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I’ve been reading Animal, Vegetable, Miracle by Barbara Kingsolver, and it’s got me thinking about food of course, but more about where it comes from than what we do with it. Her story of her family’s attempt to eat locally for one year is interesting and pretty well done. I enjoy reading about their forays to the farmers’ market, their discussions of what they can and can’t have (each family member is allowed one non-local indulgence) and the descriptions of the seasons as they unfold on their Virginia farm. The educational asides are a bit pedantic and seem more like filler, especially the boring disquisition on the “vegetannual”, also featured on the book’s website. In short, I like the concept and am looking forward to reading about the family adventure through the seasons, but much preferr Michal Pollan’s thorough study of the food chain in The Omnivore’s Dilemma (see previous review). Speaking of Pollan, he appears and narrates a new documentary film called “Food, Inc.” that the New York TImes calls “one of the scariest movies of the year.” The film goes to the feedlots and soybean fields that Pollan describes in his books, interviews farmers who fear to be filmed because of the long arm of the agribusiness giant, Monsanto, and basically, “tracks your food’s journey, from the soil to the plate.” Kingsolver’s book also touches on Monsanto with a description of the giant corporation’s lawsuit against a Canadian farmer whose canola plants had been naturally pollinated by Monsanto’s patented canola plant genes. The mind boggles…