Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life (P.S.)

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Editorial Reviews:

Product Description

Author Barbara Kingsolver and her family abandoned the industrial-food pipeline to live a rural life—vowing that, for one year, they'd only buy food raised in their own neighborhood, grow it themselves, or learn to live without it. Part memoir, part journalistic investigation, Animal, Vegetable, Miracle is an enthralling narrative that will open your eyes in a hundred new ways to an old truth: You are what you eat.

Customer Reviews: Read 266 more reviews...

5 out of 5 stars

This is a fascinating informative book about food May 8, 2007
152 out of 171 found this review helpful

It is possible to live off the land. The Kingsolver family are proof of that. They grew their own food for a year on a farm in Virginia's Applachian mountains. It only cost 50 cents a meal to feed the Kingsolver family of four for a year, and I found that to be amazing. It is much healthier to eat organic foods which are foods produced without chemicals. This is one of the main ideas of this insightful book. I love Camille's Kingsolver's contributions in this book. She is the college age daughter of the primary author. Camille's reflections about food are thoughtful, and her recipes sound delicious. I loved her essay about how she learned to love asparagus. I learned that asparagus is an excellent source of vitamin C, which I did not know before. There is a recipe in here for an asparagus mushroom bread pudding. I never thought of putting these ingredients together. Another interesting recipe in the book is one for zucchini chocolate chip cookies. The recipe sounds so unusual, I am tempted to try it. The recipe for pumpkin soup and sweet potato quesadillas sound yummy too. Everyone in the Kingsolver family contributed in this local food project. Barbara raised and bred turkeys, while her nine year old daughter raised her own chickens and provided the family with eggs for a year. They even made their own cheese.

I also enjoyed the contributions of Steven L. Hopp in this book. He is a professor who teaches environmental science at Emory and Henry College. His short contributions in the every chapter are very insightful. He really compliments the main text written by Kingsolver. I enjoyed reading his thoughts about the popularity of agricultural education in public schools. This is a fascinating and informative book about food.

5 out of 5 stars

Back to the garden! May 5, 2007
135 out of 143 found this review helpful

Three hundred and sixty-eight pages, no pretty pictures, and it's about food? Yes it is, and it's fascinating. Written by best-selling novelist Barbara Kingsolver, her scientist hubby and teenage daughter, "Animal, Vegetable, Miracle" chronicles the true story of the family's adventures as they move to a farm in rural Virginia and vow to eat locally for one year. They grow their own vegetables, raise their own poultry and buy the rest of their food directly from farmers markets and other local sources. There are touching human stories here (the family's 9-year-old learns a secret to raising chickens for food: don't name them!) but the book's purpose is serious food for thought: it argues the economic, social and health benefits of putting local foods at the center of a family diet. As Kingsolver details the family's experience month-by-month, husband Steven adds sidebars on the problems of industrial agriculture and daughter Camille tosses in some first-person essays ("Growing Up in the Kitchen") and recipes ("Holiday Corn Pudding a Nine-Year-Old Can Make").

And it is all so well written! Kingsolver can veer way off topic -- wandering off into subjects like rural politics, even turkey sex -- and still, somehow, stay right on point. Her husband can say more in two pages than some professors I know can say in 200, and the daughter's writings... well I often couldn't tell who was writing what without checking for the byline.

The book looks and feels great, too. The dust jacket has been pressed into the nubby texture of burlap. The pages have ragged edges, which makes them soft on your fingers.

Reading this book, drinking my Phosphoric Acid Diet Coke and snacking on some Partially Hydrogenated Palm Kernel Oil Walt Disney World Hungry Heroes Yogurt Pretzels, I suddenly felt like I was a kid again, sitting in my bedroom in 1969 listening to that Joni Mitchell "Woodstock" lyric: "Time to get back to the land, and set my soul free." Now that song is stuck back in my head! Maybe it should have never left.

5 out of 5 stars

More exposure of an American epidemic May 10, 2007
92 out of 106 found this review helpful

Look what happened when the nation turned its attention to the tobacco industry. If only that would happen with the fast food/processed food industry. One can only dream.....

Thank you so much, Barbara Kingsolver, for grabbing that attention and making it the focus of your new book. I loved it. It was so well written.

I hope this subject really catches the attention of more and more people. For our familys conversion to organic and local, mindful eating it started with the movie, "Supersize Me," and went on to "Fast Food Nation, etc."
Ms. Kingsolver points out in her book it is a slow process to weed yourself off that junk food.

Ms. Kingsolver opens up the doors to her farm and family life to share how we can save our lives (literally) and the world by eating local, fresh and home grown. Put down that twinkie and pop! Pick up a hoe and educate yourself on the dangers of fast food and processed food!

Blue jello? Come on! What part of that is natural, real food? But I dare you to eat a Christmas colored bean, like the one on the book cover.

Ms. Kingsolver also shares about how rare it is to see/find true animal breeding in the modern world. She states in the book it was impossible to find modern resources and had to look to the past to find the answers.
Nature has been bred out of the animals we eat. And she writes about it so eloquently!

Sorry this review is all over the place! I was so excited to see Ms. Kingsolvers new book out; and it is on a subject that is near and dear to my heart. The narrative is incredibly well written. It is very inspiring.

3 out of 5 stars

Kind of preachy June 21, 2007
81 out of 88 found this review helpful

I love Barbara Kingsolver's books and was thrilled to hear she had another on the market. Her family leaves Arizona and moved back to Virginia to spend a year living off what they can grow or buy at the local farmer's market? Good deal!

And I certainly did enjoy parts of the book, prticularly the actual discussing the dilemmas of eating locally and how the family got around them. Kingsolver is a wonderful writer, and her talk about vegetables, mushrooms and chickens is far more entertaining than it should by rights be. The recipes that are included sound nice and I plan to try some of them. But the rest of the book I found preachy to the point where it became annoying. I get the point: shop locally, shop at the local farmer's market. I get it, I get it. I'll even do it. I don't need all those extra pages pounding it in.

And I wasn't so impressed with her defense of the tobacco industry, saying it provided a living for a lot of families. Fair enough, but it's sideways logic -- trucking in the strawberries she objects to provides a living wage for truckers and their families too.

1 out of 5 stars

Unrealistic, sad guilt trip that has many flaws October 23, 2007
49 out of 87 found this review helpful

I bought this book thinking it would be something like "A Year Without Made in China" whereby the author gives their attempt at getting by without products made in China, and the failures and humorous anecdotes along the way. I thought maybe this book would be similar but instead Kingsolver (and her family as well) comes across as preachy and arrogant.

First of all you must realize that if you are "eating healthy" by eating more fruits and vegetables, that is not enough. Nor is eating organic fruits, vegetables, and meats. Nooo, you must be eating locally grown organic (although not necessarily certified because that's just too damn expensive) fruits, vegetables, and meats. Really, you should have your own apple orchard, nut trees, vegetable garden, lambs, chickens, and turkeys. Ok, if you've stayed with me this far you're doing great.

Now you know the entire food industry is in cahoots with the oil industry, right? I mean corn syrup for soft drinks, corn in your corn chips, corn grown with machinery that uses fossil fuels, shipped to you with fossil fuels is bad bad bad...I mean using fossil fuels for your food production is a major theme in this book, with Kingsolver harping over & over about it. But wait! She visits friends in Massachusetts that have fantastic tasting tomatoes that are grown far earlier in the season than anyone else in New England can dream of! How in the world do they do this!??? Well, by golly, they have a greenhouse! Wait, isn't it too cold in Mass. for the greenhouse? Well, they heat it with...wait for it...natural gas! You know that silly old fossil fuel that is we're running out of! Ok, sarcasm over, you get the idea. There are so many flaws in the book like this it's pathetic, I'll only mention the trip to Italy, the drive around the country, etc. The endless preaching wears thin but is perfect therapy if you grew up Catholic.

Also, it seems incredibly hard to believe that the family had no failures. Everything was a success! Asparagus, tomatoes, potatoes, chickens,..no pests, no crop failures, no droughts. If you have ever had a garden in the summer you know this never happens.

By the way, Mrs. Kingsolver, was the paper used to print the million copies of your book grown on locally harvested trees? Wait, the paper came from trees in Canada shipped to the U.S.A.? What were you thinking!?

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