areas. Making the flattest bit of her rocky yard into a garden takes a good deal of both money and effort. She also mocks the manmade aspects of Tucson and similar Southwestern cities, including the ignorance of its inhabitants about water and farms.
The hero might be the teenage daughter who has only a little in the book. She should write more; she has heart, tolerance and rather more sense than the fogeys, plus a “laugh with you” not “laugh at you” wit. By the way, the trio narrate themselves rather than using actors. Only John le Carre should be allowed to read his own works aloud.
Theirs then is the story of plunging into the eat-local, slow-food movement. Mom and Dad’s reasoning is that it is more authentic and more healthful. They ban cinnamon because it’s not grown anywhere close to the Shenandoah Valley, much less North America. Plus other foods, and rationalize a few exceptions, for pages on end.
Kingsolver wants to prove it’s possible. What sets her family apart from the vast majority who need supermarkets, the cheaper the better, is income. I doubt that the couple is rich, but they obviously have means to last a year. It is very likely, knowing a little about the publishing world, is that a woman of her publishing success probably first sold the idea as a book proposal. (I’ll correct this if the truth is otherwise.) This makes this alleged authentic personal journalism project suspect.
I wanted to like this book. I agree with Barbara Kingsolver on so much. Her husband summarizes good research, but even if you’re half-interested in global food issues, you’ve heard it all before. (When Pollan used facts, he did many of the interviews himself, attributing them, and he fully sourced his secondary material.) But the Kingsolvers’ self-righteousness and self-help magazine article style propelled me to the library book drop after only a couple of days. I rarely quit a book so soon.
As an antidote, I checked out Anthony Burgess’s A Clockwork Orange, read by the busy young English actor Tom Hollander. Better than the movie, by the way.
Slow food is a delightful idea, for those who’ve the time to cook all or even most meals from scratch. It need not take hours, either. Mark Bittman has an amazing pasta sauce that is just a minute or two longer to prepare than heating a jar of ready-made marinara. Saute briefly a chopped onion and add two 14-ounce or 1 28-ounce can of diced or crushed tomatoes and heat through. I use salt-free toms and near the end of cooking add only a half-teaspoon — the canned sauce is loaded with salt — and some black pepper. And some dried spices like oregano, basil and-or thyme.
Oh, they’re canned tomatoes. Please. Tins of food were sold in the 19th century. My Beloved for her health has been eating blueberries year-round for health. Last weekend Parade Magazine said real men eat blueberries (and sardines, Brazil nuts, edamame soy beans, sesame seeds and lentils).
Kingsolver’s daughter wants the project to succeed yet she begs her mom for fresh fruit. Hope the book didn’t stunt her growth.
