Monday, June 1, 2009

In Defense of Food - the real deal

Our garden is coming along nicely. This week we enjoyed almost entirely homegrown salad (radishes, sugar snap peas, onions, carrots) with only the lettuce coming from a source outside our own property. (I've let our remaining lettuce go to seed so we can begin anew before we munch our way through the last of the yummy stuff. The potatoes, squashes, watermelon, apples, oranges and tomatoes are verdant. Our grapes are growing like WEEDS and show promise with their tiny baby bunches of grapes dangling hither and yon. Beets are coming up, and the strawberries. OH! The STRAWBERRIES! Delish!

This year marks our first attempt at corn and Mayflower beans, basil from seed, Roselles and kiwi. NOTHING happened with the kiwi we planted out front. Not a thing. Not a sprout or a sprig, but a gopher has moved into the front garden since we replaced ornamental plants with plants humans might actually consume.

If you'd like to be inspired, educated and entertained, consider reading Barbara Kingsolver's Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life (P.S.). The book discusses issue around and including her family's decision to attempt to feed themselves for a year with (almost) only the food they could raise on their place.

For more incentive, check out In Defense of Food: An Eater's Manifesto. As much as I've tended to enjoy Kingsolver in the past, I confess I found Michael Pollan's treatment of the basic issues more readable, concise and inspiring.


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1 comment:

  1. Just bought the Michael Pollan books- can't wait to read them. I'll have to check out Animal, Veg, Miracle...sounds fascinating. Sounds like something I would do with my family! We tend to go through experimental phases of throwing ourselves completely into one thing or another. Then on to something else, but we always take part of the journey and our lessons learned along with us for the next adventure. :) Your garden sounds wonderful. Ours is coming along...I'll have to update my blog. It's been a couple of weeks! See you next week at Hancock.

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