A review by sheilajoyful
Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life by Camille Kingsolver, Steven L. Hopp, Barbara Kingsolver
4.0
A friend recommended this book to me, and I liked it better than the last recommend I got. Barbara writes with grace and gratitude about the glory of good food, and the joy we get to enjoy with our cuisine when we've seen this tableful small, sprouting or peeping, near us.
She makes me happy all over again to have our own several gardens and fruit trees (no matter that we don't get them sprayed in time and they rarely produce useable fruit) and jars of home-canned ketchup and salsa in my cellar. I know what a Brussels sprout looks in stalk (weird, that's how).
Warning: The book does require some Significant Inner Resistance to read. You have to talk to yourself the whole way through it: "It was okay that you ate that Reeses' Cup without making sure it didn’t come from Taiwan. You’ll plant more garden this year and that’s a good thing. But baby steps, dear, baby steps. You can do this. Read one more page. It’s just her story. Oh isn’t it sweet that she likes asparagus? You have asparagus in your garden too—be happy together. Actually, tomatoes in January don’t kill you and can be pretty good on the burger you grilled during that last warm spell. Ooh, look, she's taking the guts out of the chicken! Well, you would too if you had the chance; I bet she never made a whole quilt start to finish like you did. This world needs all stripes, this isn't a competition. Keep reading…"
She makes me happy all over again to have our own several gardens and fruit trees (no matter that we don't get them sprayed in time and they rarely produce useable fruit) and jars of home-canned ketchup and salsa in my cellar. I know what a Brussels sprout looks in stalk (weird, that's how).
Warning: The book does require some Significant Inner Resistance to read. You have to talk to yourself the whole way through it: "It was okay that you ate that Reeses' Cup without making sure it didn’t come from Taiwan. You’ll plant more garden this year and that’s a good thing. But baby steps, dear, baby steps. You can do this. Read one more page. It’s just her story. Oh isn’t it sweet that she likes asparagus? You have asparagus in your garden too—be happy together. Actually, tomatoes in January don’t kill you and can be pretty good on the burger you grilled during that last warm spell. Ooh, look, she's taking the guts out of the chicken! Well, you would too if you had the chance; I bet she never made a whole quilt start to finish like you did. This world needs all stripes, this isn't a competition. Keep reading…"