A few years ago, I read Animal, Vegetable, Miracle by Barbara Kingsolver with Steven L. Hopp (her husband) and Camille Kingsolver (her older daughter). For anyone who is not familiar with the book, Kingsolver describes on the book’s website: ”Animal, Vegetable, Miracle (Harper Collins, 2007) is the story of a year in which our family deliberately fed ourselves on products grown close to home, and what we learned from the experience.” I was inspired by the book. Earlier that year, I’d read Michael Pollan’s The Omnivore’s Dilemma, and I was already going a little bit nuts about the whole Locavore thing. I’d had a Community-Sponsored Agriculture (CSA) share for several summers in a row, and that particular summer (2007), a friend and I were growing a fairly decent sized garden of our own on her property.
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| A beautiful, exhausting labor of love |
After I read Kingsolver and co.’s book, my locavore fanaticism hit a new
high. I poured over every freaking label in the grocery store
searching for the most local box of cereal/can of beans/carton of milk
possible. When I’d come home with one over-priced sack of groceries.
My partner at the time would stare at me in amazement and horror when
I’d arrive home over an hour later with just one bag of groceries,
particularly after he saw the receipt. His expression seemed to be
asking, “How is it possible you spent all that time in the grocery store
and bought almost nothing to eat for so much money?” I’d ignore his
bewildered gaze and calmly unload my local cheeses and apples and
hazelnuts.
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| Organic Broccoli--$4 a pound. Yikes! |
