Gary Paul Nabhan relates how his experience with food permeates his life as an avid gardener and forager, as an ethno-botanist and farmland conservation advocate, and as an activist devoted to recovering place-based heritage foods. Nabhan spent a year trying to eat only foods grown, fished or gathered within 220 miles of his home - with surprising results.
Coming Home to Eat
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A tale certain to inspire gardeners, cooks, and others eager to replace convenience with flavor. "Nabhan's vivid descriptions... riveted me and ultimately forced me to face up to a single uncomfortable question: If this man can turn his satellite dish into a container garden, raise his own turkeys, opportunistically scout wild foods and glean food wisdom from indigenous tribespeople, what excuses do I have left for not hunting and gathering locally too?" The Ecologist
About the Author
Gary Paul Nabhan, a prize-winning essayist and agricultural ecologist, serves as a Distinguished Research Scientist with the Southwest Center at the University of Arizona.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
By Linzi
Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase
I loved this book and I think anyone who has an interest in organic food, anti-globalisation or native culture will too. The author lives in Arizona and the book is filled with descriptions of that part of the world and the native American tribes who also live there that he is friendly with. After a disappointing meal in Lebanon that includes dishes from everywhere else in the world but there it changes his attitude towards food in general. He decides to embark on a year of eating only food that is locally available to him or that he has grown himself, instead of buying imported food that could have crossed thousands of miles to be in his local supermarket. In doing so he discovers a wealth of information about foraging for food and growing his own that has been passed down through generations but is almost obsolete now. It was a very thoughtful and intelligent book, I found it absolutely fascinating and really well written, I couldn't read it fast enough.
Most Helpful Customer Reviews on Amazon.com (beta)
Amazon.com:
3.6 out of 5 stars
16 reviews
22 of 23 people found the following review helpful
3.0 out of 5 stars
Great topic--but why so much Spam?
15 Aug 2007
By Melissa
- Published on Amazon.com
Format:Paperback
I completely honor the impulse behind this book and believe in the importance of eating local. I also applaud Nabhan for thinking and writing about these issues before so many others (yet I'm also happy for the influx of recent local eating books and articles from Pollan, Kingsolver, McKibben, Alisa Smith & JB Mackinnon, and the blog by "No Impact Man"). Some scenes are powerful: eating ripe peaches, the short Thanksgiving section, reconnecting with family. The history and science sections are good too.
What surprised me, though, is that it seemed like throughout much of the book, Nabhan was in his Blazer, on a plane, or somewhere nowhere near home. Although he carried his fried grasshoppers and tortillas with him, I was longing to read more about the actual practices of growing and preparing local food (there is, however, plenty on roadkill). What surprised me more: the continual references to Spam, especially in relation to the sunset:
"As a Spam-colored sunset blanketed the western sky, the sweat on my back chilled" (40).
"At dusk they [mechanized dairy farms] took on a sickly greenish cast, the color of modly Spam" (158).
". . . each afternoon until the sun went down, gaudy as a thin slice of Spam" (276).
Why so much Spam? He buys a can of Spam in another odd section of the book where he spends $50 on a strange combination of food for a brunch that he and his partner, Laurie, don't eat. In another section, he throws a bunch of food in the compost bin because it uses cactuses in the advertising but doesn't contain cactus juice. I was puzzled by the waste. Why not eat the food and not buy it again? (Or in the supermarket venture, why not buy foods suitable for a decent brunch?)
In terms of the time in the Blazer and the time away from home, I understand that Nabhan's work and activism demand travel--and sometimes you see "home" more clearly when you're away from it. But I can't think of any reason for all the Spam.
What surprised me, though, is that it seemed like throughout much of the book, Nabhan was in his Blazer, on a plane, or somewhere nowhere near home. Although he carried his fried grasshoppers and tortillas with him, I was longing to read more about the actual practices of growing and preparing local food (there is, however, plenty on roadkill). What surprised me more: the continual references to Spam, especially in relation to the sunset:
"As a Spam-colored sunset blanketed the western sky, the sweat on my back chilled" (40).
"At dusk they [mechanized dairy farms] took on a sickly greenish cast, the color of modly Spam" (158).
". . . each afternoon until the sun went down, gaudy as a thin slice of Spam" (276).
Why so much Spam? He buys a can of Spam in another odd section of the book where he spends $50 on a strange combination of food for a brunch that he and his partner, Laurie, don't eat. In another section, he throws a bunch of food in the compost bin because it uses cactuses in the advertising but doesn't contain cactus juice. I was puzzled by the waste. Why not eat the food and not buy it again? (Or in the supermarket venture, why not buy foods suitable for a decent brunch?)
In terms of the time in the Blazer and the time away from home, I understand that Nabhan's work and activism demand travel--and sometimes you see "home" more clearly when you're away from it. But I can't think of any reason for all the Spam.
20 of 24 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars
Sonoran Thoreau
20 Feb 2003
By J.W.K
- Published on Amazon.com
Format:Paperback
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.
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful
3.0 out of 5 stars
Farmbrarian.com review
5 Oct 2009
By Farmbrarian
- Published on Amazon.com
Format:Paperback
Gary Paul Nabhan's book about his year long local eating experiment gives readers good insight into Nabhan's personal life, but surprisingly little information about his local eating foray. For one year, Nabhan plans to prepare 80% of his meals using foods grown within a few hundred miles of his Arizona home. This is certainly a noble act, but I found myself continuously asking how he actually did it. Sure, he tells of gathering traditional food from a local desert, slaughtering turkeys he raised and eating peaches from his own tree. But we're talking about a thousand or so meals, which would require a lot more local food than he discusses. This omission left a lot to be desired for me.
Aside from information about Nabhan's wife and other local eating acquaintances, he briefly discusses food politics. Here the reader encounters some interesting information, but is still left thirsting for more.
Nabhan has good intentions, however the book is neither informative nor inspiring enough to be compared to other tales of local eating, such as Animal, Vegetable, Miracle by Barbara Kingsolver.
[...]
Aside from information about Nabhan's wife and other local eating acquaintances, he briefly discusses food politics. Here the reader encounters some interesting information, but is still left thirsting for more.
Nabhan has good intentions, however the book is neither informative nor inspiring enough to be compared to other tales of local eating, such as Animal, Vegetable, Miracle by Barbara Kingsolver.
[...]
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3.6 out of 5 stars
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