Category: Media

CDs, DVDs, and videos to challenge, interest, or excite you.

Food Rules: An Eater’s Manual (New Edition) by Michael Pollan

Michael Pollan’s Food Rules began with his hunch that the wisdom of our grandparents might have more helpful things to say about how to eat well than the recommendations of science or industry or government. The result was a slim volume of food wisdom that has forever changed how we think about food. The new rules underscore the central teaching of the original Food Rules, which is that eating doesn’t have to be so complicated, and food is as much about pleasure and communion as it is about nutrition and health.

A Subversive Plot: How to Grow a Revolution in Your Own Backyard

Roger Dorion is plotting a revolution. He’s organizing Kitchen Gardeners; a special breed of subversives. By seeking an active role in their own sustenance, they are modern-day participants in humankind’s oldest and most basic activity, offering a critical link to our past and positive vision for our future.

Joshua McNichols talks about The Urban Farm Handbook

Are we having a spate of “mid-life food crises” or are folks in their late 30s and early 40s simply realizing that the words “supermarket” and “good food” don’t seem to belong in the same sentence anymore? Annette Cottrell – self-avowed “extreme gardener” – and Joshua McNichols turned their love of whole, minimally processed, naturally grown food into both a passion and a book.

Cereal Crimes

Cereal Crimes, a report by Cornucopia Institute, explores the vast differences between organic cereal and granola products and so-called natural products, which contain ingredients grown on conventional farms where the use of toxic pesticides and genetically engineered organisms is widespread. Analysis reveals that “natural” products—using conventional ingredients—often are priced higher than equivalent organic products. This suggests that some companies are taking advantage of consumer confusion.

Stina Booth, Booth Canyon Orchard

Stina Booth, orchardist at Booth Canyon Orchard, talks about grafting and growing apples, pears and stone fruit (peaches, plums, apricots). Did you know you can graft multiple varieties of apples or pears on one trunk?

Cavemen, Monks, and Slow Food: A History of Eating Well by Devra Gartenstein

This is a transitional time and we need transitional food. The Slow Food movement, the locavore movement, and other “food movements” can be “all or nothing” approaches. That way of thinking is standing in the way of getting people to eat better. I would love to see everybody eat fresh, local, and organic food, but until we get there, I would just like to see more people eat more lentils and fewer people eat industrial meat. The lentils don’t have to be organic, just not part of the industrial food system.