The Feast Nearby : : how I Lost my Job, Buried a Marriage, and Found my way by Keeping Chickens, Foraging, Preserving, Bartering, and Eating Locally (All on $40 a Week)

Locations
Call Number: 641.552 Ma
On Shelf At: Downtown Library

Location & Checkout Length	Call Number	Checkout Length	Item Status
Downtown 2nd Floor 4-week checkout	641.552 Ma	4-week checkout	On Shelf

Includes index.
"A charming ode (with recipes) to eating well and locally, on $40 dollars per week, from a recently unemployed food-journalism veteran. In 2009, Robin Mather found herself unemployed. She consequently moved to rural Michigan, where she committed to eating three home-cooked, seasonal, and local meals a day. In essays that chronicle a year of her ambitious project, Mather explores the confusion surrounding local eating and examines how often we fail to pay attention to the seasons that surround us. With 150 winning recipes such as Lemon-Tarragon Pickled asparagus and Greek-Marinated Grilled Leg of Lamb, Mather draws on her rich kitchen knowledge, honed by years as a food writer. This narrative-cookbook hybrid shares encouraging advice for aspiring locavores, offering both the virtues of kitchen thrift and the pleasures of cooking well"-- Provided by publisher.
"A charming ode (with recipes) to eating well and locally, on $40 per week, from a recently unemployed food-journalism veteran"--Provided by publisher.

REVIEWS & SUMMARIES

Library Journal Review
Publishers Weekly Review
Summary / Annotation
Table of Contents
Fiction Profile
Excerpt
Author Notes

COMMUNITY REVIEWS

Locavore on a Lake submitted by sdunav on June 22, 2012, 8:41am The subtitle is a little misleading - there isn't a lot about the dissolution of Mather's marriage, foraging, or the chickens in this account of a year at a cabin on a lake in SW Michigan. Happily, most of the book centers on eating locally (without being extreme about it), cooking cheaply but deliciously - there are a handful of recipes at the end of every chapter - and canning and freezing.

I enjoyed Mather's accounts of her neighbors and their seasons there almost as much as the recipes. It's a gentle book of a good life, easy to pick up and read a chapter or two at a time. It's interesting to compare this to Wade Rouse's "At Least in the City Someone Would Hear Me Scream", which is a memoir also set in a semi-rural community in SW Michigan.

making lemonade out of lemons submitted by 21621031390949 on August 11, 2016, 9:42pm I really like the premise of this book: middle-aged woman suddenly loses her job (as a food critic?), her husband leaves her, and she retreats to a cabin in the woods to recoup. With little income, she sets out eat well, buying locally and organic whenever possible, on just $40/week. This book is an account of how she did that through a year's rotation of the seasons.

Part cookbook, part memoir, this book makes for interesting light reading. I learned some things about food preservation, a few tricks about simplicity living. But midway through the book, I began to tire of hearing about all her delightful successes, and I hungered for more depth. Where were the tough moments, the struggles? Nowhere does she reveal the darker side of her situation -- the loneliness, self-doubts, grief that must have followed such huge life losses. There must have been day-to-day struggles: money worries, leaky windows, a burned batch of cookies for God's sake, so why not tell us about them and make her life more real?

I ended up feeling tired of the author's self-congratulatory smugness. "Yay me! I took life's lemons and made refreshing organic, sustainable lemonade, served with a plum (locally grown) torte, at a graciously set table with crisp linen tablecloth and napkins. Oh, and a vase of wildflowers from my back yard." Mitford on a backwoods lake.

Still, before i give the book back to the library, I think I'll copy some of her recipes.

inspiring submitted by jamieyang8 on July 18, 2018, 1:04pm about saving money, live healthy, and lead happy life