finally finished!!!

i have been working through it for the past year (as with many of the nonfiction books i read). i have read his new york times magazine articles but they are about twenty pages. this was an undertaking.... but well worth my time and energy.

section one was a bit scientific with strands of corn and hybrids and technical language. at some point, after skimming through some of the technical language, he moved on to what it means that there is a food industry that is largely based on my ignorance of how it actually operates. compelling!

section two was totally engaging because i found it fascinating to learn about how farms work. to read about farms that raise animals to live like animals and really what it is that god intended when created eco-structures. it was amazing to see how it all worked together.

section three was purely enjoyable. it is his journey of foraging for food and i was intrigued by the mushroom/fungi stuff he learned. how cool!

here was one thing he said that i was really struck by:
"the two meals [section 1 and section3] stand at the far extreme ends of the spectrum of human eating--of the different ways we have to engage the world that sustains us. the pleasures of the one are based on nearly perfect knowledge; the pleasure of the other more accurately on an equally perfect ignorance. the diversity of one mirrors the diversity of nature, especially the forest; the variety of the other more accurately reflects the ingenuity of industry, especially its ability to tease a passing resemblance of diversity from a single species growing in a single landscape: a monoculture of corn."