The Feast Nearby

I did it. I bought and read another book about owning chickens. Andy better watch out because a chicken coop is totally going up in the backyard, sooner or later.

I think Amazon recommended The Feat Nearby to me a while back; probably late last summer when I was busy searching It's the memoir of an out of work food editor (and as a pretty loyal reader of Fine Cooking and Cooking Light, I'm all over that) who moves to her small cabin in southwest Michigan to reorganize her life. With her poodle and parrot as her companions, she lives frugally, but focused on eating locally.  

While Mather's essays, which follow a full year of life in her 650 square ft. cabin (where the nearest stoplight is *gasp!* eight miles away. . .  cynical Ada feels the need to point out that she lives 53-ish miles from the nearest stoplight) are written in lovely prose, the essays are just that: essays. This is no how-to book, this is a chance to wax poetic on chickens, raspberry jam, and the single life.

One thing I was disappointed by was the lack of concrete detail about how exactly she got by on a $40 a week food budget. And frankly, $40 a week for food . . . for one person? As someone who capped her weekly food budget at $30 immediately after college, I'm just not that impressed. Despite what we're lead to believe, it is not that hard to both eat cheaply and well, just buy lots of dried goods - lentils, rice, pasta and peanut butter are your friend - and make sure you eat everything (i.e. produce) before it goes bad. Now, if Mather was living on $40 a week, full stop, then we'd truly have a "hold the presses" sort of thing going on. Hrumph! 

What was I saying?

Right, details. . .

While, I fully enjoyed the book for what it was, with a tagline like "how I lost my job, buried a marriage, and found my way by keeping chickens, foraging, preserving, bartering, and eating locally," I wanted some details. I didn't just want to hear in passing that you set up some strawberry preserves for fresh produce swapping system with your neighbor.

She talks a lot about carefully planning her yearly food supply (which included canning 50 pints of diced tomatoes!), but never gives many specifics. Call me crazy, but I want to see an appendix with information about exact amounts you canned, dehydrated, froze, etc. to get yourself through 12 months.

At the end of the essay she includes a set of recipes related to the essay's topics. We've tried out a couple of the recipes and they are yummy.  I made the lamb and apricot tagine to use up the leg of lamb I picked up on sale after Easter last year and just the other night I followed her directions for stuffing a squash. They're both winners and they make me anxious to try out her other recipes. That said, her directions for yogurt proved disappointing, but then I'm just not sure you're supposed to make yogurt when it's -3F outside. So I'm stalking up that failure to me and not her.

If you're looking for a homey, comforting read (the woman knits, how can you not love her?) for long winter evenings, this is a great choice . . . especially if you have a penchant for reading cooking magazines anyway.


 
Full disclosure: I did not pay for this book because my fabulous brother gave me a B&N gift certificate for Christmas. (Score!) The opinions expressed in this review are my own and I received no compensation for this review. 

P.S. Happy Groundhog's Day! 6 more weeks of winter where you are? We *always* have six more weeks of winter after February 2, so this day's a total cop-out in northern Minnesota. 

Read more ...

All Around Locavore

My parents did what they could to raise their children as independent thinkers. We ate mostly vegetarian fare while growing up and we didn’t have a t.v. Consequently, as a teenager, I ate up popular culture like it was going out of style. I loved leafing through teen magazines and looking at all the beautiful photo shoots of beauty products. I started to judge things by their brand name. In college, my penchant for brand names shifted towards something my roommate liked to call “importitis.” While it’s true that my Toyota was probably actually made in the U.S., I do tend to get a little gushy about anything that came from across the pond: especially HobNobs. Mmmm. . . .

Lately, there’s been a lot of talk about what we put in and on our bodies. Every time my book group meets, it seems someone else has read Animal, Vegetable, Miracle or something by Michael Pollan. Today Food Inc. showed up from Netflix. The general consensus seems to be that we should eat locally and seasonally and try to wean ourselves from overlooked luxuries like fresh raspberries in January. Oh, and the petroleum products? Those should go.

With the abundance of blueberries out in the woods and a garden that’s holding its own, it’s easy to catch on to eating locally. But when you live in the woods, internet shopping seems inevitable. And sometimes I worry that a little too much of my hard earned cash goes to little website that starts with an “A” and ends with an “N” and has “dot com” in it. When you’re shopping solely by price tag, there has to be some sort of cost.

So I’m glad to see so many great (pretty) local products that are also environmentally friendly.

Between my little stint as a tourist in my hometown on my last days off and happening to work at place with a gift shop stocked with wonderful locally crafted items, this summer I’m starting to realizing that there are a lot of great local products out there. In this shaky economic time, I’d rather buy something and know that someone nearby directly benefits from the purchase. 

Why buy familiar brand name cleaning products that are filled with all sorts of yucky chemicals when you can pay a little more and use environmentally friendly Mrs. Meyers? (A Minneapolis company and yes, I do realize plenty of box stores are based in the Twin Cities too)

I’m glad there are Minnesota companies, like Sunleaf Naturals, that offer eco-conscious personal hygiene products.

I’m glad for the plethora of local shops in my hometown that offer local gift items.

Am I ready to adopt a 100-mile diet like some locavores? Probably not. But I’m ready to stop settling for what mass-produced products box stores offer and ready to start reading my labels a little more carefully. I’m willing to pay a little bit more. In the long run, I think it’ll be worth it.

Read more ...