Being Vegan


Joanne Stepaniak - 2000
    Fielding questions from friends and foes, she describes how compassion, kindness, and mercy to animals can be integrated into everyday life. It covers living the vegan philosophy and ethic, discovering hidden animal products and ingredients, and more.

The Backyard Gardener: Simple, Easy, and Beautiful Gardening with Vegetables, Herbs, and Flowers


Kelly Orzel - 2017
    How important is composting? Is seed saving really worth it? Focusing on sustainable, organic growing practices and plants, The Backyard Gardener is a comprehensive handbook that will help get them started. Kelly Orzel covers everything from soil selection to growing and harvesting. Sidebars such as "garden center survival tips" offer useful advice to help readers build their confidence and know-how. This guide also features photographs of beautiful plant bed designs, propagation techniques, and much more.

Eat Here: Reclaiming Homegrown Pleasures in a Global Supermarket


Brian Halweil - 2004
    Since 1961 the tonnage of food shipped between nations has grown fourfold. In the United States, food typically travels between 1,500 and 2,500 miles from farm to plate—as much as 25 percent farther than in 1980. For some, the long-distance food system offers unparalleled choice. But it often runs roughshod over local cuisines, varieties, and agriculture, while consuming staggering amounts of fuel, generating greenhouse gases, eroding the pleasures of face-to-face interactions, and compromising food security. Fortunately, the long-distance food habit is beginning to weaken under the influence of a young, but surging, local-foods movement. From peanut-butter makers in Zimbabwe to pork producers in Germany and rooftop gardeners in Vancouver, entrepreneurial farmers, start-up food businesses, restaurants, supermarkets, and concerned consumers are propelling a revolution that can help restore rural areas, enrich poor nations, and return fresh, delicious, and wholesome food to cities.

Seeds of Deception: Exposing Industry and Government Lies about the Safety of the Genetically Engineered Foods You're Eating


Jeffrey M. Smith - 2003
    While the food and chemical industries claim that GMO food is safe, a considerable amount of evidence shows otherwise. In Seeds of Deception, Jeffrey Smith, a former executive with the leading independent laboratory testing for GM presence in foods, documents these serious health dangers and explains how corporate influence and government collusion have been used to cover them up.The stories Smith presents read like a mystery novel. Scientists are offered bribes or threatened; evidence is stolen; data withheld or distorted. Government scientists who complain are stripped of responsibilities or fired. The FDA even withheld information from congress after a GM food supplement killed nearly a hundred people and permanently disabled thousands. While Smith was employed by the laboratory he was not allowed to speak on the health dangers or the cover-up. No longer bound by this agreement, Smith now reveals what he knows in this groundbreaking expos�.Today, food companies sell GM foods that have not undergone safety studies. FDA scientists opposed this, but White House and industry pressure prevailed and the agency's final policy--co-authored by a former Monsanto attorney--denied the risks. The scientists' concerns were made public only after a lawsuit forced the agency to turn over internal documents.Dan Glickman, former Secretary of Agriculture, describes the government's pro-biotech mindset: You felt like you were almost an alien, disloyal, by trying to present an open-minded view. . . . So I pretty much spouted the rhetoric. . . . It was written into my speeches.In Seeds of Deception Smith offers easy-to-understand descriptions of genetic engineering and explains why it can result in serious health problems. This well-documented, pivotal work will show you how to protect yourself and your family.

Behind the Kitchen Door


Sarumathi Jayaraman - 2013
    Blending personal and investigative journalism, Jayaraman shows us that the quality of the food that arrives at our restaurant tables is not just a product of raw ingredients: it's the product of the hands that chop, grill, saut, and serve it.

Mason Bee Revolution: How the Hardest Working Bee Can Save the World - One Backyard at a Time


Dave Hunter - 2016
    Honeybees Make Honey; Mason Bees Make Food.

Kosher Nation: Why More and More of America's Food Answers to a Higher Authority


Sue Fishkoff - 2010
    In this captivating account of a Bible-based practice that has grown into a multibillions-dollar industry, journalist Sue Fishkoff travels throughout America and to Shanghai, China, to find out who eats kosher food, who produces it, who is responsible for its certification, and how this fascinating world continues to evolve. She explains why 86 percent of the 11.2 million Americans who regularly buy kosher food are not observant Jews—they are Muslims, Seventh-day Adventists, vegetarians, people with food allergies, and consumers who pay top dollar for food they believe “answers to a higher authority.” Fishkoff interviews food manufacturers, rabbinic supervisors, and ritual slaughterers; meets with eco-kosher adherents who go beyond traditional requirements to produce organic chicken and pasture-raised beef; sips boutique kosher wine in Napa Valley; talks to shoppers at an upscale kosher supermarket in Brooklyn; and marches with unemployed workers at the nation’s largest kosher meatpacking plant. She talks to Reform Jews who are rediscovering the spiritual benefits of kashrut, and to Conservative and Orthodox Jews who are demanding that kosher food production adhere to ethical and environmental values. And she chronicles the corruption, price-fixing, and strong arm tactics of early-twentieth-century kosher meat production, against which contemporary kashrut standards pale by comparison. A revelatory look at the current state of kosher in America, this book will appeal to anyone interested in food, religion, Jewish identity, or big business.

Greenhorns: 50 Dispatches from the New Farmers' Movement


Zoë Ida Bradbury - 2012
    This book, edited by three of the group's leading members, comprises 50 original essays by new farmers who write about their experiences in the field from a wide range of angles, both practical and inspirational. Funny, sad, serious, and light-hearted, these essays touch on everything from financing and machinery to family, community building, and social change.

Pot on the Fire: Further Exploits of a Renegade Cook


John Thorne - 2000
    Fisher" (Connoisseur). From nineteenth-century famine-struck Ireland to the India of the British Raj, from the bachelor's kitchen to the Italian cucina, Thorne is an entertaining, erudite, and inventive guide to culinary adventuring and appreciation.

Diet for a Small Planet


Frances Moore Lappé - 1971
    With the new emphasis on environmentalism in the 1990's, Lappe stresses how her philosophy remains valid, and how food remains the central issue through which to understand world politics.

Growing a Revolution: Bringing Our Soil Back to Life


David R. Montgomery - 2017
    Now conventional agriculture is threatening disaster for the world’s growing population. In Growing a Revolution, geologist David R. Montgomery travels the world, meeting farmers at the forefront of an agricultural movement to restore soil health. From Kansas to Ghana, he sees why adopting the three tenets of conservation agriculture—ditching the plow, planting cover crops, and growing a diversity of crops—is the solution. When farmers restore fertility to the land, this helps feed the world, cool the planet, reduce pollution, and return profitability to family farms.

Flash of Silver: ...the Leap That Changed My World


Graham Kerr - 2015
    It contains a powerful remedy for indifference in just one word...resilience!Resilience has begun to outstrip 'sustainability' as the action to be taken to preserve many species, including our own.Graham Kerr, as the 'Galloping Gourmet' was referred to, during his international TV series, as the 'High Priest of Hedonism'. He had learned how to eat, cook and profit from some of the finest and richest foods in the world and he used those gifts with enormous enthusiasm and good humor.Suddenly everything changed as an accident severed his success with one blow.Searching for a return to resilience for himself and his family he began an ocean sailing adventure that took them 24,000 miles in 2 years.Then follows one of the most observed U turns ever made by one man. The Kerr's went from a conspicuous gourmet lifestyle to that of a small family living their lives beyond immediate self-interest and they did this in plain sight!Graham uses the literary practice of the 'extended metaphor' to enquire how habits are both formed and relinquished. He does this by comparing his life with that of a wild pacific Chinook salmon. Using poetic license, imagination and good science he asks his readers to hear from the salmon...direct and to see how both man and fish have somewhat similar rites of passage.They are swept 'downstream' where they face continuous discovery, some of which are difficult, some joyful...even hilarious.Upon reaching the salt waters they encounter the challenge of an almost limitless 'ocean of opportunity' where they must eat or be eaten, always driven by immediate self-interest and the need to survive.Finally they turn away from conspicuous consumption and begin to go 'upstream on purpose', this time motivated not just to survive as individuals, but also as a species...It's a wild ride as the scent of their natal river begins to provide direction for their way back home, where it all began.Kerr is not an angry activist, as he puts it."I have a story to tell and it's personal. I have made a series of very obvious leaps over some major obstacles, not unlike the salmon. Their flashes of silver are, for me, a splendid example of the resilience that is ours for the asking."Flash of Silver is supported by an extensive web site that includes an interactive 'REFLECTIVE READERS CLUB' at www.grahamkerr.com/RRC

Eat Like a Fish: My Adventures as a Fisherman Turned Restorative Ocean Farmer


Bren Smith - 2019
    Here Bren Smith--pioneer of regenerative ocean agriculture--introduces the world to a groundbreaking solution to the global climate crisis.A genre-defining "climate memoir," Eat Like a Fish interweaves Smith's own life--from sailing the high seas aboard commercial fishing trawlers to developing new forms of ocean farming to surfing the frontiers of the food movement--with actionable food policy and practical advice on ocean farming. Written with the humor and swagger of a fisherman telling a late-night tale, it is a powerful story of environmental renewal, and a must-read guide to saving our oceans, feeding the world, and--by creating new jobs up and down the coasts--putting working class Americans back to work.

The Meat Racket: The Secret Takeover of America's Food Business


Christopher Leonard - 2014
    But that turns out to be an illusion. The rotisserie chicken, the pepperoni, the cordon bleu, the frozen pot pie, and the bacon virtually all come from four companies. In The Meat Racket, investigative reporter Christopher Leonard delivers the first-ever account of how a handful of companies have seized the nation’s meat supply. He shows how they built a system that puts farmers on the edge of bankruptcy, charges high prices to consumers, and returns the industry to the shape it had in the 1900s before the meat monopolists were broken up. At the dawn of the twenty-first century, the greatest capitalist country in the world has an oligarchy controlling much of the food we eat and a high-tech sharecropping system to make that possible. Forty years ago, more than thirty-six companies produced half of all the chicken Americans ate. Now there are only three that make that amount, and they control every aspect of the process, from the egg to the chicken to the chicken nugget. These companies are even able to raise meat prices for consumers while pushing down the price they pay to farmers. And tragically, big business and politics have derailed efforts to change the system. We know that it takes big companies to bring meat to the American table. What The Meat Racket shows is that this industrial system is rigged against all of us. In that sense, Leonard has exposed our heartland’s biggest scandal.

The Simply Vegan Cookbook: Easy, Healthy, Fun, and Filling Plant-Based Recipes Anyone Can Cook


Dustin Harder - 2018
    The Simply Vegan Cookbook takes vegan cooking to the tastiest level with easy, delicious recipes that are fun to make and a delight to eat. Creator and host of The Vegan Roadie, Dustin Harder has travelled over 110,000 miles—and visited every grocery store along the way— to find out which vegan foods are (and are not) accessible. Taking this into account, The Simply Vegan Cookbook provides healthful, balanced vegan meals using easy-to-find, affordable vegan ingredients.From greens and beans to grains and mains, The Simply Vegan Cookbook is the most comprehensive of vegan cookbooks to date. This vegan cookbook offers: 150 recipes with two variations each, resulting in a total of 450 recipes No more than 30 minutes of active time prep time per recipe Cooking tutorials improve your skills for making vegan staples The Simply Vegan Cookbook gives home cooks what other vegan cookbooks don’t—vegan recipes that save time, money, and your sanity.