Animal, Vegetable, Miracle by Barbara Kingsolver

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. (from google books)

So that's the premise of this 352 page book. Sounds interesting doesn't it? It is. Very interesting. And eye opening. But it can also be infuriating. Here's an example of Kingsolver bemoaning the rampant use of canned pumpkin:

"Come on, people. Doesn't anybody remember how to take a big old knife, whack open a pumpkin, scrape out the seeds, and bake it? We can carve a face onto it, but can't draw and quarter it? Are we in actual fact too squeamish to stab a large knife into a pumpkin? Wait till our enemies find out."

According to Kingsolver, if we buy canned pumpkin, we're squeamish. If we buy bananas, we don't care about local farmers. If we're not gardeners, then we're idiots because obviously we're not aware that vegetables are grown in dirt.

There was a book in which she made the list of 100 people who are destroying America. While I hardly think she's doing any damage, I can see where "These are the cultural elites who look down their snobby noses at ordinary Americans" would fit her description.

Yes, she's annoying, alright. But like I said earlier, this book is an eye opener and contains lots of interesting facts and several made-from-scratch recipes that sound pretty good. It has definitely inspired me to make more trips to the farmers market and buy local products when I can. But really, is buying bananas so bad?