Customer Reviews

Coming Home to Eat: The Pleasures and Politics of Local Foods

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(5)
2 star:		(1)
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I completely honor the impulse behind this book and believe in the importance of eating local. I also applaud Nabhan for thinking and writing about these issues before so many others (yet I'm also happy for the influx of recent local eating books and articles from Pollan, Kingsolver, McKibben, Alisa Smith & JB Mackinnon, and the blog by "No Impact Man"). Some scenes are powerful: eating ripe peaches, the short Thanksgiving section, reconnecting with family. The history and science sections are good too.

What surprised me, though, is that it seemed like throughout much of the book, Nabhan was in his Blazer, on a plane, or somewhere nowhere near home. Although he carried his fried grasshoppers and tortillas with him, I was longing to read more about the actual practices of growing and preparing local food (there is, however, plenty on roadkill). What surprised me more: the continual references to Spam, especially in relation to the sunset:

"As a Spam-colored sunset blanketed the western sky, the sweat on my back chilled" (40).
"At dusk they [mechanized dairy farms] took on a sickly greenish cast, the color of modly Spam" (158).
". . . each afternoon until the sun went down, gaudy as a thin slice of Spam" (276).

Why so much Spam? He buys a can of Spam in another odd section of the book where he spends $50 on a strange combination of food for a brunch that he and his partner, Laurie, don't eat. In another section, he throws a bunch of food in the compost bin because it uses cactuses in the advertising but doesn't contain cactus juice. I was puzzled by the waste. Why not eat the food and not buy it again? (Or in the supermarket venture, why not buy foods suitable for a decent brunch?)

In terms of the time in the Blazer and the time away from home, I understand that Nabhan's work and activism demand travel--and sometimes you see "home" more clearly when you're away from it. But I can't think of any reason for all the Spam.

Gary Paul Nabham has really put together a beautiful and inspiring apologia for the emerging local, cultural, slow food philosophy. Like a simmering stew, the book bubbles over with diveristy, as the author runs in and out of the poetic, historical, cultural and academic. Whereas others reviewers have found fault with the seemingly "unfocused" nature of the book, I was happily entertained. From cover to cover, the subject matter remains fresh and suprising. Some of the foods you can expect to encounter include boiled venison, baked rabbit, grilled corvina, tomatillo consommes, squash souffles, tepary bean burritos wrapped in mesquite tortillas, freshly picked and lightly steamed lamb quarters, purslane, tansy mustards, cress, prickly pear punch, mistletoe and Mormon tea. You will encounter organpipe cactus jam, stewed pumpkin, pinole, creosote bush salve, jojoba oil, damiana tea and pit roasted agaves - or "tatemada" - an ancient tradition the author and some local Indians revived, among others. Although the book runs thin on recipes (there are none), it liberally bastes philosophy: "If food is the sumptuous sea of energy we dive into and swim through every day, I have lived but one brief moment leaping like a flying fish and catching a glimmering glimpse of that sea roiling all around us. And then just as quickly, I splashed back beneath its surface, to be overmore immersed in what effortlessly buoys us up." When Nabham is not introducing you old, now by-and-large forgotten foods and the cultures they come from, he is reminding you of the pitfalls of the emerging global marketplace: for example, "the average American brings home nearly 3,300 pounds of foodstuffs each year for his or her consumption...much of it never eaten. It is nearly two-and-a-half time the weight of what most of our contempories in other regions of the world consume, and much of it comes from their farmlands." He also reminds us that, with each passing season, we are losing more top soil, more biodiversity, and more of the foods that help us keep us strong and healthy. A very important book that is also a pleasure to read. On a scale of deliciousness, I give it a peach cobbler.

"Live in each season as it passes," Thoreau said, "breathe the air, drink the drink, taste the fruit, and resign yourself to the influences of each" (p. 95). This is also the simple premise of Gary Paul Nabhan's book. Nabhan is an ethnobioligist, the Director of the Center for Sustainable Environments at Northern Arizona University, and the co-founder of Native Seeds/Search in Tucson, Arizona. COMING HOME TO EAT is about a year of eating locally (p. 13) while thinking globally. In his 330-page book, Nabhan celebrates "the sensual pleasures of food without ignoring its global politics" (p. 14).

"My mouth, my tongue, and my heart remind me what my mind too often forgets," Nabhan writes. "I love the flavor of where I live, and all the plants and creatures I live with" (p. 304). In a culture where many of us obtain our food from vending machines, fast food restaurants, and "planetary" supermarkets (p. 22), it is no surprise that we have no idea where our food comes from, where it is grown, or how it is handled. On average, in fact, the food we eat today travels thirteen hundred miles from where it is produced, changing hands at least six times along the way (p. 23). In addition, nine-tenths of our food comes from non-local sources, with handlers along the food chain gaining three times more income from its consumer price than the farmers, ranchers, and fishermen who produced it (p. 34). Biting that corporate hand that feeds us every chance he gets, Nabhan's recounts his decision to purge his kitchen cabinets of all the processed foods "whose origins were distant" (p. 42), and to consume instead food that had been grown and gathered within 250 miles of his home in Tucson. Through his experiment, Nabhan is rewarded with an "oral pleasure" derived from "the minerals, the sourness or sweetness of the very ground we walk on, the very soil the seeds break through as they take in the air we ourselves have recently breathed" (p. 50). Sensual and enlightening, Nabhan's book is full of food for thought, that will leave you coming back for more.

G. Merritt

The author has some very important things to say, most of which I agree with. I learned some things that made me curious and excited. I learned some things that made me wince with fear and disgust. Not bad.

Unfortunately, most of the book is full of semi-narcissistic, pseudo-spiritual drivel that makes for a long and painful read. I wish that Nabhan had teemed up with Mark Kurlansky to write it.

Coming Home to Eat is easy to read, enjoyable, and packed full of interesting details on a myriad of topics. This is the type of book you can give to almost anyone, and they will enjoy reading it. I'm a biologist with a background in conservation, and I really enjoyed reading about the natural history of many of the plants and animals in the book. I've given the book to two other people, and they both loved it, but for completely different reasons. One enjoyed all the detailed descriptions of cooking and meals; while the other was more interested by the social and economic aspects of the book. The author does a great job of weaving together several fairly disparate topics into a very entertaining narrative.

In today's society we are more distant from our food and how it is produced than ever before. Gary forces us to take a look at how the agricultural systems work - or don't work- and how our food choices affect the farmers, ranchers and fisherman who struggle to make a living off the land, as well as the world around us. Very thought provoking read.

Nabham delivers important insights on the health our nation's food supply. Combining hard facts with eloquent personal narrative and sensual descriptions, he creates a captivating text that is accessible to all readers.

Nabham brings forth some very salient (and often frightening) points about the destruction of arable farm lands, the uncertainty of genetically engineered seed stocks, the loss of native biodiversity, and the damaging effects of a modern diet, among other topics.

I recommend the book highly and ask the author to follow up with a very specific series of guidelines for readers who want to take steps to eat locally and improve our nation's agricultural sustainability.

In Coming Home to Eat: The Pleasures and Politics of Local Foods the author, Dr. Gary Paul Nabhan, describes how a pilgrimage to Lebanon with his brothers to meet family members, experience their cultural cuisine first-hand and to observe their methods of cultivation and foraging became the impetus for him when he returned home to southern Arizona to attempt to spend a year eating only food produced or foraged locally.
In a quote on the cover of the paperback edition I have, the author Michael Pollan refers to the work as "The first manifesto of the local food movement..." I think manifesto is a very good, if not careful choice of words by Mr. Pollan. As an example, I quote a sentence from page 131 that would fit just as well into another famous manifesto, "It seemed to me essential that each of us somehow begin to volunteer time in the fields and orchards that produce our food, and to grasp how they change from season to season, year to year, and decade to decade." To be sure, the author is capable of very florid, prosaic, passionate language when describing the local native people, the desert scenery or a newly discovered gastronomic delight, "...it tasted as though I were eating a meal just one step removed from sunlight." However, this book often also reads like a polemic or a sermon and there is no shortage of industries against which the author preaches. Don't get me wrong, I very much agree with the author's core sentiment that food consumers, every one of us, need to reconnect with where our food comes from and how it is produced. We should be thinking along the lines of fresh, seasonal, local and sustainable. I have read Where our Food Comes From: Retracing Nikolay Vavilov's Quest to End Famine and Why Some Like it Hot: Foods, Genes and Cultural Diversity also written by Dr. Nabhan and have found both to be very informative with a very worthwhile perspective on their respective topics.
It comes as no surprise that the author has very little nice to say about the processed food industry, "The sickening taste of overprocessed, chemically preserved foods rose from my belly and filled my mouth." It also comes as no surprise he chooses seed companies and agricultural chemical companies as regular targets for his vitriol. What does come as a bit of a surprise is that he seems to imply he condones the actions of eco-terrorists who have vandalized labs and crops by comparing them to the patriots who perpetrated the Boston Tea Party. He also seems to be against produce packers and shippers and all other "middlemen" who absorb 93 cents of every dollar spent on food by consumers while only 7 cents is returned to the stewards of the land, the farmer (okay, I am kinda with him on that one). To enumerate, he is against: the pharmaceutical industry and the airline industry (p.81), the real estate industry and retirement communities (p.111), the USDA Agricultural Statistics Service (p.130), the health-food and nutraceutical industries "...packages, bottles, and jars full of memory-enhancing, cholesterol-lowering, ejaculation-erupting ingredients masquerading as food." (p.166), Chicago's Museum of Science and Industry "...it continued to reek with the toxic perfumes of industrial agriculture." (p.167), the Environmental Protection Agency for its very cozy relationship with the industries it is assigned to regulate (p.183), the commercial fishing industry (p.218, p.231), and corporate owned franchise restaurants (p.258).
I think there are more than just a few spiritual and zealous overtones in this book as well. I can't help but think of as overzealous the example on page 112 where the author, who has already gone through and purged his home of all packaged foods that were not produced locally and sustainably, describes how he again goes through his pantry and refrigerator and purges all food items he has since purchased which use the apparently sacrosanct Saguaro Cactus on their label without actually containing any saguaro cactus in their list of ingredients. I wonder if he then also went to his closet and purged it of all Izod and Polo shirts because they did not actually contain any sustainably harvested alligator and horse products, respectively. Nowhere do I think this sentiment is more evident than on page 295 where the author waxes rhapsodically about washing and caring for the feet of others while on the 240 mile long Desert Walk for Biodiversity , Heritage and Health. I can't help but think this is a not even a thinly veiled biblical allusion and can only guess who the author would cast in the leading role. Finally, I have to think the author might be prone to a bit of hyperbole when it helps his caused as I read his list of ingredients for a jar of bean dip in his refrigerator and then surmised where each ingredient was likely produced. Though it might serve his cause to suggest that valuable energy, water and land were utilized in a greenhouse in Arizona to grow the tomatoes that went into the tomato paste for the aforementioned dip, it is highly unlikely. Two-thirds to three quarters of the world's processing tomatoes, and subsequently tomato paste, are produced in the fields of California each year at such a low cost per unit that tomato paste has become little more than a commodity. Turkey, Italy and to a lesser extent Israel and Australia contribute to the remainder of the world's tomato paste supply; all from open field production. If you are interested in reading a similar account of a family that tried to eat locally and sustainably that is more humorous and less rhetoric laden, then I recommend Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life by the Pulitzer nominated novelist Barbara Kingsolver.

Gary Paul Nabhan's book about his year long local eating experiment gives readers good insight into Nabhan's personal life, but surprisingly little information about his local eating foray. For one year, Nabhan plans to prepare 80% of his meals using foods grown within a few hundred miles of his Arizona home. This is certainly a noble act, but I found myself continuously asking how he actually did it. Sure, he tells of gathering traditional food from a local desert, slaughtering turkeys he raised and eating peaches from his own tree. But we're talking about a thousand or so meals, which would require a lot more local food than he discusses. This omission left a lot to be desired for me.

Aside from information about Nabhan's wife and other local eating acquaintances, he briefly discusses food politics. Here the reader encounters some interesting information, but is still left thirsting for more.

Nabhan has good intentions, however the book is neither informative nor inspiring enough to be compared to other tales of local eating, such as Animal, Vegetable, Miracle by Barbara Kingsolver.


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Having read several books on local foods and sustainability, I really wanted to love this book. I wanted to read about this man's year of eating local in the southwest US. However, I found the book just about as dry as the soil in the Arizona, where the book takes place... his writing style did not engage me. It did not make me want to continue turning the pages. Perhaps it is because I read Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life (P.S.) right before this? It had great potential... but it left me disappointed.