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Coming Home to Eat The Pleasures and Politics of Local Foods Gary Paul Nabhan PhD 9780393323740 Books

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Coming Home to Eat The Pleasures and Politics of Local Foods Gary Paul Nabhan PhD 9780393323740 Books

I feel like the other reviewers might have read a different book than I read. Because I'd kind of like to give this book zero stars.

This is a book about sustainable, local food driving local communities. It is obvious that the author is passionate about food safety and heritage. Yet the writing is dull, monotonous, and lifeless. A little less ego could have resulted in better editing, or perhaps a ghost writer could have brought the words to life, converting this tome of garrulous lecturing into a riveting page-turner that could inspire people to bring their own food choices into a closer geographic circle. After reading two-thirds of this "manifesto of the local food movement" (as quoted by Michael Pollan on the cover), I feel no fire under my rump to rush out spend $15 to have someone turn my own flour into tortillas (as is explained in detail in the book).

I didn't care for the laborious journeys into history, where, among other things, I am told that mescal fibers have been found in human feces left behind in caves 8500 years ago. And, I'm no prude, but the amount of sexually-driven writing is insane: he wrote "trying to explain what saguaro fruit tastes like is a little like explaining lovemaking to a virgin" (p.106). This was followed up with "I might as well have conceded that I was merely a means for sperm to generate more sperm" (p.109). And then, "mud on our bare skin was delicious" (p.123). Even the lady with the eggs for sale sign in front of her home was tied to sexuality, as he described others who saw her as "so smitten by her warmth and beauty that they had not even noticed her deep devotion to raising turkey, ducks, chicken and geese" (p.124). He even discussed "ejaculation-erupting ingredients masquerading as food" (p.166).

The book is punctuated with the almost purposefully-bizarre: ancient grains mixed with the blood of human sacrifice (p.120), snacking on a necklace adorned with dry-roasted caterpillar larvae (p.134), and offering the possible excuse of "looking for the hallucinogenic mucus of desert toads to lick so we can get high" (p.135). I wonder what contortions my face must have underwent while reading this, as my brain digested one super-weird passage after another.

This book wanders, has no clear thesis despite the strong message on the cover, and falls extremely short of what I think was the author's goal. It is BORING and if you find yourself in possession of it, the best you can do with it is recycle the paper it is printed on. Gary Paul Nabhan is a narcissistic food fetishist who doesn't know how to edit. With so many other great books on sustainable food, I strongly recommend you steer clear of this one.


Tags : Coming Home to Eat: The Pleasures and Politics of Local Foods [Gary Paul Nabhan Ph.D.] on Amazon.com. *FREE* shipping on qualifying offers. <strong> Amazing and eloquent....Nabhan makes us understand how finding and eating local foods connects us deeply and sensually. ―Alice Waters,Gary Paul Nabhan Ph.D.,Coming Home to Eat: The Pleasures and Politics of Local Foods,W. W. Norton & Company,0393323749,Essays & Narratives,COOKING Essays & Narratives,COOKING Regional & Ethnic American Southwestern States,COOKING Specific Ingredients Natural Foods,Cooking,Food & drink cookery: general interest,Gastronomy,International And Ethnic Cookery,Sports & outdoor recreation

Coming Home to Eat The Pleasures and Politics of Local Foods Gary Paul Nabhan PhD 9780393323740 Books Reviews

Not what I was expecting when I purchased this book. It appears to be o.k. on the topic.
Love it! Fast shipping
good
My sister loves it.
I've been studying local foods and this book really spoke to me. I think that it's one of the first on this subject. His passion for eating locally really comes through.
Really great, original book from way before the local movement was big. This will open your eyes to the role corporations and gov't play in food production, along with an entertaining picture of eating locally in a state that struggles with water -- AZ.
In Coming Home to Eat The Pleasures and Politics of Local Foods the author, Dr. Gary Paul Nabhan, describes how a pilgrimage to Lebanon with his brothers to meet family members, experience their cultural cuisine first-hand and to observe their methods of cultivation and foraging became the impetus for him when he returned home to southern Arizona to attempt to spend a year eating only food produced or foraged locally.
In a quote on the cover of the paperback edition I have, the author Michael Pollan refers to the work as "The first manifesto of the local food movement..." I think manifesto is a very good, if not careful choice of words by Mr. Pollan. As an example, I quote a sentence from page 131 that would fit just as well into another famous manifesto, "It seemed to me essential that each of us somehow begin to volunteer time in the fields and orchards that produce our food, and to grasp how they change from season to season, year to year, and decade to decade." To be sure, the author is capable of very florid, prosaic, passionate language when describing the local native people, the desert scenery or a newly discovered gastronomic delight, "...it tasted as though I were eating a meal just one step removed from sunlight." However, this book often also reads like a polemic or a sermon and there is no shortage of industries against which the author preaches. Don't get me wrong, I very much agree with the author's core sentiment that food consumers, every one of us, need to reconnect with where our food comes from and how it is produced. We should be thinking along the lines of fresh, seasonal, local and sustainable. I have read Where our Food Comes From Retracing Nikolay Vavilov's Quest to End Famine and Why Some Like it Hot Foods, Genes and Cultural Diversity also written by Dr. Nabhan and have found both to be very informative with a very worthwhile perspective on their respective topics.
It comes as no surprise that the author has very little nice to say about the processed food industry, "The sickening taste of overprocessed, chemically preserved foods rose from my belly and filled my mouth." It also comes as no surprise he chooses seed companies and agricultural chemical companies as regular targets for his vitriol. What does come as a bit of a surprise is that he seems to imply he condones the actions of eco-terrorists who have vandalized labs and crops by comparing them to the patriots who perpetrated the Boston Tea Party. He also seems to be against produce packers and shippers and all other "middlemen" who absorb 93 cents of every dollar spent on food by consumers while only 7 cents is returned to the stewards of the land, the farmer (okay, I am kinda with him on that one). To enumerate, he is against the pharmaceutical industry and the airline industry (p.81), the real estate industry and retirement communities (p.111), the USDA Agricultural Statistics Service (p.130), the health-food and nutraceutical industries "...packages, bottles, and jars full of memory-enhancing, cholesterol-lowering, ejaculation-erupting ingredients masquerading as food." (p.166), Chicago's Museum of Science and Industry "...it continued to reek with the toxic perfumes of industrial agriculture." (p.167), the Environmental Protection Agency for its very cozy relationship with the industries it is assigned to regulate (p.183), the commercial fishing industry (p.218, p.231), and corporate owned franchise restaurants (p.258).
I think there are more than just a few spiritual and zealous overtones in this book as well. I can't help but think of as overzealous the example on page 112 where the author, who has already gone through and purged his home of all packaged foods that were not produced locally and sustainably, describes how he again goes through his pantry and refrigerator and purges all food items he has since purchased which use the apparently sacrosanct Saguaro Cactus on their label without actually containing any saguaro cactus in their list of ingredients. I wonder if he then also went to his closet and purged it of all Izod and Polo shirts because they did not actually contain any sustainably harvested alligator and horse products, respectively. Nowhere do I think this sentiment is more evident than on page 295 where the author waxes rhapsodically about washing and caring for the feet of others while on the 240 mile long Desert Walk for Biodiversity , Heritage and Health. I can't help but think this is a not even a thinly veiled biblical allusion and can only guess who the author would cast in the leading role. Finally, I have to think the author might be prone to a bit of hyperbole when it helps his cause as I read his list of ingredients for a jar of bean dip in his refrigerator and then surmised where each ingredient was likely produced. Though it might serve his cause to suggest that valuable energy, water and land were utilized in a greenhouse in Arizona to grow the tomatoes that went into the tomato paste for the aforementioned dip, it is highly unlikely. Two-thirds to three quarters of the world's processing tomatoes, and subsequently tomato paste, are produced in the fields of California each year at such a low cost per unit that tomato paste has become little more than a commodity. Turkey, Italy and to a lesser extent Israel and Australia contribute to the remainder of the world's tomato paste supply; all from open field production. If you are interested in reading a similar account of a family that tried to eat locally and sustainably that is more humorous and less rhetoric laden, than I recommend Animal, Vegetable, Miracle A Year of Food Life by the Pulitzer nominated novelist Barbara Kingsolver.
I feel like the other reviewers might have read a different book than I read. Because I'd kind of like to give this book zero stars.

This is a book about sustainable, local food driving local communities. It is obvious that the author is passionate about food safety and heritage. Yet the writing is dull, monotonous, and lifeless. A little less ego could have resulted in better editing, or perhaps a ghost writer could have brought the words to life, converting this tome of garrulous lecturing into a riveting page-turner that could inspire people to bring their own food choices into a closer geographic circle. After reading two-thirds of this "manifesto of the local food movement" (as quoted by Michael Pollan on the cover), I feel no fire under my rump to rush out spend $15 to have someone turn my own flour into tortillas (as is explained in detail in the book).

I didn't care for the laborious journeys into history, where, among other things, I am told that mescal fibers have been found in human feces left behind in caves 8500 years ago. And, I'm no prude, but the amount of sexually-driven writing is insane he wrote "trying to explain what saguaro fruit tastes like is a little like explaining lovemaking to a virgin" (p.106). This was followed up with "I might as well have conceded that I was merely a means for sperm to generate more sperm" (p.109). And then, "mud on our bare skin was delicious" (p.123). Even the lady with the eggs for sale sign in front of her home was tied to sexuality, as he described others who saw her as "so smitten by her warmth and beauty that they had not even noticed her deep devotion to raising turkey, ducks, chicken and geese" (p.124). He even discussed "ejaculation-erupting ingredients masquerading as food" (p.166).

The book is punctuated with the almost purposefully-bizarre ancient grains mixed with the blood of human sacrifice (p.120), snacking on a necklace adorned with dry-roasted caterpillar larvae (p.134), and offering the possible excuse of "looking for the hallucinogenic mucus of desert toads to lick so we can get high" (p.135). I wonder what contortions my face must have underwent while reading this, as my brain digested one super-weird passage after another.

This book wanders, has no clear thesis despite the strong message on the cover, and falls extremely short of what I think was the author's goal. It is BORING and if you find yourself in possession of it, the best you can do with it is recycle the paper it is printed on. Gary Paul Nabhan is a narcissistic food fetishist who doesn't know how to edit. With so many other great books on sustainable food, I strongly recommend you steer clear of this one.