Megan Howard's The Omnivore's Dilemma

Outside Reading Blog #3
In the past week I have recently started reading a book entitled The Omnivore’s Dilemma. It discusses the American diet and the roots of our eating habits. In one particular chapter, the author (Michael Pollen) attempts to create a food that he has made utterly and completely with no artificial help and no outside contributions. He tries to create a meal that he killed, harvested, planted and seasoned with nothing from a grocery store. This was a mighty undertaking that took many months and had many twists and turns. In the beginning he immediately breaks his own rules and accepts help from close friends in scraping salt from a lake in Northern California, taking a bottle of wine from his friend Antonio’s vineyard and allowing others to help him prepare the pork that he killed on the hunting trip. The experience has many ups and downs including this middle aged man stealing cherries from his neighbors for his dessert, nearly poisoning his company with the salt he collected and nearly dieing of hypothermia while wading out into the water to trap fish. However, in the end all of his hassle is well worth the reward of preparing this meal. He believes that by collecting all the goods himself he has brought himself closer to nature and the landscape from which he harvested. Michael Pollen now has a greater understanding of Northern California and what the wilderness has offered to him.