Animal, Vegetable, Miracle

There's this book that I've had on my "need to read" list for the past like 6 months.

And I finally decided to give up my years-long mystery book streak to read "Animal, Vegetable, Miracle" by Barbara Kingsolver.

I read one of Kingsolver's novels (The Poisonwood Bible) in high school and then recently I found out that she had a book about food. So, I was in!

Her book is a wonderful compilation of personal stories and facts about our food system weaved into her family's story of moving to a farm and living on only the food they could produce or locally source for a year.


Don't be intimidated, because even though I have been impacted by the book, I am in no way going to go be a farmer, although I respect the work that they do so much more now.

The book talks a lot about how important seasonal eating is.

When we use seasonal ingredients and support the locals that grow them, it is better for everyone. Just think about it.

Our food travels fewer miles therefore it needs fewer preservatives, we're sewing into the local economy and the food tastes WAY better!

Reading this book, which I highly recommend to everyone, has inspired me to try my best to eat more seasonally, think about where my food comes from and support local farmers (easy ways to do this coming up in a post soon).

Here are some of my favorite quotes from the book:

“Households that have lost the soul of cooking from their routines may not know what they are missing: the song of a stir-fry sizzle, the small talk of clinking measuring spoons, the yeasty scent of rising dough, the painting of flavors onto a pizza before it slides into the oven.” 

“If every U.S. citizen ate just one meal a week (any meal) composed of locally and organically raised meats and produce, we would reduce our country's oil consumption by over 1.1 million barrels of oil every week.”

“Cooking is 80% confidence.”

“Many of us who aren't farmers or gardeners still have some element of farm nostalgia in our family past, real or imagined: a secret longing for some connection to a life where a rooster crows in the yard.” 

"Where my kids are concerned I find myself hoping for the simplest things: that if someday they crave orchards where their kids can climb into the branches and steal apples, the world will have trees enough with arms to receive them.”