A house without books is like a room without windows. No man has a right to bring up his children without surrounding them with books, if he has the means to buy them.
-Horace Mann
THE REVIEW
BLESSING THE HANDS THAT FEED US
What Eating Closer to Home Can Teach Us About Food, Community, and Our Place on Earth
by Vicki Robin
KIRKUS REVIEW
One woman's experiment to eat only local foods.
While grazing at a potluck table loaded with food, Robin (co-author: Your Money or Your Life: 9 Steps to Transforming Your Relationship with Money and Achieving Financial Independence, 2008) decided to take up a local farmer's challenge to eat only the food she could provide herself. But after some more consideration, the author realized that might be too limited, so the plan expanded to include any food produced within a 10-mile radius. She planned to live on that and a few "exotics"—tea, salt, spices, oil, lemons and limes—for a month and see what happened. What unfolds in Robin's homey, conversational prose was far more significant than she ever expected. She sought to lose a few pounds, get healthier, make new friends, grow closer to nature, and gain a better understanding of the amount of physical, emotional and environmental energy required to produce food. The author encourages readers to explore their own relationships with food; examine how it was prepared and eaten during their childhoods; find what local sources of food exist in their neighborhoods; learn to cook from scratch for healthier and less expensive food; and figure out how to continue this new way of eating for far longer than just a month. Throughout the book, Robin includes helpful information on how to set up "Transition Towns…a citizen-led approach to bulking up community resilience, a tool for people who wake up to the power communities have to respond proactively as global resources, finance, and climate change prove ever more unstable.” Recipes from Robin's local growers round out this call-to-action plan to buy local and live healthier and more responsibly.
An entertaining and informative memoir/self-help guide to living well on locally grown food.
Pub Date:Jan. 7th, 2014
ISBN:978-0-670-02572-5
Page count:352pp
Publisher:Viking
Review Posted Online:Nov. 3rd, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue:Nov. 15th, 2013
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