Animal, Vegetable, Miracle

Sorry for the hiatus. Lots of year end activities closing out a busy 2007. 2008 will certainly be an interesting year. Very interesting. More on that later.

I received an excellent book about a month ago; "Animal, Vegetable, Miracle" by Barbara Kingsolver and I'm about half way through it. The book chronicles the author's family's attempts to consume all food grown locally. Everything from chickens to cucumbers. I love the book. The author does a wonderful job weaving in recipes and facts about US agriculture and really ties all the culinary pieces together. If you like to read, if you like to eat well, and you're interested in the truth about US agriculture then you most definitely should pick up this book.

Ever since joining a Community supported farmer back in Virginia I find it extremely difficult to buy "produce" from stores like Safeway. Take a tomato for example. If you've tasted one from a local farmer's market or you've grown some yourself and compared it to one from Safeway which one would you take home? Hell, tomatoes at Safeway don't taste like tomatoes! If you've never bought produce from a farmer's market you ought to, not only are you missing out on seriously delicious nutrient packed produce, but you're also not putting money into the hands of someone who CARES about the land they are farming on and CARES about their customers. Check out localharvest.org for farmers in your area.

My family and I are joining a CSA again this year and we're looking forward to taking home the wonderful products the local farmers bring to the market. We've also been buying almost everything organic especially meat and diary. You should too. It is truly the patriotic thing to do. Not only is supporting local organic farmers better for you and the farmer it is better for the land. The very land our kids will be living on for the rest of their lives.

Speaking of farming, I am disgusted and find it disrespectful to animals what the large agri-business corporations put them through to feed humans. It's one thing for us to eat animals, but it's another for us to jam hundreds even thousands of them into a dark warehouse sitting in their own excrement and injected with hormones and antibiotics to keep them growing and "healthy" so we can enjoy a steak.

Come on people, do you think this is beneficial to us? The only ones benefiting from this are companies like Monsanto. Beef from a free range cow with no antibiotics or growth hormones is more tender, tastes better, has MORE nutrients, and has LESS bad cholesterol. Why wouldn't you choose meat from a free-range cow? I know this, I've had both (yes, back when I didn't know better I would buy whatever meat I could find in the store). My family and I exclusively eat meat from free range animals and try to do from local farms as well. It is the right thing to do.

Recently, I heard some people are worried about eating meat from cloned animals. Which is already creepy as it sounds, but why isn't there this kind of concern with meat from animals experiencing the kind of conditions I just mentioned? Why do we allow this kind of meat into our households? I guess it's true, ignorance is bliss.

Anyway, if you are interested in the book "Animal, Vegetable, Miracle" I've included a link to Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/Animal-Vegetable-Miracle-Year-Food/dp/0060852550/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1200781982&sr=8-1

Be healthy! Eat and drink local!