books about food

It’s the locavore’s dilemma: there’s a staggering amount of information out there these days on how to “eat local,” but the resources themselves aren’t necessarily fine-tuned to one’s particular locale. I may share similar principles with a local food lover in San Francisco, but we certainly do not share the same growing season or farmers markets. So if I prefer a tomato from my own backyard over one shipped halfway across the country, shouldn’t I also prefer a cookbook with local roots?

I’ll admit to feeling some trepidation before opening my review copy of Lisa Jervis’ Cook Food: A Manualfesto for Easy, Healthy, Local Eating (PM Press, 2009). Sure, I’d just finished a bowl of kale and potato soup, made by my own hands with greens from my local farmers market. And earlier I’d eaten a snack of raw asparagus spears from the same source. But while I aspire to fresh, healthy, local eating, I’m imperfect. Did a book with the word “manualfesto” in the title have room for my chocolate-eating, Coke Zero-drinking self?

I needn’t have worried. Jervis’s slim, informative volume is, in her words, “a short, quirky education in simple cooking; healthy, light-footprint eating; and the politics of food.”  It is indeed: not an exhaustive overview, but a brief, clear discussion that will make an excellent resource for those new to local eating as well as those familiar with the movement. 

My tomato seedlings are dying on the windowsill. In my absence, my husband put them outside on sunny, too hot days. It was more than their delicate leaves could take and the tips started to brown and wilt before I could return to rescue them. Maybe this is what made my reading of Arthur Allen's Ripe: The Search for the Perfect Tomato, so bittersweet.