Lisle library taps Kingslover for Big Read
Inquiring minds want to know that the seeds on the cover of Barbara Kingsolver's book "Animal, Vegetable, Miracle" are Christmas Lima Beans.
The attractive red and white seeds went unidentified by many until a cooperative contact at publisher Harper Collins went the extra mile to find the answer. The seeds are an heirloom variety in the Slow Food of USA Ark of Taste catalog.
If this information leaves you clueless, read the 2009 selection for The Big Read at the Lisle Library. Be forewarned, Kingsolver's first nonfiction book is not a guaranteed quick read. A little curiosity, an interest in gardening or a desire to connect with the green movement would help.
"Animal, Vegetable, Miracle" by best-selling fiction author Kingsolver is co-authored by her biologist husband, Steven Hopp, who contributes fact-filled pieces, and by their daughter Camille, who adds a teen's perspective along with recipes.
Kingsolver's family, which includes youngest daughter Lily, took on a yearlong project to eat seasonally. They consumed food for themselves and their animals only as available from their own garden and from neighboring farms - or they learned to do without. The family moved from their dessert home in Tucson with a parched, small garden to a lush green farm they own in southwestern Virginia.
The book, published in May 2007, is a chronological journal of their year. A road trip through sustainable farms in New England and Canada and a trip to Italy provide other views. What the family finds is a sensible path to consuming natural resources.
Kingsolver points out that eating what we want, when we want comes with a price. Transporting food has run amok. The average food item in a grocery store has traveled farther than most families go on vacation and jet-traveled foods cost approximately as much in gasoline as we use in our cars, she writes.
"We are all thinking about the impact of our choices," said Rita Hassert, a librarian at the Sterling Morton Library at the Morton Arboretum, who is part of its book group Leafing through Pages. She found listening to this book on tape appealing since each co-author read their sections.
"There is a great pleasure in growing your own herbs and vegetables," Hassert said. "Right now within our library, we see people coming in looking for gardening information. It is the hope of spring."
Kingsolver admits that each summer she starts with the expectations as simple as a child's regarding the plan for her garden. She even records in a journal her first red tomato of the season, but then in August when every available surface in the kitchen contains tomatoes waiting to be processed, her food dryer runs 24/7 and she picks green beans daily, her child's title of her as "Tomato Queen" is appropriate.
Along the way, the author offers practical food-related tips such as, "potatoes rolled in a sturdy paper bag in the bottom drawer of a refrigerator will keep for six months or more" and "slip paper plates under ripening melons to protect undersides from moisture and sow bugs."
Within the strategy, the family allows the purchase of breakfast cereals, pasta, vinegar, apple cider, organic flour from Vermont and oranges for the holidays. They never buy a banana. Almost everyday they bake bread, produce yogurt and make soft cheese.
Growing vegetables from seeds and poultry from hatchlings make dinner from scratch at the Kingsolver's home an enterprise. Besides the fun of seeing things grow and interacting with family, the author claims that over-fertilized crops lose micronutrients.
For apartment dwellers who do not have 40 acres and a donkey, as the family has, Kingsolver suggests container and community gardens. The Lisle Park District offers 100 garden plots for residents.
Kingsolver admits as a child never even hearing the word "zucchini" but now encourages each person to start somewhere to become "locavores" - a new word that means to eat locally.
Recipes in the book and at animalvegetablemiracle.com include zucchini chocolate chip cookies, melon salsa and pumpkin soup served in its own shell.
Ellen Swirsky, who will teach "Local, Seasonal, Ethical: Making Choices about Food" at the Downers Grove library on April 30 (already filled), offers tips on shopping the farmer's market and finding supplies of local food.
"If everybody buys just one to three local products a week, it will make a large difference," said Swirsky, who grows a variety of peppers, herbs and edible flowers. She air dries her cayenne peppers for about three weeks, then crushes them and uses them all year long.
"With people interested in how they eat, where their food comes from and how they want to feed their children, I think we have found some programming that hits the spot," said Carol Kania, publicity and program coordinator for the Downers Grove Library.
The Lisle Library is in a Big Read consortium along with Clarendon Hills, Downers Grove, Hinsdale, Indian Prairie, LaGrange, LaGrange Park, Thomas Ford, Westmont and Woodridge public libraries.
Patrons may pick up a useful 15-page guide to programs at any of the libraries. In addition to the free programming, there are many other Web sites and related reading suggested in the guide. Programs range from small reading group discussions such as the one at 7:30 p.m. today at the Downers Grove Library co-hosted by the Lisle Library, to programs "Views of Rome," "Sheep to Shawl" knitting and "Life on the Appalachian Trail." There are cooking demonstrations, nutrition label reading and a 1947 movie "The Egg and I." The variety is wonderful and also available at thebigread.org. Registration is required and some programs are already at capacity.
Programs at the Lisle Library, 777 Front St., are the Herb Patch at 7 p.m. March 26; the Giving Tree Band performance at 7 p.m. April 23; and Vegetable Gardening with a master gardener at 7 p.m. April 28.
Kingsolver gives readers a cornucopia of food for thought and a green slant on "You are what you eat."
• Joan Broz writes about Lisle in Neighbor. E-mail her at jgbroz@yahoo.com.