Animal, Vegetable, Miracle

I have been completely absorbed in Barbara Kingsolver's Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: Our Year of Seasonal Eating. It's a luscious and compelling read about our relationship with food and the people who produce it. She encourages a more intentional approach to buying food that is seasonal, produced locally and where possible, organically. She also provides plenty of gardening inspiration too.

I enjoy visiting our Farmer's Market on a Saturday morning where I can set aside my compulsive label reading and concerns about food miles as I take a leisurely stroll around the vendor's stalls. Today's haul included tamarillo sauce, feijoa & date chutney, goat's milk brie & sheep's milk blue cheeses (incidentally Barbara makes her own cheese...I wanna!), organic lamb shanks (20% off no less!), free range bacon hock for my winter soup, free range chorizo for risotto & pizza, and cheap, seasonal fruit.

I "forgot" that I'm supposed to be cutting down my wheat consumption and enjoyed this Schneckennudel "pastry snail" with my Atomic coffee, while reading Barbara.

Our family's next step to be more connected to our food is to focus on getting our own wee garden ready for spring planting. It's all about the compost around here.