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

~ (Author) "There are moments in this life that I recall not as visual snapshots but as tastes and fragrances..." (more)
Key Phrases: mesquite tortillas, cholla buds, sand food, United States, Gulf of California, Sonoran Desert (more...)
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Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Does it matter where our food comes from? Do we, our communities, and the planet do better if we choose food grown by local sources we trust? Exploring these and other questions of dietary and spiritual subsistence, Gary Paul Nabhan's Coming Home to Eat presents a compelling case for eating from our "foodshed."

Nabhan, a subsistence hunter, ethnobiologist, and activist devoted to recovering lost food traditions, gave himself a task: to spend a year trying to eat foods grown, fished, or gathered within 250 miles of his Arizona home. His book, both personal document and political screed, details this experiment from the moment Nabhan purges his kitchen of canned and other processed foods ("If this year could resolve anything for me, perhaps it would rid me of the desire to ever again buy any packaged food that boasted of its homemade flavor....") to a final food-gathering pilgrimage. That journey underscores Nabhan's conviction that we have too easily believed "the vacuous nutritional promises of the industrialized food that has sold our health down the river." In fact, the book encompasses an ongoing pilgrimage, during which Nabhan explores, for example, the near loss of saguaro cactus fruit as a dietary staple due to saguaro's use for "local color" in shopping malls, golf courses, and retirement centers. Readers, converted, skeptical, or just curious, will find Nabhan's book a source of many simple and stirring truths. "Until we stop craving to be somewhere else and someone else other than the animals whose very cells are constituted from the place on earth we love the most," he writes, "then there is little reason to care about the fate of native foods, family farms, or healthy landscapes and communities." But care we must, as the book shows so enlighteningly. --Arthur Boehm --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.



From Publishers Weekly

In this intriguing yet unsatisfying volume, the author chronicles a year of striving for a diet consisting of 90% native flora and fauna, found within 250 miles of his Arizona home. Nabhan (Cultures of Habitat) packs the book with telling local detail; the saguaro cactus, for example, is being cleared from the Sonoran Desert at a rate of 40 acres per day. An ethnobotanist with an interest in seed preservation and director of the Center for Sustainable Environments at Northern Arizona University, Nabhan is remarkably knowledgeable about plant species and the traditions of local tribes; indeed, his nature writings and conservation activism have won him a MacArthur award. But Nabhan's tone is so phlegmatic that his accounts have little emotional impact. (After an unsettling attempt to slaughter some turkeys he had raised, an effort that left him splattered with blood, he describes himself as "a little shook up.") His reactions become predictable (and preachy): he tastes a native food, recounts its history and waxes na‹ve about how wonderful it is ("If a native food tasted this good, why did it ever fall out of favor?"). His project sometimes seems doctrinaire; he doesn't admit to ever craving an Oreo or tasting a local food that's not to his liking. Nabhan's book is informative, but doesn't leave a distinct flavor in the reader's mouth. 15 illus. and one map not seen by PW. (Nov.)Forecast: As an upbeat counterpart to Eric Schlosser's recent Fast Food Nation, this book may attract some attention. An author tour in areas where devotion to "local foods" is prevalent (Tucson, Phoenix, Portland, Bay Area) should also help.

Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
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Product Details

  • Paperback: 336 pages
  • Publisher: W.W. Norton & Co. (November 2002)
  • Language: English
  • ISBN-10: 0393323749
  • ISBN-13: 978-0393323740
  • Product Dimensions: 8 x 5.4 x 0.9 inches
  • Shipping Weight: 12.8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
  • Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (14 customer reviews)
  • Amazon.com Sales Rank: #297,093 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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More About the Author

Gary Paul Nabhan
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Front Cover | Table of Contents | First Pages | Index | Back Cover | Surprise Me!
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Inside This Book (learn more)
First Sentence:
There are moments in this life that I recall not as visual snapshots but as tastes and fragrances. Read the first page
Key Phrases - Statistically Improbable Phrases (SIPs): (learn more)
mesquite tortillas, cholla buds, sand food, tepary beans, cactus fruit, desert foods, seed savers, native foods, shrimp trawlers, squash seeds
Key Phrases - Capitalized Phrases (CAPs): (learn more)
United States, Gulf of California, Sonoran Desert, New York, North America, Rio Colorado, Sand Papago, Santa Cruz, Don Fernando, White Castle, World War, Gran Desierto, Native American, Tohono O'odham, Laura Rose, Rice Dream, San Esteban, Corn Belt, Environmental Protection Agency, Pacific Northwest, Papago Indian Reservation, San Juan, The Fea, Betty Crocker, Club Du Lubnan
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The Cactus Family by Edward F. Anderson
The People by Stephen Trimble
 

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Customer Reviews

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7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars An important topic, but immensley boring, December 31, 2007
By Russell H. Dibble (Dallas, TX United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   
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.
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16 of 20 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars Sonoran Thoreau, February 20, 2003
By J.W.K (Nagano, Japan) - See all my reviews
(TOP 1000 REVIEWER)   
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.
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8 of 9 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars Great topic--but why so much Spam?, August 15, 2007
By Melissa (Pennsylvania) - See all my reviews
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.
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Most Recent Customer Reviews

3.0 out of 5 stars Farmbrarian.com review
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... Read more
Published 1 month ago by Farmbrarian

5.0 out of 5 stars A pilgrimage
Gary Nabhan embarks on a pilgrimage of habits, if not distance. Along the way we are treated to all kinds of facts and anecdotes and interesting people. Read more
Published 13 months ago by Ryan Costa

3.0 out of 5 stars Dry as Arizona soil...
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... Read more
Published 19 months ago by E. L. Weinhold

4.0 out of 5 stars A Great Book For Anyone
Coming Home to Eat is easy to read, enjoyable, and packed full of interesting details on a myriad of topics. Read more
Published on October 12, 2006 by ephemeral

4.0 out of 5 stars Follow One Man's Intense One Year Journey to Eat Locally
This book was, simply put, a joy to read, a veritable cauldron of ideas explored and fleshed out for the reader. Read more
Published on August 29, 2006 by Amy Graham

5.0 out of 5 stars A Life-Changing Book

Quite simply, Gary Nabhan's Coming Home to Eat is one of the best books I've ever read, and one of the most important. I know of nothing else like it. Read more
Published on January 8, 2006 by Christine Robins

4.0 out of 5 stars Eating locally ain't easy
The premise is interesting--eating mainly foods grown locally. It's hard to know where our food comes from. Read more
Published on April 17, 2005 by S. Lin

3.0 out of 5 stars Unfocused
This book wasn't quite what I expected. Nabhan promises a sensual tale of a year with local foods and instead wanders around from tales of anti-WTO battles in Seattle to... Read more
Published on January 26, 2003 by Arch Stanton

5.0 out of 5 stars Important Insights
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... Read more
Published on February 28, 2002 by Andrew Lawrence

5.0 out of 5 stars Food for Thought
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-... Read more
Published on February 26, 2002

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