current reading

I found this summary on another blog. It gives you a good idea of what the book is about. The book is great! I would love to visit Joel Salatin's farm. David is going to a conference in late October that features a day tour of the farm. This is one of the first farm-related things that I'm jealous of, lol! David is getting a kick out of me enjoying the book. He didn't think I would be interested in all of this. But, wow, I think it's fascinating. I hope you read it too!

"Michael Pollan's, The Omnivore's Dilemma is a book about food. That might sound simple, but when I say "about food" I mean about all aspects of food: production, consumption, evolution, emotion, health, community, environment, and philosophy. What Pollan set out to do was to describe the creation of 4 different meals. This would take him to restaurants, grocery stores, feedlots, farms, and hidden mushroom gathering sites in the Sierra Nevada, all the while discussing the importance of the food gathering activity in social, economic, political, and environmental terms. His four meals all centered around different aspects of American food culture, and can be thought of as:

1. Industrial - A fast food dinner bought in a drive through and eaten while cruising in a car.
2. Industrial Organic - Organic food bought at a local Whole Foods and cooked at home, with ingredients from all over the world, but each grown "organically."
3. Local - After a week's stay at a farm in Virginia, Pollan cooked another meal using only local ingredients (things grown and produced within a defined geographic area).
4. Hunted and Gathered - A meal, once again cooked by Pollan, with food he hunted and gathered within a days drive of his home in Berkeley, California.

In short, it is an excellent book, is now in paperback, and will be thought provoking to anyone who eats food on a regular basis."