Fall Garden Update (Square Foot Gardening)

I just realized that it's been two months since I last wrote an update about my fall garden.

I still have not purchased Barbara Ellis's The Veggie Gardener’s Answer Book and I'm still a fan of Mel Bartholomew’s All New Square Foot Gardening (click here to view all my posts on that book).

The fall garden has been as productive as the summer fruit and vegetable garden (with yellow pear and grape tomatoes, full size tomatoes, summer squash plants, eggplant, and more) and I've gotten used to eaten salad from greens freshly harvested, making stir-fry with bok choy or mibuna asian mustard greens straight from the garden, crispy roasted homegrown kale, delicious baby ox heart carrots, spicy hot scarlet globe radishes, and I'm looking forward to lots of winter squash.

I highly recommend Barbara Kingsolver’s Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life, Michael Pollan’s The Omnivore’s Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals, and Mel Bartholomew’s All New Square Foot Gardening to anyone considering gardening.

Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: Cucumber Yogurt Soup

You know I love to eat fruits and vegetables (I mentioned that a few days ago in this entry).

Really, I love food in general. Especially soups. Roasted red pepper and tomato soup. Wonton soup. Split pea and ham soup. Chicken and corn chowder. Guinness French onion soup. Spring asparagus soup. New England clam chowder. Egg drop soup. Southwestern pumpkin soup. Tom kha gai. Cream of mushroom soup.

But I've never liked chilled soup. Gazpacho? Take it or leave it. Chilled beet soup? Ick.

What I like about soups is how they warm you up, whether you like it or not.

So it was with a good amount of hesitation that I tried the recipe for Cucumber Yogurt Soup on page 192 of Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life by Barbara Kingsolver with Steven L. Hopp. (By the way, click here to read all of my posts related to this book.)

I'm definitely still not a chilled soup lover but this one was pretty tasty. Probably a good recipe for others who, like me, are wary of chilled soups. :)

Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: Asparagus and Morel Bread Pudding

I love to eat fruits and vegetables. I love a good steak too but something about how my mother cooked has made me especially enjoy fruits and vegetables.

Mangoes, lychees, guava, persimmon, papaya, pomelo, nectarines, and clementines are among my favorite fruits.

As for vegetables, I love just about any greens sauteed in garlic, onions and oil. I especially love artichokes, Japanese eggplant, taro (kalo), avocado (technically a stone fruit) and Okinawan sweet potato. And I love asparagus and have been known to eat an entire platter at a time.

And mushrooms are probably my favorite food full-stop (click here to read my entry on Part III of The Omnivore’s Dilemma by Michael Pollan to find out more about my mushroom obsession).

So when I read this recipe for Asparagus and Morel Bread Pudding on page 84-85 of Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life by Barbara Kingsolver with Steven L. Hopp and Camille Kingsolver, I was dying to try it! (By the way, click here to read all of my posts related to this book.)

I substituted a variety of reconstituted dried mushrooms for the morels and increased the amount of mushrooms and let me tell you it is every bit as good as it sounds. :)

I haven't tried any of the other recipes yet but I want to make the Pumpkin Soup in its Own Shell, Holiday Corn Pudding a Nine-Year Old Can Make, Chicken Recuerdos de Tuscon, and Cherry Sorbet.

Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life by Barbara Kingsolver

Since last week (April 28 - May 2) was Baltimore Green Week, I've been reading:

• Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life by Barbara Kingsolver with Steven L. Hopp and Camille Kingsolver
• Deep Economy: The Wealth of Communities and the Durable Future by Bill McKibben
• The Omnivore’s Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals by Michael Pollan

Click here to read my entry about my desire to read these books and click here to read a list of discussion questions courtesy of the publisher, Harper Collins). Also, you can click here to read my entries about The Omnivore’s Dilemma and here to read those about Deep Economy.


Today I'm in the mood to write about Animal, Vegetable, Miracle.

This book came very highly recommended and while I first heard about this book from reading a New York Times article published in May 2007 "My Year of Vegetables" by Corby Kummer (who by the way is a fantastic writer and frequent contributor in The Atlantic -- one of my favorite magazines), it was given to me as a Christmas present. Strangely, Christmas 2007 feels like it just happened and I find it hard to believe that it is now May 2008.

Chapter 1 and most of Hopp's sidebar essays read much like The Omnivore’s Dilemma, listed as a source in Kingsolver's bibliography, with facts of the amount of high fructose corn syrup we literally consume and petroleum we figuratively consume (through fertilizers, herbicides and pesticides and through the gas used to transport our food). Also listed as a source is Gary Paul Nabhan's Coming Home to Eat: The Pleasures and Politics of Local Foods; Nabhan (also the author of Renewing America’s Food Traditions: Saving and Savoring the Continent’s Most Endangered Foods) is a friend of the Kingsolvers!

Kingsolver and her family moved from Tuscon, Arizona to the Webb family farm -- full of charm and history and curious place names like the Milk Gap, Old Charley's Lot, Dewberry Hill and the Paw-Paw Cemetery -- in southwestern Virginia in the Appalachias and vowed to eat only food whose "provenance" they knew for their second year in their new home. Her philosophy is essentially “labors like this help a person appreciate why good food costs what it does. It ought to cost more.”

The Kingsolvers do allow themselves a few non-local food indulgences provided that they'd learn to purchase them "through a channel most beneficial to the grower and the land where it grows." Steven chooses coffee; Camille picks dried fruit; Lily wants hot chocolate; and Kingsolver indulges in spices from far off places. And as the year goes on they allow themselves more and more non-local items but they still grow astonishingly large quantities of their own food.


Kingsolver is an award-winning novelist (and 1972 Betty Crocker Homemaker of Tomorrow Award winner) and it comes through in Animal, Vegetable, Miracle. Her writing is delightful, filled with humor and facts both! Here's an example for you:

"Oh Mama," Lily cried, "Look what's about to bloom -- the tranquils."

There went the last of the needles of ice around my heart, and I understood I'd be doomed to calling the jonquils tranquils for the rest of my days. Lily is my youngest. Maybe you know how these thing go. In our family, those pink birds with the long necks are called flingmos because of how their real name was cutely jumbled by my brother's youngest child--and that was, yikes, twenty years ago.

That's how springtime found us: grinning from ear to ear, hauling out our seedlings, just as the rest of our neighborhood began to haul out the plastic lawn flingmos and little Dutch children kissing and those spooky plywood silhouettes of cowboys leaning against trees.

She just makes you laugh out loud, over and over again. (And in case you didn't know, Lily is Kingsolver's youngest child, who was six years old and starting an egg and chicken business at the time.)

As for facts, did you know that Monsanto, Syngenta, DuPont, Mitsui, Aventis and Dow (6 companies in total) control 98% of the world's seed sales? (I'm guessing that Seeds of Change, Heirloom Seeds and Park Seed Co. are among the 2% not controlled by those giants.) Or that 80% of the beef-packing industry is controlled by four companies -- Tyson (IBP), Cargill (Excell), Swift & Co. (ConAgra) and Farmland National Beef -- and that 80% of the soy-bean processing industry is controlled by three companies -- ADM, Cargill, Bunge and Ag Processing Inc. (AGP)? Or that transporting one calorie of a perishable fresh fruit from California to New York takes about 87 calories worth of petroleum? As Kingsolver puts it, "That's as efficient as driving from Philadelphia to Annapolis, and back, in order to walk three miles on a treadmill in a Maryland gym."

I loved reading the names of various heirloom fruits and vegetables and heritage livestock. Tennessee Fainting goats I'd heard of but, Florida Cracker cattle? Jersey Giant chickens? Gloucester Old Spots hogs? American Mammoth Jack Ass? Midget White, Black Spanish, Beltsville Small White, and Bourbon Red turkeys? Five-color silverbeet? Long Keeper tomatoes? Gold of Bacau pole bean? Russian Banana fingerlings? Suyo Long cucumbers? Inchelium Red, Red Toch, Chesnok Red, Persian Star, and Brown Tempest garlic? Collective Farm Woman melon? Cajun Jewel Okra? Costata Romanesca sqaush? Zucche de Chioggia? Georgian Crystal garlic? La Ratte? Aristocrat pear? Principle Borghese tomatoes (perfect for sun-drying)? Chioggia beets?

I think the most surprising fact from Hopp's sidebars essays are that in 1948 (when pesticides were first introduced), farmers used about 50 million pounds of them and suffered about a 7% loss of all their field crops; whereas in 2000 they used nearly a billion pounds of pesticides and still lose 13% of their field crops. Clearly, pesticides are not helping!

Even Camille Kingsolver's essays, recipes, and food plans are fun to read. Most interesting to me was this section of "Eating my Sister's Chickens:"

Even the ancient Hindu populations of India were not complete vegetarians -- though they did not know this. Traditional harvesting techniques always left a substantial amount of insect parts, mostly termite larvae and eggs, in their grain supply. When vegan Hindu populations began moving to England, where food sanitation regulations are stricter, they began to suffer from a high incidence of anemia. Just a tiny amount of meat (even bug parts!) in the diet makes a big difference.

And the recipes all sound delicious! I am especially looking forward to trying the recipe for Asparagus and Morel Bread Pudding. Mmmm mushrooms . . .

Animal, Vegetable, Miracle did not convince me to become a "local food" fanatic -- there are too many non-local foods that I love, particularly sushi and mangoes -- but it did give me a greater appreciation for farmers and the food they provide.

Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: Discussion Questions

I'm still reading Animal, Vegetable, Miracle by Barbara Kingsolver with Steven L. Hopp and Camille Kingsolver.

While I am not reading this for a book club I still enjoy keeping in mind discussion questions as I read, so I thought I'd share some discussion questions (courtesy of Harper Collins -- the publisher):

1. What was your perception of America's food industry prior to reading Animal, Vegetable, Miracle? What did you learn from this book? How has it altered your views on the way food is acquired and consumed?
2. In what ways, if any, have you changed your eating habits since reading Animal, Vegetable, Miracle? Depending on where you live—in an urban, suburban, or rural environment—what other steps would you like to take to modify your lifestyle with regard to eating local?
3. "It had felt arbitrary when we sat around the table with our shopping list, making our rules. It felt almost silly to us in fact, as it may now seem to you. Why impose restrictions on ourselves? Who cares?" asks Kingsolver in Animal, Vegetable, Miracle. Did you, in fact, care about Kingsolver's story and find it to be compelling? Why or why not? What was the family's aim for their year-long initiative, and did they accomplish that goal?
4. The writing of Animal, Vegetable, Miracle was a family affair, with Kingsolver's husband, Steven L. Hopp, contributing factual sidebars and her daughter, Camille Kingsolver, serving up commentary and recipes. Did you find that these additional elements enhanced the book? How so? What facts or statistics in Animal, Vegetable, Miracle surprised you the most?
5. How does each member of the Kingsolver-Hopp family contribute during their year-long eating adventure? Were you surprised that the author's children not only participated in the endeavor but that they did so with such enthusiasm? Why or why not?
6. "A majority of North Americans do understand, at some level, that our food choices are politically charged," says Kingsolver, "affecting arenas from rural culture to international oil cartels and global climate change." How do politics affect America's food production and consumption? What global ramifications are there for the food choices we make?
7. Kingsolver advocates the pleasures of seasonal eating, but she acknowledges that many people would view this as deprivation "because we've grown accustomed to the botanically outrageous condition of having everything always." Do you believe that American society can—or will— overcome the need for instant gratification in order to be able to eat seasonally? How does Kingsolver present this aspect in Animal, Vegetable, Miracle? Did you get the sense that she and her family ever felt deprived in their eating options?
8. Kingsolver points out that eating what we want, when we want comes "at a price." The cost, she says, "is not measured in money, but in untallied debts that will be paid by our children in the currency of extinctions, economic unravelings, and global climate change." What responsibility do we bear for keeping the environment safe for future generations? How does eating locally factor in to this?
9. Kingsolver asserts that "we have dealt to today's kids the statistical hand of a shorter life expectancy than their parents, which would be us, the ones taking care of them." How is our "thrown-away food culture" a detriment to children's health? She also says, "We're raising our children on the definition of promiscuity if we feed them a casual, indiscriminate mingling of foods from every season plucked from the supermarket." What responsibility do parents have to teach their children about the value and necessity of a local food culture?
10. In what ways do Kingsolver's descriptions of the places she visited on her travels—Italy, New England, Montreal, and Ohio—enhance her portrayal of local and seasonal eating?
11. "Marketing jingles from every angle lure patrons to turn our backs on our locally owned stores, restaurants, and farms," says Kingsolver. "And nobody considers that unpatriotic." How much of a role do the media play in determining what Americans eat? Discuss the decline of America's diversified family farms, and what it means for the country as a whole.
12. Animal, Vegetable, Miracle opens with the Kingsolver family’s decision to live in a place that can nourish them, and to eat food grown as close to home as possible for the recorded year. Their reasons for the decision are many, both personal and global, but one is succinctly stated in this carefully researched formula: “If every U.S. citizen ate just one meal a week (any meal) composed of locally and organically raised meats and produce, we would reduce our country’s oil consumption by over 1.1 million barrels of oil every week” (Steven L. Hopp, p. 5). What are the some of the ways fossil fuels are used to produce food, even before transport? Discuss some of the differences, in terms of fuel use and environmental impact, between industrial and small-scale, local agricultural systems? How can a consumer’s choices affect agriculture? What might you predict about our food systems as petroleum grows more costly and scarce?
13. “If you ask a person from Italy, India, Mexico, Japan, or Sweden what food the United States has exported to them, they will all give the same answer and it starts with a Mc.” (p. 155). How would you define a food culture? Can it be packaged and sold? What is required for families to shift away from making decisions about food based largely on convenience? What is your idea of a healthy family food culture?
14. In a chapter about diminishing seed varieties, the book notes: “Six companies—Monsanto, Syngenta, DuPont, Mitsui, Aventis, and Dow—now control 98 percent of the world’s seed sales. These companies invest heavily in research whose purpose is to increase food production capacity only in ways that can be controlled strictly.” (p. 51). Why are disappearing seed collections a matter of concern for the future? What is the role of genetic diversity in natural selection, and artificial selection (breeding programs) How are locally-adapted, native crop varieties important to global food security?
15. “The most difficult requirements [of eating in season] are patience and a pinch of restraint … We’re raising our children on the definition of promiscuity if we feed them a casual, indiscriminate mingling of foods from every season plucked from the supermarket, ignoring how our sustenance is cheapened by wholesale desires” (p. 31). Why do you think U.S. consumers have come to expect access to tomatoes in January and all fruits out of season? What foods are in season now, where you live? How do you know?
16. “In our daily fare, even in school lunches, we broadly justify consumption of tallow-fried animal pulp on the grounds that it’s cheaper than whole grains, fresh vegetables, hormone-free dairy, and such… Budget keepers may be aware of the health tradeoff but still feel compelled to economize on food—in a manner that would be utterly unacceptable if the health risk involved an unsafe family vehicle or a plume of benzene running through a school basement” (p. 115). When you examine your own financial priorities, is quality food near the top, or the bottom? How does it rank against clothing, entertainment, technology, etc.? In ten years, which will matter more: what you’ve put inside your body, or worn on the outside?
17. “People actually did sit in strategy meetings discussing ways to get all those surplus calories into people who neither needed nor wished to consume them. Children have been targeted especially; food companies spend over $10 billion a year selling food brands to kids, and it isn’t broccoli they’re pushing” (p. 15). How does U.S. food marketing relate to the U.S. obesity crisis? Should junk-food advertising and sales be regulated in the same manner as, for example, tobacco and alcohol?
18. “All stories, they say, begin in one of two ways: ‘A stranger came to town,’ or else, ‘I set out upon a journey.’ The rest is all just metaphor and simile. In Moby Dick… the whale was not just an aquatic mammal. In our case, the heirloom turkeys are not just large birds but symbols of a precarious hold on a vanishing honesty” (p. 335). Animal, Vegetable, Miracle is the first full-length narrative nonfiction by an author best known for her novels. How is the structure similar to a novel? How does she use the elements of character, suspense, plot and resolution?
19. “In 1999, over 70 percent of [Federal Farm Bill] subsidies went for just two commodity crops: corn and soybeans. These supports promote industrial-scale production, not small diversified farms, and in fact create an environment of competition in which subsidized commodity producers get help crowding the little guys out of business” (Steven L. Hopp, p. 206). Why do you think the U.S. government offers so little support for environmentally sound growing practices, sustainable techniques, limited pesticide use, etc.? What are the implications for the food supply? How might this change in coming decades?
20. “Multivitamins are obviously a clunky substitute for the countless, subtle combinations of phytochemicals and enzymes that whole foods contain. One way to think of these pills might be as emergency medication for lifestyle-induced malnutrition. I’m coming of age in a society where the majority of adults are medically compromised by that particular disease. Not some, but most; that’s a scary reality for a young person” (Camille Kingsolver, p. 60). What are your sources of information about nutrition? (Family, school, medical professionals, television?) How do you judge their credibility? How would you propose improving nutrition education?
21. “The antipathy in our culture between the urban and non-urban is so durable, it has its own vocabulary: A) city slicker, tenderfoot. B) hick, redneck, hayseed, bumpkin, rube, yokel, clodhopper, hoecake, hillbilly, Dogpatch, Daisy Mae, farmer’s daughter, from the provinces, something out of Deliverance… The list is lopsided. I don’t think there’s much doubt, on either side, as to which class is winning the culture wars” (p. 207). In your experience, how does our culture portray the people who grow food? Are they valued and respected? Why or why not?

I will write more about my thoughts about Animal, Vegetable, Miracle later this week or next week. Though I will say this, the recipes sound delicious and I'm excited to try some of them!