Eating cookies while reading 'Animal, Vegetable, Miracle'

Zucchini never tasted so sweet -- because by zucchini, I mean zucchini chocolate chip cookies! (PDF)

That recipe I got from "Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life," a yearlong memoir of sorts by Barbara Kingsolver that documents her family's life of trying to eat as locally as possible in southern Appalachia.

And they ate good food! Barbara brags about how she got kids to eat zucchini with these cookies: "They asked for seconds. Ha!" Of course, that's not exactly surprising when you consider that the butter, honey, brown sugar and chocolate chips outweighed the locally grown zucchini content by about 3 to 1....

Why did Barbara decide to eat local? The same reasons lots of other people are trying to eat more locally these days. Basically, people are developing a distaste for pesticide-ridden tomatoes that were shipped here via fossil fuels from thousands of miles away and taste anything but fresh and yummy. People also don't like their tax dollars going to farm subsidies that support big farm corporations growing genetically modified corn, which is then used to produce high-fructose corn syrup that gets sold to us in soda and fast food, making us fat and sick.

So the reasons to eat local are rather doom and gloom, but the book itself is fun and tasty. After all, Barbara is not a purist like Alisa and James of 100-Mile Diet fame, who promptly lost 15 pounds when they started their super-strict diet. Barbara's family grows and gets local everything they possibly can, but makes some exceptions for things like organic fair trade coffee and of course, chocolate chips.

The work sounds rather arduous at times. I mean, this family tends a rather large farm-garden, as well as a small flock of poultry. That said, Barbara's take is that it's enjoyable work that lets her enjoy the outdoors and develop a useful hobby while connecting her with community and family. Plus, there's a certain hilarity and satisfaction in getting her turkeys to mate and produce little turkeys naturally -- apparently no easy feat!

I found "Animal, Vegetable, Miracle" inspiring, even though I'm not exactly inspired to keep a chicken coop on my apartment balcony. We just live in very different places, Barbara and I. Barbara does a lot of farming and canning and jamming, which is cool if you enjoy it, but not as necessary for Angelenos who can get fresh local produce at the farmers market year-round.

That said, I tried a rather lax 100-mile diet awhile back and have pretty much stuck to it since! Tomatoes are yummier fresh from the farmers market.

As for gardening: The only things I've grown successfully in my balcony garden so far are herbs, but I have high hopes for next spring.... In the meantime, check out Jenn and Nat's urban lawn garden in Santa Monica for inspiration.

What I really need to work on now are my cooking skills. I'm great at salads and sandwiches and, um, bowls of cereal that I can just add soy milk to, but not so much at anything else. Sure, the zucchini cookies turned out, but then it's pretty hard to make a dense combo of sugar, honey and chocolate chips taste bad.

My eggs in a nest (PDF) were passable but not spectacular (left); my veggie frittata (PDF) barely edible. The Asian veggie rolls (PDF) turned out pretty well, though -- perhaps because there wasn't too much actual cooking involved. I need a local cooking class.

But I'm a proud member of the local eating movement. Join me!

Thanks to Lisa for sharing the book with me.

Photos by Siel

Comments

[Kate]

I loved Animal, Vegetable, Miracle (well, I like Kingsolver in general), and particularly appreciated her awareness that her family's choices came from a specific set of circumstances--she clearly wasn't suggesting that everyone grow all their own food. But it was a great look at how such a pursuit could work, and it made me want my own house (so that I can grow fruits and vegetables and have a clothesline) even more than I already do.

[m]

The thing is that there ARE people that would love to partake in growing their own food and being more self-sufficient in LA who grew up with a family backyard garden and going out on treks to the mountains to pick berries (like me!!). However, this is infinitely more difficult than heading to the farmers market in LA. With a decent paying job, but no where close enough to what is needed to buy a house in LA, you pretty much end up with an apartment and no land (unless you luck out and find one of the few rental properties where they don't mind you ripping up their plants) which makes growing food pretty difficult, beside the pots of herbs that can be shoved onto a windowsill or on your balcony if you have one. Sometimes seeing all the empty lots in the city filled with concrete parking lots or fake grass or even just "decorative" plants drives me crazy because I see them as potential community gardens which do a lot more for a community than just grow food. One of my friends once read about an apartment building someplace where they drained the pool and turned it into a garden, which is an awesome idea and probably puts that space to much more use than the pool did.

Also, even with just having farmers markets, there is room for canning and jamming! The farmers markets are still seasonal, so canning and dehydrating food comes in handy when those things aren't in season. Yes you can pick up plenty of dried fruit other places, but this way you know your dried apricots weren't shipped all of the way from Turkey.

When it comes down to it, if I am going to spend a lot of time and effort on something, my food comes in as much higher priority than most other things because food is necessary for life. Video games, tv and movies, not so much. I just wish there was a way to more easily marry this idea with living in LA.

[Lisa]

You're welcome, Siel, and good to see your post on the book.

Similarly, I also recommend "Hope's Edge, The Next Diet for a Small Planet," by Frances Moore Lappe and Anna Lappe.

[tarbubble]

super-easy semi-local veggie frittata:

California olive oil (not much of this produced in soCal).

onion, garlic, assorted veggies (mushrooms, broccoli, carrot shreds, bell pepper, spinach, whatever), cheese (or fake cheese if that's your thing).

black pepper.

eggs - scramble them in a cup first. add the cheese if using.

dice/slice/chop your veggies.

heat a skillet on medium heat. this is one of the rare dishes where i use a nonstick pan. swish a little olive oil in the pan and saute your onions & black pepper until the onions are soft. then add the garlic and whatever veggies you've elected to put in. saute until soft. if they start to brown up before getting soft, add a little tiny splash of water, just enough to get them steaming. the water will cook off.

once the veggies are mostly cooked, pour the egg/cheese mix over them. it should really be no more than 1 inch deep. turn down the heat and let it sit for a few minutes - you can check it periodically by turning at the edge or by just sticking in your spatula and testing the texture on the bottom. if it isn't cooking fast enough for you, turn the heat back up to medium but check more often so it doesn't burn.

once it has set on the bottom, you can try to flip it. if it doesn't flip cleanly, no biggie. just flip the pieces and press it back together as best you can. cook it to your desired done-ness.

eat with salsa or whatever sauce you think tastes good, or just eat it dry. hope this turns out well for you. it took me a while to learn to cook, so i like to share what i can when i can.

[Siel]

tarbubble -- So sweet of you to share your recipe! I unfortunately missed the farmers' market this morning, but will try making the frittata next week --

m -- I still have high hopes about my balcony garden. It's just that I really seem to have a black thumb -- I try, but things don't grow. Instead they die and make me sad. Will try again though. Some of my friends have balcony gardens and say it's not that much work and really manage to produce quite a bit of stuff. Why I can't do the same is a bit of a puzzle to me. I think people who grow stuff successfully have some sort of secret they're not sharing --