Animal, Vegetable, Miracle book discussion (chapters 17 - 20)

Phew! This has been the longest book club evah!

Here is the moment you've all been waiting for (well, maybe not) - the final installment of the Animal, Vegetable, Miracle book club discussion posts.

For those of you interested in the next book club and haven't noticed the never-ending polls and various posts, you can check it out here. I think it's fairly obvious at this point what we'll be reading.

Okay, now on with it!

Chapter 17. Celebration Days: November - December: In this chapter, Kingsolver states:

I only vow each winter to try harder to live like a potato, with its tacit understanding that time is time, no matter what any clock might say. I get through the hibernation months by hovering as close as possible to the woodstove without actual self-immolation, and catching up on my reading, cheered at regular intervals by the excess of holidays that collect in a festive logjam at the outflow end of our calendar.

How about you? Do you hibernate during the winter months, waiting for the end? Or do you relish in the shorter days, warmer foods and lots of company?

Chapter 18. What Do You Eat in January?: The author and her family fill their plates in January with foods high in omega-3s to fight off the winter doldrums. Add to that legumes, baked goods, winter squash and whatever else is in the freezer.

Do you have certain foods you tend to eat during the dead of winter?

Chapter 19. Hungry Month: February-March: This chapter discusses, in its entirety, well, turkey sex.

You see, the majority of turkey growers artificially inseminate their breeding stock. In effect, knowing how to breed turkeys naturally is becoming a lost art. And the turkeys don't know how to do it either since they don't have to. Skill in sexual prowess isn't selected for if even the most inept turkey come-ons still result in offspring via a tube. Add to that the fact that mothering instincts have been bred out of turkeys.

What in the world is going on around here? Did anyone else find it incredibly disturbing that sex and parenting have been completely bred out of turkeys?

Chapter 20. Time Begins: The final chapter wraps up their year of changes, between growing their own food and making everything from scratch. When she calculated everything out, they ended up spending about 50 cents per person per meal. Kingsolver also discusses some of the changes that occurred in society during that year, like more acceptance and desire of eating locally, driving hybrids, etc.

One thing she touches on is the act of ridiculing the small gesture. She argues that "small, stepwise changes in personal habits aren't trivial. Ultimately they will, or won't add up to having been the thing that mattered."

What have you done in the last year to change your personal habits, that when they add up really make a difference?


On Thursday, December 20th, I'll be doing a BOOK GIVEAWAY CONTEST. The book? Well, none other than my miraculously pristine hardback copy of Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, A Year of Food Life. Stay tuned!

Animal, Vegetable, Miracle book discussion (chapters 13 - 16)

Well, here we are. I'm going to finish up the discussion posts for this book this month. So expect to see the final installment in two weeks. If you want to have your say for the book in the next book club, vote here!

Here are the discussion questions for chapters 13 through 16:

Chapter 13 - Life in a Red State: Aaaah. Tomatoes. There's just no comparison between home-grown or in-season farmer's market tomatoes and those anemic, mealy orbs sold in the grocery stores year round. Here in Seattle we get "hot house" tomatoes that are supposedly grown in Vancouver, B.C. (huh?). Rumor has it they come from Mexico. They are slightly better than the standard beefsteak, but I've decided it just isn't worth it to buy them out of season. But I digress.

Our tomato plants were hit and miss this year due to the cool summer. The majority of our tomatoes were green and never did ripen. Next year I'll try ripening them inside, but I did manage to pull about 15 lbs of green tomatoes this year.

Did you grow tomatoes this year? How did they turn out? If not, will you consider growing them yourself now that you've read this chapter?

If you grew tomatoes did you do any canning or freezing to capture the bounty for consumption the rest of the year? Even if you don't grow them yourself would you think about buying a load from the farmer's market next year and canning your own tomatoes?

Have you ever had a canning party? Would you consider organizing one next year?

Chapter 14 - You Can't Run Away on Harvest Day: This chapter discusses a different kind of harvest. One that involves dispatching (my homesteading uncle's term) raised animals for consumption. For Kingsolver and her family this means chickens. She brings up a good point for those critical of raising animals for meat:

... animals raised on open pasture are the traditional winter fare..., and they serve us well here in the months it would cost a lot of fossil fuels to keep us in tofu. Should I overlook the suffering of victims of hurricanes, famines, and wars brought on this world by profligate fuel consumption? Bananas that cost a rain forest, refrigerator-trucked soy milk, and prewashed spinach shipped two thousand miles in plastic containers do not seem cruelty-free...

The point is, it's easy to malign raising animals as a food source to consume during the months when vegetation is slim. And it's easy to sit back and feel self-righteous whilst hoarking down loads of vegetarian fare that may have more of an environmental impact than low-impact raised meats. What do you think about this argument?

Do you raise animals for meat? Would you ever consider doing so? Did reading this chapter at all influence your opinion?

Chapter 15 - Where Fish Wear Crowns: Kingsolver discusses, in detail, her trip to Italy and how the food culture there influenced every part of her travels from the lengthy meals to the Italian's love of food. Granted, her trip had more of a food oriented bent to it, but I think most people travel to Italy with food on their minds. It's one of those destinations where food is just as much part of the reason for going as seeing the sights.

What's your favorite food-oriented destination and why?

Chapter 16 - Smashing Pumpkins: October brings in the pumpkin harvest and the planting of garlic. By now, your potatoes have been dug and stored along with the onions and other end of season storables. If you grew them, of course.

Were any of these grown in your garden this year? Will you be growing them next year?


Feel free to add your own discussion questions pertaining to these chapters in the comments as well!

Animal, Vegetable, Miracle book discussion (chapters 10 - 12)

What's this you say? Already another book discussion? Well, since I've been a wee bit behind on the Animal, Vegetable, Miracle book club, I thought I'd do another one while I was at it! So here goes...

Chapter 10. Eating Neighborly - I totally love the idea of restaurants serving food from nearby farms. Not only does that ensure produce and meats at the peak of production, but also gives back to the community and helps support the local agricultural economy. I can think of quite a few restaurants in the Seattle area that have a close relationship with the farms here. There is even an organization to ensure this relationship exists, called the Farmer Chef Connection. Do you have many restaurants in your area that support this sort of connection and, if so, do you go out of your way to frequent those establishments?

Chapter 11. Slow Food Nations - We've talked about this before, the idea of really sitting down and enjoying where your food comes from rather than hurrying through another meal to get to another activity in your life, whether that be a kid's soccer practice or your own busy lives. It seems like a complete lost art, that of sitting down with friends, family and neighbors and enjoying a long leisurely meal. I guess for most people it's reserved to the major holidays: Thanksgiving, Christmas and Easter. Even Super Bowl Sunday is the closest some people come to sharing a meal with others, even if it is whilst watching football.

Parade Magazine ran an article over the weekend regarding eating locally and it looked like 78% of families eat together at least once a week, including eating out at restaurants. I'm pretty sure the high percentage leans closer to the once a week rather than seven times a week and, if so, I think this is pretty pathetic. Will you be trying to institute more family meals at home after reading this chapter?

Chapter 12. Zucchini Larceny - I'm still awfully bitter about my failed zucchini plant this last summer. I mean, who has a zucchini plant that produces nothing? I mean, nada. Zilch. I guess the cool summer probably had something to do with it, but I was hoping for a summer of overwhelming zucchinis wherein I'd be freezing volumes of zucchini and baking loaves for months. Sigh. Anyway, I digress. Did you grow zucchinis this summer? Were you overwhelmed with them. What did you do with the excess? I love that passing on extra zucchini has almost become an act of terrorism. If only it were that simple :)

Animal, Vegetable, Miracle book discussion (chapters 7 - 9)

Here are the discussion questions for the latest installment of the Animal, Vegetable, Miracle book club!

Chapter 7. Gratitude - I love the idea of giving out tomato plants as gifts on Mother's Day. If you grow your own from seed and put them in a container, it's relatively inexpensive and even those recipients without a lot of yard can benefit from the bounty. Have you ever given food-bearing plants as a gift? Would you consider doing so now?

Chapter 8. Growing Trust - "Grocery money is an odd sticking point for U.S. citizens, who on average spend a lower proportion of our income on food than people in any other country, or any heretofore in history." I always find it amazing that for such a rich country we spend such a pittance for our food. Now, I'm sure a lot of that has to do with farm subsidies and the taxpayer money paid to produce all those High Fructose Corn Syrup based products that are so dirt cheap. But, even for fresh fruits, vegetables, meats and the rest, it seems a crime that we don't pay for what it's worth. Again, I'm sure the prices are reflected by the huge economies of scale that you see in conventional farming and CAFO's. But all of this is at a cost. What's the thing that bothers you the most about cheap food and how it came to you? Unfair labor wages? Costs to the environment?

Chapter 9. Six Impossible Things Before Breakfast - One of the points Kingsolver makes early in this chapter is the idea of actually sitting down to enjoy your food instead of rushing through it. Many people spend little time eating their meals (as they are usually on the run) or don't spend mealtimes with their family. I'm sure you've heard about the Slow Food movement (she covers it in Chapter 11), or the concept of bringing back mealtime as a way of enjoying family, friends and food. How often do you have dinner together with your family? How often do you partake in fast food, take-out or eating on the run?

A while back I bought the book she describes in Chapter 9 regarding cheese making as I was interested in making my own mozzarella, among other things, but I never got around to ordering the required additives. Have any of you made your own cheese? What did you think about it?

The process of making your own food, whether that be from growing your own vegetables and grains, to milking your own animals to making something from scratch like bread and cheese, elicits not only a sense of accomplishment and pride in what you've done. For me, it also creates an almost a zen-like calm. I don't mind the extra labor because I get so much satisfaction out of doing it. How does it make you feel?

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As usual, add your comments to this post and feel free to add your own questions for the chapters covered since I only touch on a few points in each chapter.

Animal, Vegetable, Miracle book discussion (chapters 4 - 6)

The long overdue discussion questions for the Animal, Vegetable, Miracle book club are finally here!

For those of you not aware of what this is all about, this blog hosts an online book club where we all read the same book (this current one was picked by the readers) and I post discussion questions for each chapter. I got a little behind and missed last month's posting, but hopefully we are back on track! I try to post on the first Tuesday of the month. So, to help you with your reading assignments, the next post after today's will be November 6th and will cover chapters 7 - 9.

Now onto the discussion questions:

Chapter 4 introduces the idea of the "vegetannual", basically bringing to light the concept (for most vegetation, but not all) that a plant is predestined to begin its life in the spring and die in the fall. The underlying idea is that most modern consumers have become so distant and unaware of the growing cycle as to expect tomatoes in the winter, watermelons in spring and pretty much any type of produce year-round. The exceptions include things that we tend to prefer seasonally, like pumpkins in the fall and yams around Thanksgiving.

Do you try to eat seasonally, or do you just buy whatever looks good in the store regardless of whether it's in season locally or had to be shipped in from another hemisphere? Will you pay more attention to it after reading this chapter?

Chapter 5. The author's family comes from a region of tobacco farmers and I found it interesting that when the idea of eliminating tobacco given it's inherent health risks came up at a party, she blurted out, "what about the tobacco farmers"? The idea never really came to my mind when thinking about cigarettes and the cash crop and industry behind it. You usually think of only the big tobacco giants, but not the farmers that actually grow the crops. The same thing goes for the produce you find in the stores.

Does it ever cross your mind what it actually takes to bring one apple to market? Are the time, work and resources properly represented by the cost? Since we all are, for the most part, completely at the mercy of farmers for our food supply, shouldn't we pay more attention to how our food is grown and how our farmers are compensated?

Chapter 6 discusses how the author's daughter wants to get chickens to raise for eggs as well as meat. I remember reading somewhere that at the turn of the 20th Century many people, even those living in cities (even NYC), had backyard chickens.

Do you own chickens? If not, would you be willing to if it were either more socially acceptable, or legal to raise chickens?

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As usual, feel free to add your own questions or comments regarding these chapters since I only touched on a few points.

Animal, Vegetable, Miracle book discussion (chapters 1 - 3)

The time has finally come! The first discussion questions for the Animal, Vegetable, Miracle book club are here.

I have to admit that initially I wasn't too excited about reading this book as I figured it would be just too similar to the Omnivore's Dilemma. So far, I've been happily surprised. This book has renewed my excitement for all that I'm doing regarding what I eat. And by that I mean, growing my own food, eating locally, buying organically and canning or otherwise preserving what's in season.

And now onto the book discussion questions.

1. In Chapter 1, the author describes how her family spent years planning their relocation and finally packed up and moved everyone to an area where they could live a more sustainable existence by growing their own food and animals. If you live in an area where sustainable living is not feasible (such as the SW like the author), would you be willing to do the same?

2. Chapter 2 discusses the difficulty of finding fresh produce during the winter months. Kingsolver's family started this experiment basically during the food doldrums without having had a previous season of preserving and storing to get them through. What plans do you have this winter for eating local or seasonally? Do you intend on buying out-of-season fruit mid-winter or do you think you can try to rely on foods you are storing away now (by canning/freezing/drying)?

3. Kingsolver discussed in Chapter 3 how utterly crappy most grocery store produce is, as the result of off season produce and/or produce that gets picked terribly early so that it can ripen during long transports. Additionally, the variety of produce is limited - many of the heirloom varieties just aren't produced anymore due to their inability to travel or for other reasons. Does this bother you - the flavorless foods and their limited variety, or are you just so used to it that you don't care about the tasteless bananas from elsewhere?

Again, during this book club, feel free to throw in your own questions into the mix!