holdouttrout

I'm only halfway through this book, and I already know it's dangerous. Like all of Kingsolver's books (the ones I've read, that is), she lures you in by way of a brilliant setting, interesting characters, the perfection of anecdotes, and then pounces. You're left lying in the dust, helpless, while she brandishes her point over you. The worst part, of course, is that she isn't trying to skewer you--she just holds out the weapon and lets you take it yourself.

And you WANT to.

Animal, Vegetable, Miracle is about how she and her family resolved to eat responsibly and locally for an entire year. Simple concept? Yes. Idealized? Almost certaintly. Fascinating as heck? Oh, yeah.

The book is filled with triumphs of the garden, of farms, and warnings about the calamitous use of pesticides everywhere, and the fossil fuels we abuse by transporting inferior vegetables and fruits around the world. Her family's life was an exercise in creative eating--defining and appreciating a local cuisine without depriving themselves in order to prove a point.

Some of this stuff I already knew--I HAVE been thinking about how wonderful fresh carrots can taste, recently, and it's making me go a little crazy, planning out gardens I have no room for and no aptitude for and no knowledge base for. How do people get things to grow? I've never been quite sure.

The dangerous part of the book isn't how she talks about growing asparagus or making pizza from scratch or yes, making your own cheese. The dangerous part is in how reasonable she makes it all seem. "Oh, mozzarella can be made in an hour," she says, and you immediately start thinking about where you can get your hands on milk that isn't ulta-pasteurized. I mean, you pull it like taffy! How is that not uber-cool?

Still, all of the home-grown, slow meals, lifetime dedication to food stuff is a little out of my reach, I think--but I DID manage to make that rhubarb pie. And the spinach I bought at the farmer's market was amazing. And I have gotten better at cooking without non-stick pans.

Okay, so I'm (mostly) joking about the commune. But maybe there's hope for the cheese.