For Christmas I received two books that I have been enjoying related to sustainable food, gardening, cooking and green kitchen products and processes. The first book is called “The Green Kitchen” by Richard Ehrlich. It is based on a column in the “Times of London”.
This book has great tips on everything from taking advantage of local foods and seasonal foods, to energy efficient cooking tips, energy efficiency appliances and green cleaning tips. The bulk of the book are recipes with pictures (which is imperative in my opinion). The dishwasher in the house I am currently renting is pretty much useless, so the section on hand washing dishes and when dishwashers are more beneficial than hand washing was particularly interesting to me.
I’m not much of a cook, but I will tackle some of these recipes and see if I can do them justice.
The second book is called “Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, A year of food life” by Barbara Kingsolver. This is a story of a family who has dedicated a year to cooking and eating only locally grown foods. They have a garden and some farm animals that provide much of their own food and the rest they buy from other local farmers. Just like the book “No Impact Man“, this takes a good idea to its extreme — which most of us won’t do but might be curious about. I’m enjoy finding some tidbits of knowledge that can help me make informed decisions on what I’m eating and where the food comes from. I’m not ready to give up bananas, but I am making my list of local foods, when they are harvested in this area, and who is growing them.
I tried to grow a garden last year and I harvested a half-dozen really good ears of corn, about the same number of not-so-good ears, a few tomatoes (before early blight took most of the tomatoes in this area), 2 pumpkins, and whole lot of Rhubarb (a lot!). I consider this pretty dismal since I planted many more things such as green beans, lettuce, spinach, squash, cucumbers, and peppers…so I’ve been thinking I might spend my time better looking for the local farmers markets and plan on buying my local food. This book has provided a little inspiration to try again with a garden. We’ll see…
