Animal, Vegetable, Miracle (Chapters 9-12)

How could a book about organic and local food possibly be interesting? I asked myself this question several times while staring at the cover of Animal, Vegetable, Miracle before finally starting it. Surprisingly I found it interesting, funny, and easy to read! Barbara Kingsolver's sense of humor made me laugh out loud which got me a lot of weird looks from people around me.
Kingsolver also offers some seriously good insight on why Americans eat the way we do now. One thing she got me thinking about was the role of women in the equation. As we know, fast food and frozen meals are often turned to because families don't have enough time or energy to make an extravagant home-cooked dinner every night. Kingsolver explains that this change is due to women getting jobs. She blames her generation for turning away from the homemaker role and taking on more serious and time-consuming careers. In many households now the mother works as much as the father, and at the end of the day both are too tired to think about making dinner and no one else is there to fill the role. It is much easier to just order in or pick something up on the way home. She's not saying that families and their health are falling apart because of women, just that we are losing touch with "the art of cooking."
I think the most interesting part of the whole book is the section when she talks about dairy and our relationship with it. Most animals stop drinking milk once their are grown, but we continue to do so despite the fact that most Americans are lactose intolerant (even if they don't know it). One item that Kingsolver discusses really caught my attention: cheese. I never knew or even imagined that someone could make cheese in their own home! Despite the plastic wrapping in the grocery store, I didn't think of cheese as a processed food, after all it's on the safe outer edges away from the aisles of junk food. Kingsolver learns how to make her own cheese which she claims can actually be made faster than a cobbler. I think it's amazing how easy it is to make, but it seems to be so uncommon in society today.
In another chapter, Kingsolver visits her Amish friends at their farm. They produce all of their own food and only have to purchase flour and sugar from town, and occasionally pretzels as a treat. I really respect the family and their distance from the endless unnatural foods produced. Kingsolver also talks about how it's nearly impossible for local farmers to sell dairy products because of strict regulations. She believes that this is a way to eliminate small farms as competition to the large corporations who dominate the market.
Kingsolver's exploration into the food industry was insightful and entertaining. I learned a lot from her experiences and thought about things that I never have thought about before. Animal, Vegetable, Miracle is a book filled with countless interesting facts and stories. I enjoyed reading it, and I think anyone would get something out of it. I've learned not to judge food books so harshly because this was a really good one! Make sure you check it out :)
-Melissa