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Freshly Picked: A Locavore’s Love Affair with BC’s Bounty
by Jane Reid (Caitlin $26)
Review by Claire Mulligan
Now that I have savoured the lustrous pages of Jane Reid’s warm-hearted and witty book Freshly Picked: A Locavore’s Love Affair with BC’s Bounty, I am going to tromp to every farmer’s market and roadside stall and apologize to all those vegetables and fruits I have taken for granted and misunderstood.
To radishes, the sprinters of the vegetable world. To apples, those rebels who reinvent themselves with each new seed. To mushrooms who, weirdly, share more DNA with animals than plants. To corn, whose co-dependent sex life (on us) takes a page to delineate.
I don’t think it was a mistake that I kept pronouncing the word locavore (one who eats foods grown locally whenever possible) as lovacore. Well, it was a mistake, but given the love and wisdom that infuses this book, it’s an understandable one.
Still, Freshly Picked is not just a celebration, it is a call to action and Reid’s chapter titles —“Give Peas a Chance,” “Bring on the Broccoli”—illuminate this.
Although Freshly Picked centres on the bounty in our corner of the world, it is also expansive and worldly, ranging around the globe and through history, offering perfectly-portioned anecdotes with which to delight your friends around a table (I’m picturing a long, rustic one set in an orchard).
The poor minions of Tiberius pushed cucumbers around in wheelbarrows to catch the sun.
Louis XIV started the fad for snacking on fresh-shelled peas.
The pyramid builders ate garlic for stamina.
Reid also weaves in delightful, personal anecdotes. In France, a young Reid falls head over heels for her first perfectly crisped beans. In B.C., Reid tracks down a garlic maestro through Craigs-list and discovers a garage stocked with heirloom garlic: Russian Reds, Persian Star, etc.
At the end of each chapter, after you have appreciated the history and idiosyncrasies of, say, the strawberry, the cucumber, Reid gives, not a “recipe” as such, but a scene, a story (the recipe for stew actually riffs off an O’Henry story).
Freshly Picked encourages a joy of cooking that has nothing to do with The Joy of Cooking, that massive instructional manual that could be shelved beside the Joy of Tile Scrubbing.
Ease is emphasized. Cut tomatoes “the size of a stamp.” Snip parsley “until you are bored.” Set asparagus on “your prettiest plate.”
These are not the rigid lists of your white-aproned home economics class where you had to level off that ¾ teaspoon of extra-mild curry with a knife, squint-eyeing every grain like a scientist developing a life-saving vaccine.
“Serve with love,” is Reid’s mantra as she takes us on journeys to Pemberton and the Okanagan, to the ghost farms of Bella Coola and Salt Spring, as she reminds us that food is about reciprocity and respect, about dirt and the outdoors, about sustainability and community, as she kindly suggests we radically rethink our relationship with the growing world.
Freshly Picked persuades you that it is not a big deal to eat responsibly, to support your local farm economy; in fact, it is easier than the way you purchase and eat now. You have to eat every day; why not make it an act of generosity?
While we’re on that topic of generosity, I can’t think of a better gift for that foodie in your life, that gardener, and especially that jaded produce-avoider than, Freshly Picked.
9781987915792
Claire Mulligan teaches at UVic and Camosun College. She wrote The Reckoning of Boston Jim (Brindle & Glass, 2007), a nominee for both the Giller and Ethel Wilson awards. Her first short film, The Still Life of Annika Myers, which is all about food, is currently in production.
by Jane Reid (Caitlin $26)
Review by Claire Mulligan
Now that I have savoured the lustrous pages of Jane Reid’s warm-hearted and witty book Freshly Picked: A Locavore’s Love Affair with BC’s Bounty, I am going to tromp to every farmer’s market and roadside stall and apologize to all those vegetables and fruits I have taken for granted and misunderstood.
To radishes, the sprinters of the vegetable world. To apples, those rebels who reinvent themselves with each new seed. To mushrooms who, weirdly, share more DNA with animals than plants. To corn, whose co-dependent sex life (on us) takes a page to delineate.
I don’t think it was a mistake that I kept pronouncing the word locavore (one who eats foods grown locally whenever possible) as lovacore. Well, it was a mistake, but given the love and wisdom that infuses this book, it’s an understandable one.
Still, Freshly Picked is not just a celebration, it is a call to action and Reid’s chapter titles —“Give Peas a Chance,” “Bring on the Broccoli”—illuminate this.
Although Freshly Picked centres on the bounty in our corner of the world, it is also expansive and worldly, ranging around the globe and through history, offering perfectly-portioned anecdotes with which to delight your friends around a table (I’m picturing a long, rustic one set in an orchard).
The poor minions of Tiberius pushed cucumbers around in wheelbarrows to catch the sun.
Louis XIV started the fad for snacking on fresh-shelled peas.
The pyramid builders ate garlic for stamina.
Reid also weaves in delightful, personal anecdotes. In France, a young Reid falls head over heels for her first perfectly crisped beans. In B.C., Reid tracks down a garlic maestro through Craigs-list and discovers a garage stocked with heirloom garlic: Russian Reds, Persian Star, etc.
At the end of each chapter, after you have appreciated the history and idiosyncrasies of, say, the strawberry, the cucumber, Reid gives, not a “recipe” as such, but a scene, a story (the recipe for stew actually riffs off an O’Henry story).
Freshly Picked encourages a joy of cooking that has nothing to do with The Joy of Cooking, that massive instructional manual that could be shelved beside the Joy of Tile Scrubbing.
Ease is emphasized. Cut tomatoes “the size of a stamp.” Snip parsley “until you are bored.” Set asparagus on “your prettiest plate.”
These are not the rigid lists of your white-aproned home economics class where you had to level off that ¾ teaspoon of extra-mild curry with a knife, squint-eyeing every grain like a scientist developing a life-saving vaccine.
“Serve with love,” is Reid’s mantra as she takes us on journeys to Pemberton and the Okanagan, to the ghost farms of Bella Coola and Salt Spring, as she reminds us that food is about reciprocity and respect, about dirt and the outdoors, about sustainability and community, as she kindly suggests we radically rethink our relationship with the growing world.
Freshly Picked persuades you that it is not a big deal to eat responsibly, to support your local farm economy; in fact, it is easier than the way you purchase and eat now. You have to eat every day; why not make it an act of generosity?
While we’re on that topic of generosity, I can’t think of a better gift for that foodie in your life, that gardener, and especially that jaded produce-avoider than, Freshly Picked.
9781987915792
Claire Mulligan teaches at UVic and Camosun College. She wrote The Reckoning of Boston Jim (Brindle & Glass, 2007), a nominee for both the Giller and Ethel Wilson awards. Her first short film, The Still Life of Annika Myers, which is all about food, is currently in production.
