I am in the middle of the book Animal, Vegetable, Miracle by Barbara Kingsolver. I have seen quite a few bloggers reading this lately and all are loving it. So far, the book is making me think. I really could do with more of the stories about her family and less about the political/socio-economic ramblings of WHY we all need to think about where our food comes from, but I guess she needed to include that in the book to get across WHY her family chose to do this food experiment. The premise of the non-fiction book, is the author and her family move from Tuscon, AZ back to their roots on a farm in rural Virginia and decide to live for a year eating only foods that they grow/raise themselves OR buy foods that are locally grown/raised. She includes essays in the book from her 19 year old daughter and from her husband. She also includes recipes and sample menus of how they managed to only eat foods that were in season.
Last year my 6 year old started a garden in our yard with my Dad. My son had been fascinated with my Dad's large vegetable garden and he wanted to start his own. Last year we ate tomatoes, cucumbers and peppers from the garden and my son couldn't have been prouder when he came in form his garden with armfuls of vegetables. This year my Dad could not come down to help, so I helped him get it ready and helped him plant. He choose the plants and we have quite an eclectic mix - tomatoes, peppers, zucchini, cucumbers, watermelon, pumpkins and some herbs (that was my contribution!) I don't think that living in my suburban neighborhood I will ever live like Ms. Kingsolver, but I feel that the book did open my eyes to HOW we get our food and what we can do in small ways to help out our environment, say by planting our little garden.
I just wish that we would get some RAIN here. We are in a pretty bad drought (lots of water restrictions) and although we do water the garden everyday, I think things would grow a little better if we had some good soaking rains!
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