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Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life | 
| Authors: Barbara Kingsolver, Camille Kingsolver, Steven L. Hopp
Publisher: HarperCollins
Category: Book
List Price: $26.95
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Rating:  338 reviews
Sales Rank: 11968
Media: Hardcover
Pages: 384
Number Of Items: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.5
Dimensions (in): 8.9 x 6.2 x 1.3
ISBN: 0060852550
Dewey Decimal Number: 641.0973
EAN: 9780060852559
ASIN: 0060852550
Publication Date: May 1, 2007
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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Product Description
Bestselling author Barbara Kingsolver returns with her first nonfiction narrative that will open your eyes in a hundred new ways to an old truth: You are what you eat. "As the U.S. population made an unprecedented mad dash for the Sun Belt, one carload of us paddled against the tide, heading for the Promised Land where water falls from the sky and green stuff grows all around. We were about to begin the adventure of realigning our lives with our food chain. "Naturally, our first stop was to buy junk food and fossil fuel. . . ." Hang on for the ride: With characteristic poetry and pluck, Barbara Kingsolver and her family sweep readers along on their journey away from the industrial-food pipeline to a rural life in which they vow to buy only food raised in their own neighborhood, grow it themselves, or learn to live without it. Their good-humored search yields surprising discoveries about turkey sex life and overly zealous zucchini plants, en route to a food culture that's better for the neighborhood and also better on the table. Part memoir, part journalistic investigation, Animal, Vegetable, Miracle makes a passionate case for putting the kitchen back at the center of family life and diversified farms at the center of the American diet. "This is the story of a year in which we made every attempt to feed ourselves animals and vegetables whose provenance we really knew . . . and of how our family was changed by our first year of deliberately eating food produced from the same place where we worked, went to school, loved our neighbors, drank the water, and breathed the air."
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| Customer Reviews: Read 333 more reviews...
 Back to the garden! May 5, 2007
Julie Neal (Sanibel Island, Fla.)
159 out of 167 found this review helpful
Three hundred and sixty-eight pages, no pretty pictures, and it's about food? Yes it is, and it's fascinating. Written by best-selling novelist Barbara Kingsolver, her scientist hubby and teenage daughter, "Animal, Vegetable, Miracle" chronicles the true story of the family's adventures as they move to a farm in rural Virginia and vow to eat locally for one year. They grow their own vegetables, raise their own poultry and buy the rest of their food directly from farmers markets and other local sources. There are touching human stories here (the family's 9-year-old learns a secret to raising chickens for food: don't name them!) but the book's purpose is serious food for thought: it argues the economic, social and health benefits of putting local foods at the center of a family diet. As Kingsolver details the family's experience month-by-month, husband Steven adds sidebars on the problems of industrial agriculture and daughter Camille tosses in some first-person essays ("Growing Up in the Kitchen") and recipes ("Holiday Corn Pudding a Nine-Year-Old Can Make").
And it is all so well written! Kingsolver can veer way off topic -- wandering off into subjects like rural politics, even turkey sex -- and still, somehow, stay right on point. Her husband can say more in two pages than some professors I know can say in 200, and the daughter's writings... well I often couldn't tell who was writing what without checking for the byline.
The book looks and feels great, too. The dust jacket has been pressed into the nubby texture of burlap. The pages have ragged edges, which makes them soft on your fingers.
Reading this book, drinking my Phosphoric Acid Diet Coke and snacking on some Partially Hydrogenated Palm Kernel Oil Walt Disney World Hungry Heroes Yogurt Pretzels, I suddenly felt like I was a kid again, sitting in my bedroom in 1969 listening to that Joni Mitchell "Woodstock" lyric: "Time to get back to the land, and set my soul free." Now that song is stuck back in my head! Maybe it should have never left.
This is a fascinating informative book about food May 8, 2007
Robert G Yokoyama (Mililani, Hawaii)
168 out of 191 found this review helpful
It is possible to live off the land. The Kingsolver family are proof of that. They grew their own food for a year on a farm in Virginia's Applachian mountains. It only cost 50 cents a meal to feed the Kingsolver family of four for a year, and I found that to be amazing. It is much healthier to eat organic foods which are foods produced without chemicals. This is one of the main ideas of this insightful book. I love Camille's Kingsolver's contributions in this book. She is the college age daughter of the primary author. Camille's reflections about food are thoughtful, and her recipes sound delicious. I loved her essay about how she learned to love asparagus. I learned that asparagus is an excellent source of vitamin C, which I did not know before. There is a recipe in here for an asparagus mushroom bread pudding. I never thought of putting these ingredients together. Another interesting recipe in the book is one for zucchini chocolate chip cookies. The recipe sounds so unusual, I am tempted to try it. The recipe for pumpkin soup and sweet potato quesadillas sound yummy too. Everyone in the Kingsolver family contributed in this local food project. Barbara raised and bred turkeys, while her nine year old daughter raised her own chickens and provided the family with eggs for a year. They even made their own cheese.
I also enjoyed the contributions of Steven L. Hopp in this book. He is a professor who teaches environmental science at Emory and Henry College. His short contributions in the every chapter are very insightful. He really compliments the main text written by Kingsolver. I enjoyed reading his thoughts about the popularity of agricultural education in public schools. This is a fascinating and informative book about food.
More exposure of an American epidemic May 10, 2007
A. Y. Smittle (Winchester, VA United States)
99 out of 112 found this review helpful
Look what happened when the nation turned its attention to the tobacco industry. If only that would happen with the fast food/processed food industry. One can only dream.....
Thank you so much, Barbara Kingsolver, for grabbing that attention and making it the focus of your new book. I loved it. It was so well written.
I hope this subject really catches the attention of more and more people. For our familys conversion to organic and local, mindful eating it started with the movie, "Supersize Me," and went on to "Fast Food Nation, etc."
Ms. Kingsolver points out in her book it is a slow process to weed yourself off that junk food.
Ms. Kingsolver opens up the doors to her farm and family life to share how we can save our lives (literally) and the world by eating local, fresh and home grown. Put down that twinkie and pop! Pick up a hoe and educate yourself on the dangers of fast food and processed food!
Blue jello? Come on! What part of that is natural, real food? But I dare you to eat a Christmas colored bean, like the one on the book cover.
Ms. Kingsolver also shares about how rare it is to see/find true animal breeding in the modern world. She states in the book it was impossible to find modern resources and had to look to the past to find the answers.
Nature has been bred out of the animals we eat. And she writes about it so eloquently!
Sorry this review is all over the place! I was so excited to see Ms. Kingsolvers new book out; and it is on a subject that is near and dear to my heart. The narrative is incredibly well written. It is very inspiring.
Great, Now I Want Chickens May 13, 2007
Mara (Virginia)
28 out of 31 found this review helpful
Wonderful, insightful book about the importance of eating locally, and even more importantly, eating thoughtfully. Barbara Kingsolver details the year in which she and her family strive to live off of foods grown locally, but the book is much more than an interesting personal memoir; she, her husband and their daughter explain in great detail WHY they feel the need to do this.
There is no vague talk or philosophy here, rather very thorough forays into biology, politics, history, education, and every other genre of study that explains how we, as Americans, eat-- which is generally pretty badly. The scientific background of both Ms. Kingsolver and her husband (who has essays scattered throughout the book) really shines through. The decision to eat locally (in this case, from their own garden or farms within the same county) is presented not as a throw-back to a better, earlier time but as the way forward, the beginning of a new and improved chapter. Instead of presenting this painstakingly-researched information in one overwhelming block, Ms. Kingsolver carefully intersperses it with the personal story in easily-digested bites. This keeps both the science and the garden-family-diary part in balance and makes the book very readable.
The personal side of the story is excellent. Growing vegatables; raising poultry; making cheese at home(!!!); baking bread every day (the husband's responsibility in this case); canning, freezing, braiding, and otherwise storing the garden's bounty; each of these and more are a part of the grand experiment. "Deprivation" never sounded so fun or so fufilling. If you've ever dreamed of canning your own tomatoes or keeping chickens, this book will make your yearnings worse.
Ms. Kingsolver and co. are refreshingly non-vegetarian, blithely describing Turkey-Harvest Day (what it sounds like, yes) and explaining both why "vegetarian" crops like corn kill more animals via thresher and pesticide than meaty "crops" like chicken, and why the idea that the world would be better off with more vegetarians is deeply flawed. Vegetarians may be perturbed by their findings, but I think it would still be worth reading with an open mind.
The glimpses into her family life, too, are fascinating-- kids who are more interested in chickens and tomatoes than Playstation and cable? Huh. The book includes several essays by Kingsolver's elder daughter, Camille, who provides an interesting perspective: as both an interested member in this "new" lifestyle and a college freshman, she is a bridge between these cultures.
Like any garden/farm narrative, I suppose, Animal, Vegetable, Miracle is very regional and it really captures the flavor of its paticular locale--Virginia. I am a recent transplant to Virginia myself (this is my first spring/summer here) and the book answered some of my questions about this new place, like "Why does my front yard smell like onions? Are those chives growing wild all around the neighborhood?" Apparently they are "ramps". Who knew? Not this Texan. That sudden retreat to freezing last month is a "dogwood winter". I realize that to most readers of this review it's not important, but I felt a sudden thrill of recognition to realize that this farm and author are probably within a hundred miles from here-- to realize that she is describing my newly adopted environment.
My only bone to pick is a very small one. Near the end of the book, Ms Kingsolver expresses surprise that her pet topic of eating locally has suddenly mushroomed from a secret underground movement, to the mainstream. As far as I can tell, this isn't true. Yes, the Times (or whatever it was) has a cover story on eating locally. But I was learning about it back in college (2001-ish) at the University of Vermont. My environmental classes covered the costs of shipping tomatoes and included a trip to the local CSA. That CSA, as well as the one I've joined here in VA, have been around for a while-- at least 5-10 years I think. Ms Kingsolver mentions several upscale restaurants (and one diner) that serve only local foods, and cookbooks. So clearly, this trend/idea/philosophy has been gaining steam for at least a decade, and didn't just pop out of the ground as the book was going to the publisher. But, as I said, small quibble. The book is fantastic, I'd reccommend it to anyone interested in changing the way they eat, gardening, farming, chickens...
A love story about food, land, and our earth. November 9, 2007
Gray Harrison (central massachusetts)
17 out of 19 found this review helpful
Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life
By Barbara Kingsolver, Steven L. Hopp and Camille Kingsolver
"Animal, Vegetable, Miracle" was given to me by some friends early last June, just as our garden was starting to flower. I was a little hesitant to give it a read since some of Barbara Kingsolver's other writings had failed to inspire. However, I had just finished another very compelling book about the state of food in America: Michael Pollan's "The Omnivore's Dilemma". I was interested to see what Ms. Kingsolver had to add to the discussion. According to the jacket of the book, she and her family were willing to commit to a year of eating only locally grown food, and in these days of peak oil and economic uncertainty, I was intrigued to find out how such an experiment would work out. So, in between weeding the garlic and picking string beans, I dove in to "A Year of Food Life".
The day's work done, it was with great pleasure that I would sit down on quiet and peaceful summer evenings to connect with the Kingsolver's as they explored what life is like when you are committed to being part of your local food-o-sphere. It definitely requires a huge shift in attitude if you, like me, have grown up expecting to be able to eat anything you want, anytime you want it. The Kingsolver's not only had to change their expectations about food availability, they actually had to change their address! They had lived for many years in Tucson, AZ, a place that, as it says in the book, "might as well be a space station" in terms of human sustenance. Every morsel of food comes from far away, and every drop of water comes from a nonrenewable and quickly disappearing source. So, after years of planning and discussion, they packed their bags and headed to the old family homestead in southern Appalachia, where, in the immortal words of Sam Kinison, "the food is". Water falls from the sky, green things grow, and people are not so far removed in time from the era when all food was both local and organic. Ah yes, I said to myself, it sounds an awful lot like New England, and the more I learned about the Kingsolver's story, the more convinced I became that we New Englander's could learn to live locally (again), too.
The book chronicles the family's experiment in local food; from the move to their new home, the first spring day when they broke free from the industrial food web, and the days and weeks of planting, weeding, harvesting, and storing the bounty of their land and their neighbor's land. They planned to eat only what was available within a 100 mile radius, with a few small exceptions. Before you say, "Hey, I can't live without bananas!", know that each family member was able to choose a special food item that might break the 100 mile rule. Barbara's partner Steven, a man after my own heart, chose coffee. As I imagined how I might survive on a local only diet, I have to admit that Ethiopian coffee, Costa Rican chocolate, and French wine would all be very hard to part with. Tropical fruits would be sorely missed as well. Should I leave everything behind and move to Costa Rica where the food grows all year, the coffee is respectable, and I could indulge in chocolate guilt-free? I have to admit, it is a question that still haunts me, but if the experience of the Kingsolver's is any guide, then our unique spot on the planet can provide everything we need and more. And, I don't have to worry about bullet ants and eyelash vipers.
In between learning about how her daughter started an egg and chicken business, and how long a row of potatoes they dug, one of the most important points that Barbara Kingsolver makes in this book is that the current system of agriculture and food distribution in this country is not only incredibly wasteful, but completely unsustainable. It is rather frightening to learn that americans consume about 400 gallons of oil a year per person for agriculture. Most of that is used in transporting food: each food item in a typical meal has traveled 1500 miles! Facts such as these are interspersed throughout the book in informative sidebars, many of which offer positive steps to take in the direction of a sustainable future. For instance, one of Steven's sidebars notes that "if every US citizen ate just one meal a week composed of locally and organically raised meat and produce, we would reduce our country's oil consumption by over 1.1 million barrels oil every week." Impressive, but according to the US Government's Energy Information Agency, we profligate denizens of north america use almost 21 million barrels of oil each day. Worldwide thirst for oil: over 83 million barrels a day. Amount of oil needed to put fresh kale on my dinner plate almost every night for the past 4 months? Unknown, but miniscule, since I only had to use electrically pumped water to water the garden occasionally. Of course, I can do much better with some of my other food and lifestyle choices, and this book has inspired me to do so. For example, I learned how to can grape jam made from the concord grapes that grow along the edge of our property, and my freezer is full of tomato sauce from our garden. I've also become obsessed with fermented foods, and at our learning center we are studying chemistry in part from the perspective of safe food storage.
OK, you say, you know all that, so why should you read this book? Because, in my opinion, "Animal, Vegetable, Miracle" is truly a pleasure to read. Plenty of hard facts for the analytic side of the brain, wonderful imagery and mouth-watering descriptions of fresh food for the right side of the brain, and woven throughout a romantic love story between the people and the earth that provides so bountifully. I think that's what kept me coming back for more, because as the book described each micro-season of the year (such as the day the asparagus is ready), I was gaining more and more appreciation for the garden in my backyard and the community of people in this area who are striving to bring about a more sustainable food life for all of us. This is a very inspiring story, and has gained an esteemed position on the short list of books that has made a huge impact on how I live my life.
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