I recently read Barbara Kingsolver’s book, Animal, Vegetable, Miracle. The book chronicles her family’s experience as they change their eating habits.

They move to a farm and grow their own food. It’s about eating fruits and vegetables that are local and in season. I love her writing. The Poisonwood Bible is one of my favorite books.

The personal essays in the book interwoven with facts about the food industry work really well together. It also gets you thinking. I’ve always advocated buying locally, but still bought a lot of produce from the supermarket. It is convenient after all.

Reading Animal, Vegetable, Miracle made me want to try this experiment too. We don’t have a farm. considered tilling the ground in our weedy, unpaved driveway, but then we’d have no where to park the car. That small bit of space still wouldn’t supply us with amount of produce that we need. I think that would also violate our lease agreement somehow.

So, we’ve started getting seasonal, organic fruit and vegetables delivered to our home. The delivery comes every Monday morning. We did the figures and it only costs us £1 extra per week. That’s not bad at all.

The problem with this grand plan is that now is the season for cabbage and potatoes. We never really ate many of those before, so I’m cooking new recipes. At one time this would’ve really stressed out my stepson. His Asperger’s Syndrome makes him want everything to be scheduled. Since moving to the UK our weekly menu has become more varied. Now variety has become his routine. That’s a relief. It makes things easier.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again. Support small, local farmers. Buy your produce at farmers markets. Produce that has spent less time in transport and less time on the shelf has more nutrients. When possible get it right out of the ground. It’s better for you and it tastes better.

We’ll probably try our hand at foraging in spring. There’s plenty of nettle around here and nettle is good for you. We’ve already done some foraging this past summer.

Photo by Nicholas_T

Tweet This   Stumble This  

Related Posts

• My Take on Traditional Diets
• My Take on Omnivorism
• My Take on Vegetarianism
• My Take on Veganism