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.


Share this post with: