The Dirty Life

This is the best book I've read in years - it made me laugh, cry, shake my head, and daydream about quitting my job and buying a farm in the middle of nowhere. Of course, I don't actually have what it takes to live that kind of lifestyle day in and day out, year after year. As the author says, with a dairy cow, there is milking to be done twice a day, no exceptions. No vacations, no days off, no calling out sick. And that's just one animal!

I'm in the habit of reading several books at a time, but by the time I got 1/4 of the way through this one, the rest had fallen by the wayside. I could barely put it down.

Over the past few years, I've become more and more aware of what I'm eating and where it comes from. I've always had a garden, ever since I can remember. Obviously, home grown organic produce tastes better than anything you can buy in a grocery store. What I'd never given much thought to, until more recently, is the rest of my diet. Sure, I try to eat healthy, both for actual health reasons, and to keep from getting fat as a rhino. Then my husband got laid off, and when he finally found work again, it was in Florida. Between the stress of the separation and the burden of keeping a household for two up by myself (3 dogs, 2 cats, an acre of grass, etc...), combined with a late frost last year that killed all my tomatoes, peppers, etc..., the garden just utterly failed to launch. So I started visiting the local farmers markets. Lo and behold, there was a world of fresh, locally produced food out there that I'd never noticed before. I broadened my horizons and started buying vegetables I'd never had outside of a restaurant. I bought handmade sausages, organic pastured "minimally processed" milk and yogurt, handcrafted cheeses, butter, and baked goods. And I learned to cook for the first time, sorta. I mostly slid into a sorta lazy default vegetarianism, because I'm skeeved out by the idea of handling raw meat. To be honest, I took the sausage to my sister's and my brother in law cooked that one.

I've always enjoyed gardening books, books about growing plants, for food or otherwise. But I started reading books about food. I'd read a few Michael Pollan books over the years, starting with The Botany Of Desire, but that was about the extent of my food reading. My husband does the cooking. I grow it, he cooks it. Or at least that's how it was before he moved to Florida for 9 months. Now we're more likely to share the kitchen duties if we're both home, rather than him cooking for me. For instance, this weekend, he grilled fish and steak while I made potatoes with butter and onions, baked asparagus with olive oil and ground black pepper, and sauteed chard with garlic and olive oil. It was a delicious meal, finished with chocolate chip ice cream and black raspberries from the garden. :)

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