But who better than Barbara Kingsolver, best-selling author of Animal Dreams and The Bean Trees, to show us month-by-month how to practice patience and restraint in at least one area of our lives - food we bring to the table.
In her new work of nonfiction, Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, Kingsolver chronicles how her family spent an entire year eating only food either grown and raised on their farm in southern Appalachia or purchased from nearby producers.
In Kingsolver's words it's "the story of what we learned, or didn't; what we ate, or couldn't; and how our family was changed by one year of deliberately eating food produced in the same place where we worked, loved our neighbors, drank the water and breathed the air."
Much like The Omnivore's Dilemma by Michael Pollan, Animal, Vegetable, Miracle takes the industrialized food system to task. But Kingsolver's family narrative softens this 370-page book.
Her good-humored personal stories of raising and breeding heritage turkeys, managing overzealous zucchini plants, raising chickens and selling eggs are the most inspiring part of the book. Sprinkled throughout are informative sidebars by Steven L. Hopp, Kingsolver's biologist husband, and tried-and-true family recipes from teenage daughter Camille.
In places, Kingsolver gets preachy, giving us a history of industrialized food and statistics as background. But readers will think twice the next time they reach for bananas from far-away places or high-fructose cereal at the grocery store.
Three eye-opening facts from her book:
* Most food in the U.S. has traveled an average of 1,500 miles from farm to plate.
* Seventeen percent of our nation's energy goes toward production, packing and shipping food.
* U.S. farmers produce 3,900 calories per citizen per day, twice what we need and 700 calories more than in 1980.
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That's OK, Kingsolver says. Simply try to eat in season and eat local.
Indulge in tomatoes from the local farmers market and when they are gone realize you must wait until next year to get more, unless you've canned extras. Same for asparagus, strawberries and peaches. Buy a half side of beef or lamb from a local producer and put the meat in the freezer. Or seek out a nearby dairy from which to buy milk and eggs.
It's not necessary to live on a food-producing farm to be part of the local-food movement, she says. "But it is necessary to know such farms exist, understand what they do and consider oneself basically in their court."
kathys@sltrib.com
Animal, Vegetable, Miracle
Barbara Kingsolver, HarperCollins, $26.95
