I’ve started a new book: Animal, Vegetable, Miracle by Barbara Kingsolver. I’m about 50 pages in, and I’m already eager to yap about it.

I also updated the queue with new titles I’m excited about. Check it out and give me a holler if there’s a book there you want to read soon and/or discuss.

Ooh boy was it a long time ago that I was first swept away by a Barbara Kingsolver novel. The Bean Trees, way back in 1988. Bean Trees then Pigs in Heaven then Animal Dreams. In 1998, her epic Poisonwood Bible blew my mind and catapulted Kingsolver to the upper echelons of my favorite writers list.

Years ago Rusty recommended Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, Kingsolver’s chronicle of her family’s year-long experiment in eating more responsibly. They move full-time to her husband’s farm in southern Appalachia committed to eating only locally grown/locally raised food, including what they can produce on the farm themselves, for one full year. They allow themselves just the merest of exceptions: coffee, olive oil, grains, and a few spices. The book was on my maybe someday list for a long time.

It was Demon Copperhead that bumped it up to “read now.” More specifically, it was a few lovely passages buried in that 560-page tome that romanced me and made me want to live on the Kingsolver family farm. Passages like this one, where Demon is ruminating on his time in Knoxville, Tennessee after living in rural Appalachia (Lee County, Virginia) his entire life:

I made my peace with the place, but never went a day without feeling around for things that weren’t there, the way your tongue pushes into the holes where you’ve lost teeth. I don’t just mean cows, or apple trees, it runs deeper. Weather for instance. Air, the way it smells from having live things breathing into it, grass and trees and I don’t know what, creatures of the soil. Sounds, I missed most of all. There was noise, but nothing behind it. I couldn’t get used to the blankness where there should have been bird gossip morning and evening, crickets at night, the buzz saw of cicadas in August. A rooster always sounding off somewhere, even dead in the middle of Jonesville. It’s like the movie background music. Notice it or don’t, but if the volume goes out, the movie has no heart. I’d oftentimes have to stop myself and ask what season it was. I never realized what was holding me to my place on the planet of earth: that soundtrack. That, and leaf colors and what’s blooming in the roadside ditches this week, wild swept peas, wild sweet peas or purple ironweed or goldenrod. And stars. A sky as dark as sleep, not this hazy pinkish business, I’m saying blind man’s black. For a lot of us, that’s medicine. Required for the daily reboot.

I’m only about 50 pages into Animal, Vegetable so far, but I’m already enjoying it. Barbara, her husband Steven, and their daughters Camille (18) and Lily (9) have made it from Arizona to Virginia, settled in at the farm, and chosen an April start date for their self-imposed challenge. They’ve finalized the rules they’ll follow, collaborated on their first locavore shopping list, and visited the local farmer’s market even though the weather was miserable. In solidarity with the eight vendors braving the fierce cold, Barbara decides she’ll buy something from each one of them. They end up buying green onions, turkey sausage, lamb, baby lettuce, black walnuts, and rhubarb.

On Saturday morning at the market as we ducked into the wind and started back toward our car, I clutched my bags with a heady sense of accomplishment. We’d found a lot more than we’d hoped for. We chatted a little more with our farmer friends who were closing up shop behind us, ready to head home too. Back to warm kitchens, keeping our fingers crossed in dogwood winter for the fruits of the coming year.

I’m grateful to be along for the ride! But oof — now I have to open my eyes to yet another systemic ill I feel powerless to affect. The powers that be — food industry titans, big oil, and the politicians they lobby for policies that make them richer — they sure do have us all in a headlock. The farmers they harm are well aware; sadly most of the rest of us are pretty clueless, especially those of us as lazy as I am about what I consume.

If I had a book club, I’d want to talk to folks about maybe committing to adopting one good shopping/eating habit by the time we finish this book. Wouldn’t that be cool? I don’t have the discipline to become a hardcore locavore, but I’m thinking about things like this.

But here’s all I’m doing today: noting the provenance of everything I eat, and throwing out a few ideas I’ll ponder further as I read on.

MORNING

• Peet’s Coffee, House Blend. From “Latin America.” Peet’s makes some bold statement on its website about sustainable sourcing, and it’s easy to believe them because, well, I want to! But I suppose I should dig deeper…
• Lucerne Dairy Farms half-n-half. Distributed from nearby Pleasanton according to the package – but where are the cows? Lucerne Milk is a Canadian company that touts its Canadian cows; Lucerne Foods is an American company that says its dairy products come from the Lucerne Foods Dairy Network. Both are owned by Safeway. Hmm…
• Natureripe blueberries from Salinas, which is just under 100 miles away. (But it’s January. What’s up blueberries growing in Salinas in January?)
• Sunbelle strawberries, all the way from Mexico.
• Straus Greek yogurt, from Straus Family Creamery in beautiful Petaluma, CA, less than 50 miles away.
• Granola from Whole Foods, no brand on the packaging and I imagine locally made, though not sure where the ingredients might be from.

LUNCH

• Leftover bibimbap – from an Jong Ga House here in Oakland, but no idea where they get their ingredients! There wasn’t much left, so I also threw in:
• Kirkland brand rice – maybe grown in California?
• Scallions from Farmer Joe’s – apparently from Mexico
• Organic Valley egg – local, I think: “Organic Valley’s food is produced on small organic family farms located throughout the United States. Our cooperative consists of nearly 1600 small organic family farms who share a commitment to organic agriculture and producing nourishing food in a way that is good for our farmers, the animals they care for, and the earth.”

DINNER

• Homemade veggie burgers – I made the “meat” yesterday and didn’t note where the ingredients came from, but there were many: tempeh, rice, oats, mushrooms, beets, nutritional yeast, Worcestershire sauce, and more. (It’s a pretty awesome recipe from The Spruce try it!)
• Buns and fixins – ketchup, mustard, mayo, pickles, lettuce, tomato…
• Homefried potatoes – potatoes, onions, yellow bell pepper…
• And a beer – a Yuza Blonde from Dokkaebier, which is a Bay Area brewery. The yuzu is probably from California, but where are the other ingredients from?

TO ponder

The many mysteries of where all my dinner ingredients originated makes the one-year Animal, Vegetable challenge sound ridiculously difficult. I can’t wait to get some good reading time (it’s supposed to rain this weekend!) so I can see how they do it.

With the goal of adopting one good new food habit by the time I finish the book, I’m putting down a few ideas based on my meal notes above.

• Pay the extra money for Straus or other local dairy instead of settling for mystery milk products
• Check the produce packaging before you buy it — and only buy produce grown 100 miles away or closer
• Dig deeper into Peet’s and Organic Valley to confirm they’re brands I can support guilt-free

There’s so much I could do better, but I know I’m only good at baby steps. What about you?