Date: February 19, 2010
Time: 7:00pm
Host: Lina Hornak
Attendees: Jenn, Melissa, Jackie, Malinda, and Meg
Snack(s): Chocolate Chip Cookies (w/ rice syrup), Pecan-cranberry chew, and sun-dried tomato pesto and homemade mozzarella on toasted French bread.
This month we are welcoming a new member to our club. Welcome Jackie Jenkins, we are excited to have you in our group! Also, welcome to our honorary members, Robin and Vivienne, Meg and Malinda’s (respectively) brand new little girls!
This month we read Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life, by Barbara Kingslover. Together with her husband, Steven Hopp, and daughter, Camille, Barbara Kingsolver tells the story of her family’s year living only on food that they grew themselves or that they could get locally.
Wow, where to start with this book? It was funny, informative, and inspiring. Malinda started the conversation on Friday night by staying that she fully expected to feel inadequate while reading this book, but found that it was not written in a way that made her feel guilty. I had the same expectation and agree and felt that the book was, more than anything, inspiring. Meg has read other works by Barbara Kingslover (such as The Poisonwood Bible) and she felt she was not as preachy in this book as she can be in her fiction.
We discussed the things we did not know before reading this book. Most of us were not aware that pineapples do not grow in trees. Some of us had no idea that peanuts grow long stems that curve downward, driving the nuts into the ground, making them as Barbara says, “the dogged overachievers of the plant kingdom.” Though, Jackie, whose grandparents live on a farm, always brought peanut plants into school for show-and-tell. And who knew turkey sex could be so funny!?
We also learned enough about the U.S. food production and agribusiness to make you angry that this is not common knowledge to the American consumer. Things they don’t tell us about include: the ability of agribusinesses to patent varieties of plant solely to remove them from production; the fact that 98% of the world seed sales are controlled by only six major companies; or that 99% of the turkeys Americans consume every year are not only bread to fatten up quickly and be sedentary, but they are also unable to reproduce naturally.
I think many of us have gained a new vision of the food in our grocery stores. Thinking more now about what foods are in season and how far those out of season foods may have traveled to get to our stores. It has made us think about eating foods that are available in the seasons in which they would grow in our area. Even if it hasn’t stopped us from buying those foods out of season, we are thinking about it.
I asked the others if they have ever had a craving for a certain food, and they could eat that food practically every day for a month or more and then, when the desire has passed, they don’t want to look at that food again for a year. I suggested that this might be a human characteristic that would have gotten our ancestors (who did not have grocery stores and imported, out of season foods) through various seasons of food. Like asparagus season, which Barbara discusses in this book, when a family might eat asparagus for something like 8 weeks straight.
Malinda questioned if there were any parts of the book we did not like. She expressed her frustration with the informative entries by Steven Hopp that were placed within Barbara’s writing, leaving the reader asking, where do I stop reading the main text to read his entry? I fully agreed with Malinda, that was quite a stressful situation for me! Meg found it amusing that we worried so much about it. Meg disliked the recipes that were included in the book. She was bothered that they were all vegetarian recipes and felt that there were very few, if any, that she would ever try to make.
I think we all agreed (correct me if I’m wrong ladies) that the book was funny, engaging, and overall well written.
In our discussion we talked of other documentaries (d) and books (b) that we have seen or read that, may not be in direct relation to the topic of this book but we felt were relevant issues. Some of those include: Food Inc. (d); The Omnivore’s Dillema –Michael Pollan (b); Skinny Bitch (b); Who Killed the Electric Car (d); In Defense of Food –Michael Pollan (b).
For March:
For March we will be reading My Sister’s Keeper, by Jodi Picoult.
Melissa will be hosting the meeting, on March 19, 2010 at 7pm.
Better get reading!!
