Brain Child

A couple of weeks ago, when my kids brought home their school cafeteria’s lunch menu, I noticed a couple of interesting items. First, the menu now noted the number of calories in every item served, from pizza to carrot sticks. My eight-year-old twin daughter and son and my seven-year old daughter are a bit young to appreciate the idea of measuring the amount of energy food provides; but it’s important to know, and I’m glad the school has introduced the concept.

Even more interesting to me was a short blurb on the menu’s inner page: “Fresh from the farm! Locally grown fruits and vegetables will be featured on the menu from September 13-17, 2010, to promote Maryland Home Grown School Lunch Week. Melons, cherry tomatoes, red and green peppers, lettuce and cucumbers are some of the Maryland agricultural products that will be served in the cafeteria.”

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. 

Cathy Erway’s first memoir, The Art of Eating In: How I Learned to Stop Spending and Love the Stove, is the kind that includes recipes at the end of each chapter. Well it might: Erway spent two years cooking nearly every meal she ate, avoiding both restaurants and takeout food, and recording her experience at her blog, Not Eating Out in NY. This memoir shares what she learned during those two years, intertwining kitchen discoveries and personal revelations and including a thoughtful assessment of the state of eating out in America.