References and Reads

References and Reads

Here is a list of references and reads associated with local living. Some are blogs, some are sites, some are books, and some are cookbooks.  I hope they are useful to you in making your own decisions.  I welcome recommendations for things to read!

Books to Read and Debate:

About the Food Industry or Nutrition:

• Organic, Inc. by Samuel Fromartz..great expose on the history of the organic industry and the debate surrounding big organic. 
• The Omnivore's Dilemma by Michael Pallon. this book was a game changer for me. 
•  Eating Animals by Jonathan Safron Froer is a detailed look at the animal welfare issues, in particular, animal farming in the U.S. It's enlightening, disturbing, philosophical and, I think, a must read for meat eaters.
• Real Food by Nina Planck. I love this book.  It is a great science based discussion about what we should be eating: it's not low fat, highly processed food substitutes. 

Autobiographical or biographical local living/farming/sustainability type books:

• Animal, Vegetable, Miracle by Barbara Kingsolver. the classic book that has changed many a mind. inspiring and well written. 
• Made by Hand by Mark Frauenfelder. this is a light, quick read about being more self-sufficient. 
• Farmer Jane by Temra Costa. This is stories of women in the food movement. It's similar to this blog in many ways. 
• The Dirty Life by Kristin Kimball, a book about a New York reporter who falls in love with a farmer she interviews and abandons the city to start a major farming endeavor in the country.
• Plenty: One Man, One Woman, and a Raucous Year of Local Eating, by Smith and Mackinnon, the original 100-mile challenge from Vancouver, Canada area. This was also published under the title The One Hundred Mile Diet.

Other things that fit in this blog genre:

• Radical Homemakers by Shannon Hayes. A philosophical book that makes you think about the current home set.

Cookbooks I use a lot:

The most important thing to know is that if you are cooking grass-fed or pastured meat, particularly beef, lamb, and pork, the internal temperatures for testing when they are done are much much lower than with conventional meat. Overcooking your meat by following standard guides will give you something that is chewy, tough, and extremely dissatisfying. The grass-fed cookbooks will have the correct temperature ranges.

• Nourishing Traditions by Sally Fallon. Love this cookbook. It challenges me to think differently and try different things. It has tons and tons of useful information along the side columns about worldwide diets and science. 
• The Grassfed Gourmet by Shannon Hayes. this one is new to me, but a classic to others about how to properly cook grassfed meat. What I have tried, came out fabulous. 
• The Farmer and the Grill by Shannon Hayes. this one I've owned quite awhile and use alot. It's great grill techniques.  
• Tender Grassfed Meat: Traditional Ways to Cook Healthy Meat by Stanley Fishman . again focused on how to deal with grassfed meat. This is a great book. 
• Great Good Food by Julee Rosso. like Nourishing Traditions, this is worldwide, seasonal food. 
• Simply in Season. Classic mennonite seasonal cookbook with simple, hearty recipes. 
• Dishing Up Maryland. This cookbook is seasonally divided into recipes based on local ingredients and dotted with profiles of farms/producers across the state. Beautiful photos and a great local resource. 
• How to Cook Everything by Mark Bittman. classic. 
• The Food You Crave Ellie Krieger. simple, healthy food. 

Movies to See and Debate:

• Food, Inc. 
• Dirt! 
• The Cove
• Super Size Me
• Food Matters

Favourite Blogs and sites:

The Blog Roll:

The blog roll here is blogs I read and regularly find interesting and useful. I don't add something until I've been monitoring it for a bit, and I might remove entries later. They are not in a particular order here.

• www.theslowcook.com - The Slow Cook - this is the blog site for Ed Bruske, former Washington Post journalist and author of a daily blog.  His blog focuses largely on school food issues, but also on his garden in downtown Washington DC and the food appreciation courses he offers for school children. This is a daily read for me. Highly recommend it. 
• The Truffula Seed Produce Blog is an occasional blog for Josie and Shawn, but Josie's background in photography and excellent writing skills make it a great read.  I keep it on an RSS feed, so that when she does post something, I'll see it. This really tells about their adventure in farming as young, organic farmers. 
• The Nourishing Cook is a woman making her way through the Nourishing Traditions cookbook. She's got a ways to go, it's a huge book, but the great thing about this site is that if you do want to try something unusual, like fermented carrots, and she has cooked it, you'll also find tons of comments from others around the world who have also tried and you get the aggregate knowledge. Very helpful. 
• Nourishing Days is a blog dedicated to what is known as Real Food, as supported by a range of cookbooks and other books. The blog is interesting and the author shares her own experiences as well as recipes.
• The pair of blogs, Simple Bites, and Simple Organic, are a food blog and a more general sustainable living blog that are well written and clean in presentation.
• Sustainable Eats is about sustainable eating, obviously, and is well written. It also sponsors a Thursday blog round where others link to their most recent posts about sustainable food, which is a great source of new blogs and interesting ideas.
• Kellly the Kitchen Kop is another sustainable living blog with a Wednesday Real Food round up. Again, this is a great source of finding out what folks are doing each week.
• GNOWFGLINS is a blog about rediscovering traditional methods of healthy food preparation. They actually do a lot of online tutorials for small fees and from all I can tell are really excellent. It's impressively thorough.
• Not Inadequate is a knitter and a mom interested in sustainable living, so you get a nice mix of posts. It's a fun read.
• Simply Really Living is a blog from a woman in Massachusetts with a similar bent to my own. She has just started, but it is off to a great start.
• Civil Eats is a food politics blog, as is The Ethicurean.
• The Good Eater Collaborative is a multi-author, occasionally published, blog that is about food, but not so much about either specifically recipes or politics. They've had pieces on raising bees and chickens in an urban setting, for example.

Resource Websites:

• www.localharvest.org - Local Harvest - fundamental resource for finding local food-related businesses in your area, but they also have a weekly newsletter and blog that are worth reading. They also have a way to find members blogs within your area.