Green Daily

Do you know where your food comes from? Do you ever read the little stickers on your fruit and veggies--and do they tell you their return address?

People all over the country, and all over the world, are realizing the environmental impact of shipping food very long distances. The U.K.'s largest grocery store chain, TESCO, has even started labeling food with information about the product's carbon footprint.

Barbara Kingsolver, famous for her novels The Poisonwood Bible, The Bean Trees and short story collection Pigs in Heaven, took a shot at a nearly all-local diet for her and her family, as they spent a year in their family home in Appalachia.

She, her older daughter Camille, and her husband Steven Hopp chronicled that year in the nonfiction book Animal, Vegetable, Miracle.
Turns out, the realities of eating local mean raising your own chickens and turkeys, tending a larger-than-average garden, and doing massive amounts of canning and other types of preserving for the winter. If you eat locally and grow your own food, the reader discovers, you also have to adjust to times of plenty and leaner times. Eating local can quickly become a full-time job.

The book has both amusing anecdotes -- like when Kingsolver's daughter names the family's turkeys after upcoming meals -- as well as a bit of turkey romance. Kingsolver narrates in her eloquent but practical voice, and she has even the least experienced cooks wishing they could join her in making cheese (!), pasta sauce, and tending her many garden vegetables.

Daughter Camille pens the book's recipes, and husband Steven provides a scientist's perspective on eating locally. The multiple authors provide complimentary perspectives on what must have been a very challenging year for the family.

If you buy the book online, don't forget to look for a local seller!