Goodreads | Sara's review

Sara's review

Plenty: One Man, One Woman, and a Raucous Year of Eating Locally
by Alisa Smith, J.B. Mackinnon

[close]

blog this review

Copy/paste the text below into your blog.

<a href="http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/421393.Plenty_One_Man_One_Woman_and_a_Raucous_Year_of_Eating_Locally?utm_medium=api&amp;utm_source=blog_review" style="float: left; padding-right: 20px"><img alt="Plenty: One Man, One Woman, and a Raucous Year of Eating Locally" border="0" src="http://s3.amazonaws.com/photo.goodreads.com/books/1174591836m/421393.jpg" /></a> <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/421393.Plenty_One_Man_One_Woman_and_a_Raucous_Year_of_Eating_Locally?utm_medium=api&utm_source=blog_review">Plenty: One Man, One Woman, and a Raucous Year of Eating Locally</a> by <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/237667.Alisa_Smith">Alisa Smith</a><br/><br/>
  <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/14752058?utm_medium=api&utm_source=blog_review"><h3>My review</h3></a>
  rating: 4 of 5 stars<br/>The premise behind this book is that a couple in Vancouver, Canada commits a year of their lives to only eating food within a 100 mile radius. While this could have been a book of smug environmentalism, all rhapsodic with the pleasures of fresh strawberries and self-righteous about reducing carbon emissions (and there is a bit of that), the co-authors choose the much more winning tactic of writing about how utterly hard and somewhat insane the year was. Urban dwellers in a small apartment with a small plot in the community garden, Smith and MacKinnon have the small salaries of free-lance writers and not a whole lot of free time. And they have no idea what they're doing, either. Before they get to rhapsodies on fresh strawberries, there are disgusting narrations of making sauerkraut, heartbreaking losses of an entire potato stash, and a whole lot of fretting about how insane it is to keep onions and garlic in one's sock drawers. They're quite candid: the experiment almost proved the end of their relationship and reconciliation only became possible when -- 8 months into their experiment -- they finally found a source of locally grown wheat, so that they could eat bread once again. 
<br/>
<br/>The couple alternate narrating the months of their year. MacKinnon seems to be more of the source of both environmental self-righteousness (he starts out by listing a long litany of how-the-modern-food-system-is-ruining-the-earth, all of which is true, but all of which also is probably known by anyone motivated to read the book) and culinary lyricism (this potato tastes like this! and this beet tastes like this!). He finds a more engaging voice when he begins to unearth a history of food diversity naked to the modern eye. Smith, the more sceptical partner, has a more enjoyable narrative voice, obliquely associating her investment in the experiment to a long history of dislocation in her own family. Only the recipes they include at the beginning of each month fail -- heavy on metaphor and atmosphere, the recipes would probably have been more interesting if they'd just been, well, recipes for how to cook local, seasonal food.
  <br/><br/><a href="http://www.goodreads.com/review/list/93454?utm_medium=api&utm_source=blog_review">View all my reviews.</a>

Sara's review
rating:
recommended for: foodies, people interested in gardening, folks dejected about the environment

The premise behind this book is that a couple in Vancouver, Canada commits a year of their lives to only eating food within a 100 mile radius. While this could have been a book of smug environmentalism, all rhapsodic with the pleasures of fresh strawberries and self-righteous about reducing carbon emissions (and there is a bit of that), the co-authors choose the much more winning tactic of writing about how utterly hard and somewhat insane the year was. Urban dwellers in a small apartment with a small plot in the community garden, Smith and MacKinnon have the small salaries of free-lance writers and not a whole lot of free time. And they have no idea what they're doing, either. Before they get to rhapsodies on fresh strawberries, there are disgusting narrations of making sauerkraut, heartbreaking losses of an entire potato stash, and a whole lot of fretting about how insane it is to keep onions and garlic in one's sock drawers. They're quite candid: the experiment almost proved the end...more The premise behind this book is that a couple in Vancouver, Canada commits a year of their lives to only eating food within a 100 mile radius. While this could have been a book of smug environmentalism, all rhapsodic with the pleasures of fresh strawberries and self-righteous about reducing carbon emissions (and there is a bit of that), the co-authors choose the much more winning tactic of writing about how utterly hard and somewhat insane the year was. Urban dwellers in a small apartment with a small plot in the community garden, Smith and MacKinnon have the small salaries of free-lance writers and not a whole lot of free time. And they have no idea what they're doing, either. Before they get to rhapsodies on fresh strawberries, there are disgusting narrations of making sauerkraut, heartbreaking losses of an entire potato stash, and a whole lot of fretting about how insane it is to keep onions and garlic in one's sock drawers. They're quite candid: the experiment almost proved the end of their relationship and reconciliation only became possible when -- 8 months into their experiment -- they finally found a source of locally grown wheat, so that they could eat bread once again.

The couple alternate narrating the months of their year. MacKinnon seems to be more of the source of both environmental self-righteousness (he starts out by listing a long litany of how-the-modern-food-system-is-ruining-the-earth, all of which is true, but all of which also is probably known by anyone motivated to read the book) and culinary lyricism (this potato tastes like this! and this beet tastes like this!). He finds a more engaging voice when he begins to unearth a history of food diversity naked to the modern eye. Smith, the more sceptical partner, has a more enjoyable narrative voice, obliquely associating her investment in the experiment to a long history of dislocation in her own family. Only the recipes they include at the beginning of each month fail -- heavy on metaphor and atmosphere, the recipes would probably have been more interesting if they'd just been, well, recipes for how to cook local, seasonal food....less

Like this review? yes flag

comments (showing 0-0 of 0)

newest »

date

all Sara's books »