Book Report: A Homemade Life

I read about A Homemade Life: Stories and Recipes from My Kitchen Table on another blog. I can’t remember which one, sorry. At first this book didn’t seem all that interesting to me and I almost didn’t read it, but I’m so glad I did.

It’s a wonderfully entertaining book, part cookbook, part biography. Each short chapter is comprised of a brief story about a specific dish some are quite funny others sentimental and sad.

It’s quite fascinating to read the history of the recipes and how each recipe became a part of Molly’s life. The recipes are also fantastic, I tried several of them and I’d highly recommend the pancakes! It’s the perfect book to keep on your nightstand so you can read a chapter or two each evening, although you many end up dreaming of delicious food all night long.

Have you read any good books lately that you’d recommend?

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Book Report: The Unhealthy Truth

I’ve been reading The Unhealthy Truth: How Our Food Is Making Us Sick – And What We Can Do About It and WOW what a great, but scary book. I already knew a lot of the information from the book because I’m very interested this kind of thing and have been reading up on it for quite a while.

The first 7 chapters are spent detailing the information Robyn found during her research into GMO (Genetically Modified Organisms) and artificial chemicals, preservatives, and dyes in manufactured foods and the link between these and allergies, autism and other immune diseases. I won’t recount the information here, read the book for all the gory details. You might be interested to know that the top 12 GMO foods in production the United States are: corn, cotton, potatoes, tomatoes, soybeans, canola, sugar beets, rice, flax, squash/zucchini, papaya and chicory (radicchio). I knew about corn, soy, sugar beets, cotton and canola, but I was surprised by the other crops on the list. Yet another reason to shop locally and grow your own!

The last chapter, however, is a HUGE let-down as she details her “meal-plan” for getting your family on the healthier eating road. I was excited to hear about her great ideas of incorporating fresh organic food into her new diet, but her new diet is just like her previous one, she just switched conventional processed food for organic processed food. I’m sure organic processed food contains fewer chemicals than conventional, but this doesn’t really get to the root of our screwed up country-wide eating disorder. We no longer eat “REAL” food; none of our food looks like it does in it’s natural form and most of it is processed, comes in a box and is shipped thousands of miles. Are organic processed packaged granola bars really a healthier option than an in season peach from a local farm? Her meal plan is also severely lacking in the area of fresh fruits & veggies, not even getting close to the 7-11 servings a day we should be getting.

I also completely disagree with her statement that eating organically and healthfully are more expensive than eating conventional boxed food. Sure if you’re just switching all of your processed food from regular to organic you’re going to pay more for it. But if you buy real fresh food that’s in season it’s actually much much cheaper!

Buying fresh local apples is a better investment nutritionally than buying a bag of chips and you’ll get more servings out of it (not many people sit down and eat 3 apples at once, but many people will sit down and eat 3 servings of chips). A better cheaper option is buying locally grown fruit and veggies in season. A .75 zucchini from the farmers market (or picked in your back yard) that will serve 5 really is much cheaper than that bag of organic baby carrots you buy each week at the grocery store (and much fresher).

I do love that she mentions getting your kids involved in the process of healthier eating, which is very important. Here’s an idea: instead of buying all the expensive organic processed food at the grocery why not load up your kids and head to the farmers market. Let them each pick out one new veggie each week and get them involved in choosing their own healthy food. Not only is this local food much healthier because it’s fresh and local, but it’s much cheaper than grocery store food. You could also try growing a few veggies in pots on your front/back porch. It’s amazing how willing kids are to try something new if they’ve nurtured it from a seedling.

I believe buying good quality local organic produce is an investment in your health and in your future (not to mention it tastes much better as well). It’s also very important for the preservation of our farmland. In the last couple years as we transitioned to local whole foods we actually started spending less on our groceries (and that includes buying $8/gallon raw organic milk). There are a lot of things I would go without in order to eat good quality food, cable, cell phone, the second car, vacations, new clothes, eating out, etc, but I don’t have to because I’m actually spending less on my healthy diet. Some things are more expensive, like dairy & meat, but we eat a little less of them and the savings from buying in season fruits and veggies helps off-set the cost. There’s great peace of mind knowing that you’re feeding yourself in the healthiest way possible, giving yourself and your loved ones the best chance to live a long healthy happy life.

I would highly recommend reading this book, but only if you’re ready to making changes in your diet. If you don’t want to hear about all the chemicals, pesticides, and genetically modified organisms lurking in your processed foods and the health problems they cause, do not read this book. Ignorance is bliss, at least for a while.

Are you taking steps to cut out GMO’s and trying to include more whole real foods in you diet?

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Time for Pickles

When Mr Chiots went to the library yesterday, The Joy of Pickling, Revised Edition: 250 Flavor-Packed Recipes for Vegetables and More from Garden or Marketwas in for me.

It came in just in time, because when I was out looking around the garden yesterday evening I spotted these.

I’m planning on making refrigerator pickles because I like them really crispy. I’ll probably be making them on Sunday or early next week when I have some time.

Are you already preserving from your garden harvest?

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Gardening Books: Gaia’s Garden, A Guide to Home-Scale Permaculture

I’m always reading several books, I have a stack of 10-15 on the table at all times and I read them while I’m eating breakfast, lunch, dinner or just taking a break. I love reading gardening books for inspiration, I’m particularly drawn to books with interesting photos and ideas.

I read Gaia’s Garden: A Guide to Home-Scale Permacultureafter watching A Farm for the Future because I was fascinated by the idea of forest gardens they talked about in this documentary.

It’s not the typical garden book filled with photos of lush gardens (although the 2nd edition may have more), it has more of a textbook feel with only a few sketches to articulate certain points. It is easy to understand and very well written and keeps you engaged throughout the entire book. I’m finding that permaculture is quite fascinating, and I think I’ve learned more about gardening and nature from this book than I learned in all my years of science in school (perhaps that’s because I’m paying attention now?).

If you’re interesting in the nitty-gritty of organic gardening I would highly recommend this book. It’s not the typical fluff organic gardening book that talks about composting and heirloom vegetables. It will definitely challenge some of the ideas you have about organic gardening and perhaps inspire you to make your gardens a little more closely aligned with the natural order of things. I’m hoping to implement some of the ideas into the gardens here at Chiot’s Run.

To read more about permaculture go here.

Have you ever heard of Permaculture? Are you implementing some of it’s techniques in your gardens?

P.S. I’d like to thank all of you who click through my Amazon links in the sidebar or in the posts. I get a tiny percentage of whatever you order (not just the linked item), I haven’t earned much, but soon I may have enough to buy a new plant. Thanks!

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Great Gardening Books: Victory Garden Cookbook

I don’t remember where I found out about this cookbook, but I requested it from the library a few weeks ago. I must admit it sat in the pile of books on my table for a week or two because it just didn’t seem that interesting. I thought it looked a bit outdated and it wasn’t like most other modern cookbooks that I’m drawn to; glossy and full of delicious photos.

The Victory Garden Cookbookis a combination gardening book and cookbook. It has directions with each vegetable about how to grow them and it even recommends a few specific kinds to grow. Following the gardening tips there are recipes for each vegetable covering a wide array of cooking techniques for each.

I must say the recipes weren’t all that exciting for me; I’m fairly well versed in the cooking of various vegetables and we’ve developed our own favorite ways to eat them.

I did however really enjoy reading through the gardening sections for each vegetable. I’d recommend checking this book out of the library and giving it a read. You may learn some new tricks for growing great vegetables and if you don’t have a ton of favorite vegetable recipes in your repertoire already you may just find a few from this book.

Any good vegetable cookbook recommendations? Or vegetable gardening books?

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