Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: Kingsolver
A friend passed along a fascinating book by one of my favorite fiction authors, Barbara Kingsolver, who wrote the cross-culturally unforgetable Poisonwood Bible, and many other very readable books. This book is about how her family vowed to eat locally for one year. I haven’t finished it yet, this is not a book review, but I am trying to think how eating locally would apply in Kuwait.
We would have a year-round supply of fish, which I love. We would have spinach in December and January, and those wonderful Kuwaiti tomatoes in the Spring. Cilantro, green onions and mint are grown year round, too, I think, and we would have chickens and eggs and maybe some sheep – or does most of the sheep in Kuwait come from elsewhere? Pomgranates? Pistacios?
I need YOUR help. What would our diet look like in Kuwait if everything we ate were local? Which month would we be able to eat what? What could we preserve in some way – drying, canning, freezing – for future months?
What grain would we have? Let’s say keep the food “local” and give ourselves a 100 mile radius. What would we eat?
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Please do a review when you have finished, okay? I have enjoyed her books of essays as well as her fiction in the past.
Middle Eastern diets heavily rely on rice, as it is the most durable and the easiest to grow in our climates.
so id assume one would have to eat rice, lamb, fagi3/Fage’e (desert crop, a cross between a potato and a mushroom), dates and maybe if were lucky none of it will be bathed in dust.
I will try, Grammy-Girl. So far, I it’s slow getting into, and I’m also doing some frivolous reading.
Mrm – I don’t believe rice is grown in Kuwait, is it? Maybe in Iraq? Within 100 miles? This ban on exporting Indian rice may have a severe impact on Kuwaiti diets!
What about Harees? Is wheat grown anywhere near Kuwait?
Is Fage’e the desert truffle everyone scrambles to find in the spring?
Ah, yes! Dates! Perfect!
I love fage’e .. Yeah it is the desert truffle.
My grandmother makes the best Lamb machbooos with it. Our maid/cook makes it in this indian style .. yummy i can’t wait for lunch.
Chirp! You make me hungry!
But rice . . . or harees – are they local? If not Kuwait, then Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Iran?
I know a lot of chicken comes from Saudi Arabia; I’ve seen those huge farms, all air conditioned. So we would have chicken and eggs.
What else?