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Independence Days:
A Guide to Sustainable Food Storage & Preservation
by Sharon Astyk
Product Details:
Paperback: 368 pages
Publisher: New Society Publishers; First Edition edition (November 1, 2009)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0865716528
ISBN-13: 978-0865716520
Product Dimensions: 8.9 x 6 x 1 inches
Shipping Weight: 1 pounds
Review(s):
courtesy The Ethicurean
by Jennifer M. (aka Baklava Queen), 18 November 2009
This, Astyk's latest book, is her most practical in scope, but is still seasoned with considerable analysis of why locavoreanism matters. Those who pursue local foods end up following "a typical order of things," she notes in Independence Days, starting with eating seasonally and gradually learning to make do with what is available, or to preserve seasonal foods for the off-season. "Food Preservation and Food Storage are logical steps in locavore life... to keep the links going all year around."
The title of her book comes from an idea espoused by the late Carla Emery, who declared "independence days" those times when her family ate their own homegrown food or food from other local sources, making them more self-sufficient. Food independence is a vital necessity in a time of global climate change, economic insecurity, and corporate control of the national food system. So while one aspect of the book encourages people to expand their local eating beyond the harvest season through food preservation, Astyk's secondary project is "protecting and insulating ourselves from the limitations of our fossil-fueled, ecologically damaging and uncertain food system" by practicing food storage. Though she defines the two separately, she acknowledges that both are inextricably woven together, "and it is hard to sort out which one we are actually talking about at any given moment."
Astyk herself initially delved more deeply into growing, preserving, and storing food as a response to our energy crisis, but instead of being daunted by the prospect of all that work, she set herself a challenge "to do one little bit every day or week," just as Emery had proposed. She dubbed this the "Independence Days" challenge and invited her blog readers to join her in a weekly review of what was planted, harvested, and preserved each week, as well as the ways in which she minimized waste, stored food and other goods, cooked something new, managed her household reserves, and worked on building local food systems. "Preserving food is everyday work," Astyk stresses.
As the new guru of low-energy food preservation, Astyk could make it look easy. But you can hear the self-deprecating laugh in her response throughout the book, emphasizing that she makes mistakes, too: overplanning the garden, not getting around to preservation quickly enough, not storing enough for a family of growing boys, and so on. But she makes several sensible points about food preservation and storage that will help anyone make those first steps toward their own "Independence Days"
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