Coming Home to Eat: The Pleasures and Politics of Local Foods

Gary Paul Nabham has really put together a beautiful and inspiring apologia for the emerging local, cultural, slow food philosophy. Like a simmering stew, the book bubbles over with diveristy, as the author runs in and out of the poetic, historical, cultural and academic. Whereas others reviewers have found fault with the seemingly "unfocused" nature of the book, I was happily entertained. From cover to cover, the subject matter remains fresh and suprising. Some of the foods you can expect to encounter include boiled venison, baked rabbit, grilled corvina, tomatillo consommes, squash souffles, tepary bean burritos wrapped in mesquite tortillas, freshly picked and lightly steamed lamb quarters, purslane, tansy mustards, cress, prickly pear punch, mistletoe and Mormon tea. You will encounter organpipe cactus jam, stewed pumpkin, pinole, creosote bush salve, jojoba oil, damiana tea and pit roasted agaves - or "tatemada" - an ancient tradition the author and some local Indians revived, among others. Although the book runs thin on recipes (there are none), it liberally bastes philosophy: "If food is the sumptuous sea of energy we dive into and swim through every day, I have lived but one brief moment leaping like a flying fish and catching a glimmering glimpse of that sea roiling all around us. And then just as quickly, I splashed back beneath its surface, to be overmore immersed in what effortlessly buoys us up." When Nabham is not introducing you old, now by-and-large forgotten foods and the cultures they come from, he is reminding you of the pitfalls of the emerging global marketplace: for example, "the average American brings home nearly 3,300 pounds of foodstuffs each year for his or her consumption...much of it never eaten. It is nearly two-and-a-half time the weight of what most of our contempories in other regions of the world consume, and much of it comes from their farmlands." He also reminds us that, with each passing season, we are losing more top soil, more biodiversity, and more of the foods that help us keep us strong and healthy. A very important book that is also a pleasure to read. On a scale of deliciousness, I give it a peach cobbler.

Nabham delivers important insights on the health our nation's food supply. Combining hard facts with eloquent personal narrative and sensual descriptions, he creates a captivating text that is accessible to all readers.Nabham brings forth some very salient (and often frightening) points about the destruction of arable farm lands, the uncertainty of genetically engineered seed stocks, the loss of native biodiversity, and the damaging effects of a modern diet, among other topics.I recommend the book highly and ask the author to follow up with a very specific series of guidelines for readers who want to take steps to eat locally and improve our nation's agricultural sustainability.

In today's society we are more distant from our food and how it is produced than ever before. Gary forces us to take a look at how the agricultural systems work - or don't work- and how our food choices affect the farmers, ranchers and fisherman who struggle to make a living off the land, as well as the world around us. Very thought provoking read.

"Live in each season as it passes," Thoreau said, "breathe the air, drink the drink, taste the fruit, and resign yourself to the influences of each" (p. 95). This is also the simple premise of Gary Paul Nabhan's book. Nabhan is an ethnobioligist, the Director of the Center for Sustainable Environments at Northern Arizona University, and the co-founder of Native Seeds/Search in Tucson, Arizona. COMING HOME TO EAT is about a year of eating locally (p. 13) while thinking globally. In his 330-page book, Nabhan celebrates "the sensual pleasures of food without ignoring its global politics" (p. 14)."My mouth, my tongue, and my heart remind me what my mind too often forgets," Nabhan writes. "I love the flavor of where I live, and all the plants and creatures I live with" (p. 304). In a culture where many of us obtain our food from vending machines, fast food restaurants, and "planetary" supermarkets (p. 22), it is no surprise that we have no idea where our food comes from, where it is grown, or how it is handled. On average, in fact, the food we eat today travels thirteen hundred miles from where it is produced, changing hands at least six times along the way (p. 23). In addition, nine-tenths of our food comes from non-local sources, with handlers along the food chain gaining three times more income from its consumer price than the farmers, ranchers, and fishermen who produced it (p. 34). Biting that corporate hand that feeds us every chance he gets, Nabhan's recounts his decision to purge his kitchen cabinets of all the processed foods "whose origins were distant" (p. 42), and to consume instead food that had been grown and gathered within 250 miles of his home in Tucson. Through his experiment, Nabhan is rewarded with an "oral pleasure" derived from "the minerals, the sourness or sweetness of the very ground we walk on, the very soil the seeds break through as they take in the air we ourselves have recently breathed" (p. 50). Sensual and enlightening, Nabhan's book is full of food for thought, that will leave you coming back for more.G. Merritt