Book Club

In honor of Fair Trade month, October's Simple, Good, and Tasty book club selection is Javatrekker: Dispatches from the World of Fair Trade Coffee. In the book, author Dean Cycon -- founder of Dean's Beans Organic Coffee, activist, and entrepreneur -- describes the many issues and implications around producing fair trade coffee in Africa, Central America, South America, and Asia. Javatrekker is a fantastic mix of travelogue and social commentary, with a healthy dose of history, politics and economics.

Continuing our bookclub this month, we'll be diving into the gap. The food gap, that is. September’s Simple, Good and Tasty book club pick. Closing the Food Gap: Resetting the Table in the Land of Plenty, by author Mark Winne addresses a vast array of political, social and economic issues around food.

Poverty. Food insecurity. A racist, classist, sexist food system. Issues of food justice. Urban supermarket abandonment and food deserts. And the overlapping and connecting of obesity, hunger and poverty. Tricky, complex and difficult issues. Wondering how to jump into the conversation? Or where to even begin? I was too, until I picked up September’s Simple, Good and Tasty book club pick. Closing the Food Gap: Resetting the Table in the Land of Plenty, by author Mark Winne is turns out to be an enlightening place to start.

Told from Winne’s personal experiences as a boy growing up in rural (read: farm-filled) New Jersey and as a new adult resident in Hartford, Connecticut, the book allows readers to connect to these food issues in a truly personal way. And challenges you to learn more and act accordingly.

Full market basket, check. Overflowing CSA share, check. Hideously prolific garden, CHECK WITH THE ZUCCHINI ALREADY! Yes, this time of year is chock-full of local goodness. So much so, at times, that you might just move from happily local-foods-rich to utterly overwhelmed. Fear not, The Minnesota Table: Recipes for Savoring Local Food Throughout the Year is here to help. Author Shelley N.C. Holl  and chef/recipe creator B.J. Carpenter have culled out some of the most delicious tips, tricks, stories and concoctions imaginable.

Onward and upward!  Are you ready for another dose of book club?  We sure are! 

As the Simple, Good, and Tasty club continues, we're looking forward to tonight's discussion about Real Food: What to Eat and Why. Where do you stand on full-fat or raw milk? Organic over local? Check out our proposed discussion questions, grab the book (or not -- you know, getting all the way through the reading isn't as important as checking in and participating), and swing on over.

July’s book club selection continues our education in and understanding of our favorite thing here at Simple, Good and Tasty: FOOD! As we all know, there are many real and complex issues surrounding the way we get food to our mouths these days. And there are trade-offs that need to be made. But what’s better? And how do you decide? 

More than anything, I think we can credit columnist and cookbook author Mark Bittman with helping make the local, sustainable, sane, reasonable food movement more popular. Sure, Michael Pollan got there first, but he was arguably ahead of his time in terms of bringing the education, history and underlying issues of our food system to the table. Since then, many real food advocates have followed in his footsteps and have done a bang-up job getting the rest of us on board.

Mark Bittman, cookbook author and New York Times columnist, takes a balanced look at our food lives in Food Matters: A Guide to Conscious Eating. Packed with recipes and sensible advice, Bittman brings us another step closer to taking all of the thoughtful knowledge about food choices, environmental impacts, the Standard American Diet – ground other authors have indeed covered – and breaks it down in a simple, easy-to-use manner. 

Joan Dye GussowAs spring rolls full force towards summer, it's time for another food-laden book chat! Tonight's choice, This Organic Life: Confessions of a Suburban Homesteader, will be discussed at two venues (at least*):

 The simple act of putting a shovel into the ground and tucking in the first seeds (or seedlings) without doubt means you’ve already decided to do things differently. Feeding yourself – with the efforts of your own two hands and contributions of a mostly organic nature – is an exercise in science, nature, tradition, history, politics and not just a little bit of faith. Not such a simple act, after all.