There are a lot of reasons to buy another gardening book: maybe it discusses a variety that most books forget; maybe it offers some unique tips on how to grow your favorites. But when you’ve already got shelves full of gardening books, the real reason to buy yet another one is when it is, as Simon Rickard’s “Heirloom Vegetables” is, not only both of these things but above all, a beautiful book filled with beautiful stories about heirloom produce.

“The main purpose of this book is to tell some of the interesting stories about heirloom vegetables,” Rickard writes on one of the first pages of “Heirloom Vegetables.” “As in all good stories, the plot jumps around a bit.”

So begins a journey into the world of vegetables — and people — because, as Rickard says, “Vegetables are human creations.”

That may be a tough pill to swallow for those of us who like thinking of nature as what happens when humans aren’t sticking our fingers in it, but Rickard’s point of view is both intriguing and truthful.

In its first chapter, the book delves into a lengthy definition of what, exactly, an heirloom vegetable is — and what it isn’t: “‘Pure’ and untouched by the hand of man.”

“Heirloom vegetables are entirely the work of human hands,” he writes. “True, nature originally created the prototypes of vegetables, but humans have spent thousands of years customizing them and pimping them up.”

Throughout the chapters of his book, Rickard details several examples of this customization. Each chapter focuses on an overarching family — peas or nightshades or gourds — and explores not only the ‘pure,’ original incarnation of some of our favorite veggies, but also the varieties that were carefully tended to by our ancestors, the farmers and gardeners who were able to seize genetic opportunities to make vegetables work for them.

“Our ancestors found the one weird potato plant with extra large tubers growing in the field of wildlings, and kept its tubers back to see what would happen,” Rickard writes. “They noticed the strange new grain with large, non-shattering seed heads, and saved its seed for next year.”

Through his prose, the reader learns how and where these varieties were created, what they taste like, and how they have been further modified to create new and exciting sub-varieties. The journey of their creation is one defined by a sustainable relationship, a back-and-forth, a give-and-take that has defined most of our relationship with vegetables, up until the modern industrialization of agriculture. It is this element of our relationship with vegetables that Rickard seeks to nourish with these stories, and it is an intriguing approach in the current media climate, where a completely different sort of genetic modification is gracing headlines more often than not.

The book is much more than a simple gardening guide, though it does offer a few tips for sustaining Rickard’s favorite heirloom varieties. This is, above all, a book for a lover of plants and vegetables, for those who seek to discover their history, and for those who are intrigued by the relationship that humans and vegetables have sustained for centuries.

Related on EcoSalon
Book Review: ‘Edible Memory: The Lure of Heirloom Tomatoes and Other Forgotten Foods’ by Jennifer A. Jordan
What if We Committed to Growing Food, Not Lawns? Foodie Underground
‘Bonjour Kale:’ Teaching the French How to Cook Kale

Image care of Penguin Books

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Caroline Allen‘s “Air,” the sequel to “Earth” and the second novel in Allen’s ‘Elemental Journey’ series, addresses the universal theme of growing up via the unique, other-worldly voice of her début novel.

In the case of protagonist Pearl, growing up means growing away, leaving her rural Missouri for the resolute foreignness of Tokyo, an urban jungle entirely opposite of the earth that anchored her — quite literally — to home in the first book.

Pearl’s “visions” continue to make appearances in this novel, which begins after Pearl has completed journalism school and has made a dozen attempts at skydiving, an activity that allows her to distance herself from the earth to which she was so rooted as a child throughout the first book. Allen’s construction of these visions, which allowed her to gain a true sense of place in her home state, sensing the history of the Osage that once lived there, paves the way for a new sort of vision once Pearl arrives in Tokyo, rootless, raw, and far from home.

“My soul was not used to staying inside,” Pearl says upon her arrival in her new home; it is obvious almost immediately why air was chosen as the representative element of this book. Earth is home, but air is an exploration, a longing, a leaving — while it is a sense with which many can identify, Allen’s characters and keen physical descriptions make this leaving a feeling like no other. As Pearl moves further and further from her roots, she begins to suffocate — in the urban jungle of Tokyo, in the cigarette smoke that blankets her office, in her discovery of herself — though she is unaware. An expatriate and a stranger to this country, Pearl explores the new culture, with its foreign air gods, unique philosophy, and new encounters, all of which are illustrated with this same elemental theme.

“I felt an airy sense I knew him,” she says. “As though our souls had danced in the same place.”

But perhaps the most essential meaning of ‘Air’ is with regards to breath and breathing. At the beginning, Pearl is also a runner, saying that, “Running forced a person to breathe. It forced a person to stop holding their breath. But breathing here could have serious consequences.” This proves to be true, as Pearl begins to smoke more and more cigarettes, causing physical breathing difficulties, but also suppresses more and more of her personal truth, making a meditation session where she is meant to concentrate on her breathing nearly impossible. As she distances herself from the earth, she also seems to become further from herself; this very common post-adolescent feeling of loss of self is illustrated in the other-worldly voice and style unique to Allen.

The book is not without its faults. At some points, the author seems to become too reliant on the narrator’s visions — they become less of a tool and more of a shortcut, making the coincidences Pearl encounters too easy to explain away. There are also several oversights in continuity that become distracting — a last name that changes, or characterization that seems incoherent. Love and lust appear and disappear too quickly and are unexplained; certain characters are used as tools to help the story progress and do not evolve into three-dimensional people on the page.

The narrator, however, saves whatever issues the book displays; Pearl remains the same uncommonly honest character from the first tome: admitting her unfairness to the revolving door of men who seem to pass through her life, her genuine description of her feelings and shortcomings, both emotional and physical, from the odor of her own sweat to the temptation to abandon her friends for the new man in her life.

“I couldn’t cry,” she says at one point. “I didn’t have enough of me left.”

“Air” is, overall, a beautiful story, but not a pretty one. Despite the departure from the earth, the physicality of the original remains — the grime, the stench, the dirt — and it is this that grants the novel its authenticity. It is a genuine book that opens Pearl’s restricted Missouri background to the world, and it paves the way for even more self-discovery in the following installments.

“Air” is available via Amazon on Kindle and in paperback.

Related on Eco Salon

Book Review: ‘Fika’ by Anna Brones and Johanna Kindvall

Book Review: ‘Edible Memory: The Lure of Heirloom Tomatoes and Other Forgotten Foods’ by Jennifer A. Jordan

Book Review: Most Good, Least Harm

Image care of Caroline Allen

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“Why should the edible biodiversity I found at the market become a subject for a book by a sociologist and not just ingredients for a pleasurable dinner?”

This sentence from the introduction of “Edible Memory” from Jennifer A. Jordan is the perfect starting point for this intricate yet very readable anthropological study of heirloom foods.

Jordan, an Associate Professor of Sociology at the University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee, begins her book by outlining an experience that so many of us have had: encountering heirloom foods as an adult. Her introduction on the definition of what she calls “edible memory” explores food memories both old and new — from the Twinkies of childhood to the heirloom tomatoes whose cultural memory is far more extensive, yet whose individual memory may not be so well forged.

In fact, this idea of cultural versus individual edible memory is examined at length. How, for instance, did tomatoes come to be seen as Italian when they are natively grown in South America? Why has America become associated with apples? These questions and more are explored over the course of six specific chapters dedicated to different foods and ideas.

The first three chapters explore three foods that are frequently considered to be heirloom — tomatoes, apples and root vegetables. These chapters explore the history of these foods up to and including their current heirloom nature and how they earned this label. This historic exploration of foods that have become commonplace offers interesting points of reflection for anyone who has paid more for an heirloom tomato in recent years.

The book also devotes chapters to  two other themes: that of the “mobile vegetable” and that of that delicate line between local and exotic. The first discusses the globalization of produce, though not in any way the average shopper may be thinking of it. Jordan delves, for example, into the history of cassava and its place in the slave trade, the development of a taste for pepper in Spain and Hungary after it was imported from the colonies and the East.

The last chapter explores the loss of such local fruits as plums, often used for plum brandy throughout the world and which used to cover much of California’s Santa Clara Valley, only to be replaced by tract homes. These local losses are contrasted with the increased popularity of imports like tropical fruits, which very rarely receive an heirloom label, no matter how culturally or historically significant they may be.

In each chapter, Jordan poses particularly poignant questions regarding, for example, the trajectory of heirloom tomatoes from nonexistent to something so popular that they are out of the financial purview of the very farmers who grow them, to a nearly over-used, bland and unexciting omnipresence on the market. These questions demand that we ask our own questions about our foodie habits — why do we choose the foods we choose, and how rooted are these foods in our own memories? Jordan’s brief personal introductions to each chapter keep the reader rooted in the personal nature of food memory.

The book concludes with a particularly poignant and poetic image of the durability of fruit trees, their edible memory ensconced in the soil — and a warning against romanticizing foods, especially heirloom foods, something we’re all wont to do. The study encourages learning more about the heirloom foods we’ve come to love, but it also paints an appetizing picture of the memories some of us would rather forget: the Kraft Dinners or Devil Dogs of our youth.

Jordan proposes that we advocate for change in the food world, for the forging of new cultural culinary memories all while conserving the permanence and importance, if not the contemporariness, of our personal food memories.

“Edible Memory“ is available via the University of Chicago Press.

Related on EcoSalon

Book Review: ‘Fika’ by Anna Brones and Johanna Kindvall

Book Review: ‘Eating Rome: Living the Good Life in the Eternal City’ by Elizabeth Minchilli

Book Review: Caroline Allen’s ‘Earth’

Image care of the University of Chicago Press

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“The Osage were divided into two tribes: the Earth people and the Sky people, each with their own inherent powers.”

Quotes such as these begin each section of “Earth”, a novel by Caroline Allen and the first installment in her elemental journey series. As promised, the book takes the reader into the depths of what it means to be close to the earth through the perspective of Pearl, a narrator followed from the age of 12 through the age of 22 through the story of someone with such a clear connection to the earth it belies reality.

Pearl’s point of view is clear and raw; it’s refreshing for the reader to find herself inside the head of a character who knows herself yet sees herself in everyone: as her repetitive mantra signifies, not There but for the grace of God go I but There go I. It’s a strange, foreign, wonderful and sometimes frightening place to be, contrasts that pulls off with grace and finesse.

Pearl’s story is, indeed, a story of contrasts. An abusive father, absentee sister, defeated mother, crazy aunt in whose footsteps Pearl fears following, with her out-of-body visions that connect her to the native that so intrigue and haunt her– all come second to her relationship to the  This is a girl for whom home and family are not in a place or a person, but in land. “It isn’t done” to touch in her home, to hold or be held; her family becomes the willow tree on the side of the highway where she takes refuge; her home is the farmland that is her sanctuary but where her father makes her choose her own switch when she disappoints him. It is an earth described as brutal, raw, cold, but in spite of — or perhaps because of — all these things, it is Pearl’s one true love throughout the story.

Allen’s descriptive prose is infectious from the first page — it is thanks to this that Pearl’s intrinsic relationship to the earth comes alive: “Scratchy cornstalks, the crimson suddenness of obese tomatoes, heavy watermelons on bulky vine, green beans in stuttered formation, bulbous onions exposed beneath soil, rows and rows of abrasive leaves and sweating half-­‐‑grown food.”

For Pearl, the more rural, the more raw the earth is, the realer it is; this is presented in stark contrast with her mother, also a child of rural poverty, who wants nothing more than to distance herself from  her mother does so, pushing Pearl from the earth in the process, Pearl loses her grasp on reality and on herself.

In her visions, Pearl describes herself as a tree — “a crooked tree with twisted, eccentric roots.” Through her visions, she becomes one with the earth; as she distances herself from it, she finds herself seeking out that connection she once had: “I wanted to get out of the truck, go into the forest, lie on my back and let mud seep into my bones. I wanted to dissolve into the fractal forest, bits of me speckled into bark, measurements of me absorbed in roots, breaths of me sparking kindling. I wanted to merge.”

Pearl’s journey is far from over by the end of the story, but the conclusion is satisfying, particularly given that the reader is left with the hope for Air, the second book in the series; the conclusion of this first tome invites us to posit the next step for Pearl, which is sure to bring even more of the evocative, descriptive prose that keeps the reader tumbling through this intriguing universe that Allen has created.

is available for purchase via Amazon.

Related on EcoSalon

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There’s a lot of dire green news out there. Species dying. Glaciers shrinking. Fish better off snorkeling than breathing their own water.

So, when a book comes along that paints a sunrise on the smog-choked horizon, it merits a look.  Pulitzer Prize winner Edward Humes brings us Eco Barons: The Dreamers, Schemers, and Millionaires Who Are Saving Our Planet. In a nod to the Rockefeller and Carnegie-type Robber Barons who drove the Industrial Revolution, “eco barons” refers to the band of visionaries who are using their wealth, energy and celebrity to push the world in a green direction.

There’s Douglas Tompkins, the former founder and CEO of the Esprit fashion empire who uses his fortune to preserve Patagonian rainforest. There’s Roxanne Quimby, the founder of Burt’s Bees, who sold her stake on her multi-million dollar cosmetics empire to save the great Maine Woods. But not all the eco barons are wealthy emperor-types. There’s Terry Tamminen, a former pool boy who is now the head of the California EPA and Carole Allen, a single mother, who has marshaled an army of schoolchildren to save endangered turtles from extinction by fishing fleets.

Through inspiring stories of individuals making a difference, Humes presents a timely and hopeful book. Worth a read.

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Bottomfeeder: How to Eat Ethically in a World of Vanishing Seafood by Taras Grescoe opens with a horrifyingly poetic description of a monkfish as the “Quasimodo of the Atlantic” whose “uncooked flesh, especially the liver can be virtually ambulant with marine worms”.

The book goes on in squirm-inducing detail to educate readers about why we shouldn’t be eating the fish we are eating and how, if we want to save our oceans, we’d all be well-advised to become bottomfeeders.

Expertly written, enthralling and suspenseful, this book goes deep into the reasons most top-of-the-food-chain fish aren’t sustainable and also lays out the facts about heavy metal contamination in many popular fish, like tuna and swordfish.

In addition to being an invaluable resource for eating fish sustainably, the book has huge entertainment value. The author is a true seafood lover with the mind of a social geographer. He has a feel for describing the fisherpeople he meets on his travels as he searches for marine life he can safely enjoy without emptying the oceans.

Along the way, readers are treated to gorgeous descriptions of Belon oysters with French butter and rye bread, flame-kissed Portuguese sardines and micro-scale sustainably-farmed shrimp in a coconut curry, while getting an intimate peek into the lives of the people who harvest, produce and cook the fish.

The book’s journey around the world is organized around a species or a dish that is a central part of the culture of each place the author visits. The opening chapter is set in the fine restaurants of Manhattan and centers on the monkfish, a severely overfished bottomfeeder that nobody would have considered eating until Julia Child popularized it.

While in New York, he provides a sharp, spot-on critique of top chefs who speak convincingly about sustainable fisheries while filling their menus with overfished species.

Grescoe visits the Chesapeake Bay and France in the chapter about oysters. He goes to England to discuss the reasons behind the demise of the cod, ending that chapter with the assertion that if moratoriums are not placed on the cod fishery, the next generation will be eating jellyfish and chips.

Next, he heads to the Mediterranean in search of the rascasse, the essential ingredient to bouillabaisse and a cousin to this hemisphere’s endangered snapper. Tokyo is the setting for his investigation of the mighty blue fin tuna and India for a sickening description of the ponds that provide the ubiquitous, cheap shrimp on those all-you-can-eat platters. You don’t want to know about this, but you need to.

This book has unequivocally changed my eating habits forever.

Though for years I’ve carried the Seafood Watch card to avoid buying endangered fish, I must admit that I have ordered off restaurant menus without thinking too hard about that sushi on my plate or the type of fish in those tacos. No more.

Now I will eat delicious sardines, aquacultured clams, oysters, and vegetarian species of farmed fish, squid, Pacific halibut, and the occasional black cod.

It is hard to learn there are so many things I love that I can no longer eat, like canned tuna, but I’d like to save something besides jellyfish for the next generation and help preserve the vibrant fishing and eating cultures that I learned about in this book and in my own travels.

The end of the book provides useful information on what to eat when, including fishing methods. This is important because some fish are only smart choices if they are caught in ways that don’t harm the environment or take a lot of bycatch.

Bottomfeeder will break your heart if you are a lover of seafood and our ocean environments. Yet that’s exactly why everyone should read it. Our oceans might just depend on it. It will be nearly impossible to come away unchanged by this book. After reality sunk in, I felt empowered by my knowledge and inspired to do the right thing all the time. I will no longer look the other way for the sake of one good meal.

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There’s green action. Then there’s green soul. You can change your light bulbs, recycle and buy organic. Or you can choose to be green – living with consciousness and integrity – deep in your very core.

The book Most Good, Least Harm explores this difference, which the author, Zoe Weil, dubs MOGO. She urges readers to investigate their actions and impact in order to live and create a life that works for the highest good. In her own words:

This is not a how-to book with prescribed choices for doing the most good and least harm. It is, instead, a call to define for yourself your deepest values and to live accordingly.

But the author also takes into account the conflicts this can cause. For example, she used a computer to write her book and educate about MOGO, but is aware of the toxic chemicals used in computer production. She promotes critical thinking for all of us to address these challenges in our everyday lives and, after analyzing the situation, work for the highest good.

The seven keys to MOGO are:
Live your Epitaph
Pursue Joy through Service
Make Connections and Self-Reflect
Model Your Message and Work for Change
Find and Create Community
Take Responsibility
Strive for Balance

For those who could use some down-to-earth guidance beyond the rhetoric, a helpful questionnaire and action plan is included, plus pages of detailed information and a list of online resources to help you on your way.

Living your epitaph – it puts things in a diffferent perspective, doesn’t it? Clearly, creating a life of the highest integrity requires a great deal of introspection and the changes required can seem intimidating. But the author is not asking for overnight change; rather, she seeks to inspire us to think and act from a higher place and make the changes we feel we need to make, at our own pace and one at a time. MOGO is a process, and it’s one we urgently need.

Author Zoe Weil

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Living in an energy efficient home made of eco-friendly materials is fast becoming a dream for many of us. No longer do we wish for a perfectly trimmed lawn and a white picket fence, but rather efficient appliances, well-placed windows and good insulation. Oh, and a xeriscaped yard.

And if you just so happen to be in the eco-home market, check out Sid Davis’ Your Eco-Friendly Home – Buying, Building or Remodeling Green. This book’s in-the-box approach serves its readers well and is engaging and accessible, with inexperienced home buyers in mind – but even experienced buyers will find something to chew on, because looking to build, buy or upgrade to green brings up new issues that most people haven’t even thought about. Davis meticulously describes securing financing, researching agents and contractors, retaining architects, using engineers, and many other traditional means.

Conveniently enough, this book is divided into three parts, each one focusing on Building, Buying or Remodeling green. Each section is full of information and examples.  Here’s a partial list of topics from the very long and detailed table of contents:

Finding and Qualifying for Eco-Friendly Financing
Finding an Eco-Friendly Agent
Shopping for an Eco-Friendly Home on Your Own
Successful Strategies For Making an Offer on a Home
Finding and Working With a Green Builder
Planning Your Environmentally Friendly Home
Protecting Yourself with Good Paperwork
Finding and Working with a Green Architect
Paying the Contractor and Managing Your Costs
Green Landscaping
Determining Where and What to Plant and Landscaping Mistakes to Avoid
Remodeling Your Home’s Exterior and Interior with Eco-Friendly Systems and Materials

This practical guide really covers it all. I even shared this book with my husband, who spent over 14 years working as a contractor and has owned a few homes himself, and he thinks it’s a great resource, too. His personal suggestion is that anyone considering remodeling would be best served by hiring a skilled local carpenter rather than a large licensed contractor, simply because the carpenter will be more willing to work with you and your family step-by-step to make sure your needs are met. It is your local carpenter that is familiar with the local planning department, local materials, local suppliers, and local specialty labor. And keeping it local is a lot of what eco-friendly living is all about.

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There’s so much to think about when raising your children green in a brown world. Food, clothing, shelter – these are just the beginning. What do you do when your child comes home with lice? How do you regulate TV and internet? Any conscious parent will want guidance for these issues in raising their child as holistically and organically as possible.

Lynda Fassa, author of Green Kids, Sage Families provides over 240 pages of such guidance. And the author has taken into account your busyness as a parent and provides useful information in bite-sized chunks that are accessible and fun to read. You can literally flip through this book and pick out what you need in the moment for healthy snack ideas, easy green home improvement, school-related issues, and arts and crafts for toddlers to teens. (Check out Lynda Fassa’s Green Babies, Sage Moms if you’re a new parent of a little one).

Here’s some of what you’ll find out in this book:

How to host an eco-friendly party
The truth behind food labels
Conscious consumerism for teens
Easy, homemade bath and body products for kids
Ideas for family meal plans
Green ideas for the holidays
Toxic products you absolutely must not allow in your house

Green Kids, Sage Families is a well-rounded read, with plenty suggestions for those on a budget (as many families are) and lots of expert guidance from green CEOs, businessmoms and other “green gurus” with real world experience to help your family thrive organically in the real world.

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