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Books on Wooden House:
Coming Home to Eat: The Pleasures and Politics of Local Foods
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Manufacturer: W.W. Norton & Co.
List Price: $15.95
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Issuing a "profound and engaging...passionate call to us to re-think our food industry" (Jim Harrison, author of The Raw and the Cooked), Gary Paul Nabhan reminds us that eating close to home is not just a matter of convenience—it is an act of deep cultural and environmental significance.
Embodying "a perspective...at once ecological, economic, humanistic, and spiritual" (Los Angeles Times), Nabhan has dedicated his life to raising awareness about food—as an avid gardener, as an ethnobotanist preserving seed diversity, and as an activist devoted to recovering native food traditions in the Southwest. This "inspired and eloquently detailed account" (Rick Bayless, Chefs Collaborative) tells of his year-long mission to eat only foods grown, fished, or gathered within two hundred miles of his home. "A good book for gardeners to read this winter" (New York Times), Nabhan's work "weav[es] together the traditions of Thoreau and M. F. K. Fisher [in] a soul food treatise for our time" (Peter Hoffman, Chefs Collaborative).
PRODUCT DESCRIPTIONS:
Binding: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 641
EAN: 9780393323740
ISBN: 0393323749
Label: W.W. Norton & Co.
Manufacturer: W.W. Norton & Co.
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 336
Publication Date: 2002-11
Publisher: W.W. Norton & Co.
Studio: W.W. Norton & Co.
SIMILAR ITEMS:
• Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life (P.S.)
• The Omnivore's Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals
• In Defense of Food: An Eater's Manifesto
• Slow Food Nation: Why Our Food Should Be Good, Clean, And Fair
• Plenty: One Man, One Woman, and a Raucous Year of Eating Locally
CUSTOMER REVIEWS:
A pilgrimage -
Gary Nabhan embarks on a pilgrimage of habits, if not distance. Along the way we are treated to all kinds of facts and anecdotes and interesting people. Some of the most important dealing with water and topsoil. This book won't make me stop buying canned beans at the dollar store, but it did help me resolve to stop buying frozen microwave meals.
Author gets very lyrical and poetic about describing his motivations and concerns. More interesting were the people he meets and describes over the course of the book. His Irish-American grandmother supporting 12 kids in chicago while working as the head cook of a factory's cafeteria. obsolete farmers and cowboys of yesteryear working construction today. Native peoples of the southwest and Mexico whose metabolisms are so efficient modernity hurls them straight into diabetes. The folks at Seed Savers' Heritage Farm.
All of this happens over the course of Nabhan's mission to eat mostly foods grown within 200 miles of his home or current location. All goes well, until he stops at a White Castle. He is then defeated by White Castle. It only takes one or two burgers to propel him into a nap.
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Dry as Arizona soil... -
Having read several books on local foods and sustainability, I really wanted to love this book. I wanted to read about this man's year of eating local in the southwest US. However, I found the book just about as dry as the soil in the Arizona, where the book takes place... his writing style did not engage me. It did not make me want to continue turning the pages. Perhaps it is because I read Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life (P.S.) right before this? It had great potential... but it left me disappointed.
An important topic, but immensley boring -
The author has some very important things to say, most of which I agree with. I learned some things that made me curious and excited. I learned some things that made me wince with fear and disgust. Not bad.
Unfortunately, most of the book is full of semi-narcissistic, pseudo-spiritual drivel that makes for a long and painful read. I wish that Nabhan had teemed up with Mark Kurlansky to write it.
Great topic--but why so much Spam? -
I completely honor the impulse behind this book and believe in the importance of eating local. I also applaud Nabhan for thinking and writing about these issues before so many others (yet I'm also happy for the influx of recent local eating books and articles from Pollan, Kingsolver, McKibben, Alisa Smith & JB Mackinnon, and the blog by "No Impact Man"). Some scenes are powerful: eating ripe peaches, the short Thanksgiving section, reconnecting with family. The history and science sections are good too.
What surprised me, though, is that it seemed like throughout much of the book, Nabhan was in his Blazer, on a plane, or somewhere nowhere near home. Although he carried his fried grasshoppers and tortillas with him, I was longing to read more about the actual practices of growing and preparing local food (there is, however, plenty on roadkill). What surprised me more: the continual references to Spam, especially in relation to the sunset:
"As a Spam-colored sunset blanketed the western sky, the sweat on my back chilled" (40).
"At dusk they [mechanized dairy farms] took on a sickly greenish cast, the color of modly Spam" (158).
". . . each afternoon until the sun went down, gaudy as a thin slice of Spam" (276).
Why so much Spam? He buys a can of Spam in another odd section of the book where he spends $50 on a strange combination of food for a brunch that he and his partner, Laurie, don't eat. In another section, he throws a bunch of food in the compost bin because it uses cactuses in the advertising but doesn't contain cactus juice. I was puzzled by the waste. Why not eat the food and not buy it again? (Or in the supermarket venture, why not buy foods suitable for a decent brunch?)
In terms of the time in the Blazer and the time away from home, I understand that Nabhan's work and activism demand travel--and sometimes you see "home" more clearly when you're away from it. But I can't think of any reason for all the Spam.
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A Great Book For Anyone -
Coming Home to Eat is easy to read, enjoyable, and packed full of interesting details on a myriad of topics. This is the type of book you can give to almost anyone, and they will enjoy reading it. I'm a biologist with a background in conservation, and I really enjoyed reading about the natural history of many of the plants and animals in the book. I've given the book to two other people, and they both loved it, but for completely different reasons. One enjoyed all the detailed descriptions of cooking and meals; while the other was more interested by the social and economic aspects of the book. The author does a great job of weaving together several fairly disparate topics into a very entertaining narrative.
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