Another excerpt from "Animal Vegetable Miracle," Barbara Kingsolver's 2007 book.

Another excerpt from "Animal Vegetable Miracle," Barbara Kingsolver's 2007 book. This one comes from the same paragraph we visited last time, but I wanted to make a separate point:

Crop failure is a possibility all farmers understand, and one reason why the traditional farmstead raised many products, both animal and vegetable, unlike the monocultures now blanketing our continent's midsection. [p. 54]

The notion of crop failure — hell, the notions of crops at all, as opposed to consumer goods sold under plastic wrap in supermarkets, has longer standing in most Americans' thinking — came to me in a new way during the hurricane last month.

Another bite from "Animal Vegetable Miracle," Barbara Kingsolver's 2007 book:

Another snippet from Barbara Kingsolver's "Animal Vegetable Miracle":

... To the extent that it is understood, this [American] cuisine is widely assumed to be the property of the elite. Granted, in restaurants it can sometimes be pricey, but the do-it-yourself version is not. I am not sure how so many Americans came to believe only our wealthy are capable of honoring a food aesthetic. Anyone who thinks so should have a gander at the kitchens of working-class immigrants from India, Mexico, anywhere really. Cooking at home is cheaper than buying packaged foods or restaurant meals of comparable quality. Cooking good food is mostly a matter of having the palate and the skill. [page 31]

As in my first installment of this series, I am completely down with the author in spirit and intention, but I have a quibble.

To me, the foremost bar is neither palate nor skill. It is willingness to make the effort, which she almost gets to in her next paragraph when she raises "attitude."

Cooking for one's family and oneself has definite, quantifiable benefits — nutritional, relational, financial — but to get them, we'd have to bother, and it's just easier to hit the drive-thru.

Too many Americans think it's the same thing, and if so, they'd rather relax. The thing is, it isn't so.

As the left column of this page touts, I've written a book, "Fat Boy Thin Man," and will be releasing it within weeks. 

Yesterday, I sent out a Facebook notice for the book's group page, and you, of course, are most welcome. Last time I checked, 145 friends had signed up, which I'm most grateful for. (Yes, I've been checking regularly. I'm like that.)

Here's the FB link.

A friend tipped me off to the blog of Dr. Joe Wright, writer-in-residence for the William B. Castle Society of Harvard Medical School, and I'm glad she did. The jumping off point for this post is Jamie Oliver, the young-ish chef cum nutritional crusader from Britain.

He makes several points, many of them really cogent. Such as...

Tim Weiner, a longtime j-star, wrote the New York Times's obituary of Alexander Haig. It is impressively illuminating, entertaining, and well-written.

I would consider myself a success if I could grow up to be like Dan Phillips of Huntsville, Texas.

Joe Romm makes a point I love in an essay today at Climate Progress. 

It does not do to call those on the other side of the climate-change question "skeptics." As he says, they are not skeptics at all — their minds are made up. 

Tom Friedman's column yesterday was filed from Costa Rica, perhaps the globe's best example of how to prosper without exploiting native resources.

You're no doubt familiar with Costa Rica's many wonders, both natural and governmental. In a country roughly the size of West Virginia, it has rainforest, an active volcano, and both Caribbean and Pacific shores. It has decades of stable, democratic leadership, a literacy rate above 90 percent, and protects more than a quarter of its land for conservation.