Animal, Vegetable, Miracle

http://www.localharvest.org My former roommate, Jenn (with two n's) is reading Barbara Kingsolver's book, Animal, Vegetable, Miracle. I am reading it with her a couple of chapters at a time. Today I include my insights from chapters 1-2. The premise is one family eating only local, in-season foods for one year. One true fact is from p. 4: "The average food item on a U.S. grocery shelf has traveled farther than most families go on their annual vacations." One thing I learned that was eye opening was that the reason our American school year goes from Labor Day to mid-June was to free up children to help on the farm in the all important harvest months of summer! Wow! That says a lot! We Americans have grown quite accustomed to eating processed foods and/or foods that have traveled pretty darn far to reach our grocery shelves. We have succumb to eating frozen vegetables when they are out of season even if they don't taste very good! We are a culture that doesn't know how to wait for what's good!
This family started their food experiment in early spring, right after the asparagus was ready. This book also includes recipes consisting of foods that are in season for each month of the year! Jenn & I both will be attempting some of these recipes and leaving our comments here!