« Quotable Friday : What If? | Main | The Adoration of Jenna Fox: A Co-Blog with Eisha of 7-Imp »
July 19, 2008
The Neverending Salad, or Why I Believe Barbara Kingsolver May Be Dangerous Even Though I Don’t Believe She is Screwing Up America
After many years of debating the potential merits of signing up for one of those deals where you pay in the spring to get a box of produce every week from a farm during the growing season, I finally decided to take the plunge and used part of my tax return to enroll to get produce from Windy Meadow Farms this year.
There are two reasons I did this:
#1-Deb raved about the produce she got from Windy Meadow Farms last year in her weekly kidsoutandabout.com newsletters.
#2-I read Animal, Vegetable, Miracle by Barbara Kingsolver.
In his book 100 People Who Are Screwing Up America, Bernard Goldberg lists Barbara Kingsolver as offender #73. I don’t think Kingsolver’s screwing up America, but I do think she may be a bit dangerous. I read Animal, Vegetable, Miracle on the recommendation of several friends, I went on about the book so much that my boss read it, and now my boss and I are BOTH growing vegetables in our yards and getting produce from Windy Meadow Farms. Do you see how subtly Kingsolver works her magic?
The produce from Windy Meadow Farms is, indeed, awesome. I get two big bags of it every Wednesday—potatoes, radishes (and, wow, I think I ate more radishes this year than I have eaten in my entire life previously), lettuces, spinach, herbs, zucchini, summer squash, cucumbers. I have been able to eat ice cream whenever I want this summer because outside of that, all I can eat is vegetables and the fruit I keep insisting on buying at the farmer’s market on Saturdays. Sometimes I feel like I’m so full of vitamins that my eyes must be glowing. I’ve been learning lots of new ways to prepare and eat vegetables, too, from dreamy Mark Bittman in my new second-favorite cookbook, How to Cook Everything Vegetarian. (First favorite: How to Cook Everything by Mark Bittman. Duh.) Mostly, though, I make salad. Lots and lots and lots of salad. I eat salad almost every day, but since the lettuces and other fixins change with what happens to be around when I make my salads, I don’t get tired of them. Currently, I’m eating a salad of romaine lettuce, the neverending radishes, sweet onion, cucumber, sliced almonds, and sunflower seeds. Yum. The salad I finished yesterday had red leaf lettuce, the neverending radishes, sweet peas (out of my backyard garden), string beans (also out of the backyard garden), sliced almonds, and sunflower seeds. (Sliced almonds and sunflower seeds are almost as common as lettuce in my salads.) Also yum.
At some point this summer, I will be getting beats from Windy Meadow Farms. I believe my exposure to beats has been limited to eating one pickled one once. Mr. Bittman tells me I will love them. Barbara Kingsolver says so, too.
Books mentioned:
Bittman, Mark. How to Cook Everything: Simple Recipes for Great Food. NY: Macmillan, 1998. (HC: 9780028610108, PB: 9780471789185, and HUZZAH, a 10th Anniversary HC edition coming out in November: 9780764578656)
Bittman, Mark. How to Cook Everything Vegetarian: Simple Meatless Recipes for Great Food. Hoboken, NJ: Wiley, 2007. (HC: 9780764524837)
Goldberg, Bernard. 100 People Who Are Screwing Up America (and Al Franken is #37). NY: HarperCollins, 2005. (HC: 9780060761288)
Kingsolver, Barbara, with Steven L. Hopp and Camille Kingsolver. Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life. NY: HarperCollins, 2007. (HC: 9780060852559, PB: 9780060852566)
Posted by adrienne at July 19, 2008 10:15 PM
Comments
Wow. Now, my family tells me, if I may say so myself, that I make yummy, creative salads (a compliment I've never understood -- it's not hard to just play and throw stuff in and try new things), but YOURS sound flat-out awesome. I think I drooled when I read what you were eating as you typed this. Sunflower seeds. Never tried that.
Beets. Mmmm. Those poor, unloved vegetables. "Beets are the most intense of all vegetables." Isn't that the first line of Jitterbug Perfume?
I got Kingsolver's book for my husband but haven't read it yet. How does Goldberg think Kingsolver is screwing up America? I can guess what he might have to say, but can you elaborate a bit? I'm curious. Of course, I could always do a web search.
Salads: Scrumdangdiddlyumptious, as my husband would say.
Posted by: jules at July 20, 2008 07:54 AM
Beets are awesome, and the water they're cooked in turns the most beautiful red. I need to get those Mark Bittman books; they sound great. Another wicked cool cookbook is Deborah Madison's "Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone." Just yesterday I spotted a patch in my yard that could be a vegetable garden, but we have a problem with deer.
Posted by: Susan T. at July 20, 2008 09:27 AM
The other book I would enthusiastically recommend is In Defense of Food by Michael Pollan. One of his premises is that it isn't necessarily the fat/cholesterol stuff that is bad for you but rather the preservatives that have entered our food. He goes on at length about the political/scientific reasons for why that happened but the bottom line is if what you are buying would not be recognized by your great-grandmother as food, it probably isn't and you should probably not eat it. Having said that, I don't really want to see a radish any time soon.
Posted by: Terri at July 20, 2008 10:47 AM
Sometimes your eyes DO glow.I'm here to say there is no 666 on your head:)No 999 either!
Posted by: momster at July 20, 2008 11:11 AM
Jules, It's because of an op-ed piece she wrote after 9/11:
http://www.commondreams.org/views01/0925-08.htm
The guy thinks Kingsolver shouldn't be encouraging her child to question things. He's an idiot.
Sunflower seeds RULE!
Susan, I have rabbits around here, but we've called a truce and everyone seems happy at the moment.
Terri, I FINALLY used up the radishes.
Momster, I was hoping it was true about my eyes.
Posted by: adrienne at July 20, 2008 11:46 AM
Hey, have fun with your veg box! I really love mine, though in the UK, the beets... can get out of hand, as can most of the root veg! I have even learned to eat beets raw -- nice gory tongue effects, and trust me, a couple of hours later, you'll remember you ate them! (Be prepared to be startled.)
Good for you, with your glowing eyes. Definitely a free pass to all the ice cream you can eat, and all the dangerous writers you can read.
Posted by: TadMack at July 20, 2008 01:39 PM
TadMack, Now I've GOT to try eating a raw beet.
Posted by: adrienne at July 20, 2008 11:56 PM
Susan, we LOVE Deborah Madison in our house, and we've got that great vegetarian cookbook you mention. Woot for Madison!
Thanks for the link, Adrienne.
Posted by: jules at July 21, 2008 08:50 AM
Wow, Adrienne. What a great piece. Shoot, I thought Goldberg was going to comment that she's screwing up America because of her food book. Der.
That piece brought tears to my eyes. Pretty powerful stuff.
Posted by: jules at July 21, 2008 08:58 AM
Bwaa-ha-ha! Another convert! Vegetables are cool! They will not be denied! We're all going to return to farming--even if we have to grow plants in our bathtubs! Barbara Kingsolver is leader of the squash!
Posted by: Robin Brande at July 24, 2008 10:14 PM
Between the vegetables and Lost, I don't know why I need anything else in this life.
Posted by: adrienne at July 25, 2008 07:50 AM