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Title: Coming Home to Eat: The Pleasures and Politics of Local Foods by Gary Paul Nabhan ISBN: 0-393-02017-7 Publisher: W.W. Norton & Company Pub. Date: November, 2001 Format: Hardcover Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $24.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.6 (5 reviews)
Rating: 5
Summary: Sonoran Thoreau
Comment: Gary Paul Nabham has really put together a beautiful and inspiring apologia for the emerging local, cultural, slow food philosophy. Like a simmering stew, the book bubbles over with diveristy, as the author runs in and out of the poetic, historical, cultural and academic. Whereas others reviewers have found fault with the seemingly "unfocused" nature of the book, I was happily entertained. From cover to cover, the subject matter remains fresh and suprising. Some of the foods you can expect to encounter include boiled venison, baked rabbit, grilled corvina, tomatillo consommes, squash souffles, tepary bean burritos wrapped in mesquite tortillas, freshly picked and lightly steamed lamb quarters, purslane, tansy mustards, cress, prickly pear punch, mistletoe and Mormon tea. You will encounter organpipe cactus jam, stewed pumpkin, pinole, creosote bush salve, jojoba oil, damiana tea and pit roasted agaves - or "tatemada" - an ancient tradition the author and some local Indians revived, among others. Although the book runs thin on recipes (there are none), it liberally bastes philosophy: "If food is the sumptuous sea of energy we dive into and swim through every day, I have lived but one brief moment leaping like a flying fish and catching a glimmering glimpse of that sea roiling all around us. And then just as quickly, I splashed back beneath its surface, to be overmore immersed in what effortlessly buoys us up." When Nabham is not introducing you old, now by-and-large forgotten foods and the cultures they come from, he is reminding you of the pitfalls of the emerging global marketplace: for example, "the average American brings home nearly 3,300 pounds of foodstuffs each year for his or her consumption...much of it never eaten. It is nearly two-and-a-half time the weight of what most of our contempories in other regions of the world consume, and much of it comes from their farmlands." He also reminds us that, with each passing season, we are losing more top soil, more biodiversity, and more of the foods that help us keep us strong and healthy. A very important book that is also a pleasure to read. On a scale of deliciousness, I give it a peach cobbler.
Rating: 3
Summary: Unfocused
Comment: This book wasn't quite what I expected. Nabhan promises a sensual tale of a year with local foods and instead wanders around from tales of anti-WTO battles in Seattle to genetically engineered crops in Illinois to monarch butterflies in Mexico. While I assume this is designed to show us the interconnectivity of man to all species, it makes for a seriously unfocused narrative. While the sections of the book are nominally divided by seasons, it's hard to find a thread that weaves it's way all the way through this crazy quilt of a book. It's also light on sensuality, although perhaps I was subconsciously envisioning tales of eating local foods off the smooth, supple thighs of young Papago women. I kept wanting him to cut loose in the narrative, break some rules, slash some tires, shotgun some processed food displays instead of meekly writing letters to Congressmen and the FDA. Have you ever seen what a 12-guage shell can do to a nice display of Hostess products?
Although a bit restrained, Nabhan and his crew fight many admirable battles and he has some insights on the raping of the seas by multi-national seafood harvesters and the danger of genetically engineered crops. He believes that we can heal ourselves and the planet by disengaging from the 99 cent value meal and reconnecting with the earth and its creatures. That's assuming the 280 million people now crowding the country are even remotely interested in such a proposition, and something tells me they are not. Nor is this book likely to ignite their hidden passions for local foods.
Rating: 5
Summary: Important Insights
Comment: Nabham delivers important insights on the health our nation's food supply. Combining hard facts with eloquent personal narrative and sensual descriptions, he creates a captivating text that is accessible to all readers.
Nabham brings forth some very salient (and often frightening) points about the destruction of arable farm lands, the uncertainty of genetically engineered seed stocks, the loss of native biodiversity, and the damaging effects of a modern diet, among other topics.
I recommend the book highly and ask the author to follow up with a very specific series of guidelines for readers who want to take steps to eat locally and improve our nation's agricultural sustainability.
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Title: Enduring Seeds: Native American Agriculture and Wild Plant Conservation by Gary Paul Nabhan, Wendell Berry, Miguel A. Altieri ISBN: 0816522596 Publisher: University of Arizona Press Pub. Date: October, 2002 List Price(USD): $19.95 |
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Title: Fatal Harvest: The Tragedy of Industrial Agriculture by Andrew Kimbrell ISBN: 1559639415 Publisher: Island Press Pub. Date: July, 2002 List Price(USD): $45.00 |
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Title: Slow Food(The Case For Taste) by Carlo Petrini, William McCuaig, John Updike ISBN: 0231128444 Publisher: Columbia University Press Pub. Date: 15 May, 2003 List Price(USD): $24.95 |
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Title: The Farm As Natural Habitat: Reconnecting Food Systems With Ecosystems by Dana L. Jackson, Laura L. Jackson, Nina Leopold Bradley ISBN: 1559638478 Publisher: Island Press Pub. Date: April, 2002 List Price(USD): $25.00 |
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Title: Cultures of Habitat: On Nature, Culture, and Story by Gary Paul Nabhan ISBN: 1887178961 Publisher: Counterpoint Press Pub. Date: October, 1998 List Price(USD): $17.00 |
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