Japan Farmers Markets

Welcome to the August Book Club Post! I'm lucky enough to host this month's discussion of Michael Pollan's In Defense of Food: An Eater's Manifesto . Check out other titles the group has read, see what's coming up next, and join in! I have to say that I think In Defense of Food is the best book I've read by Michael Pollan. Here he accomplishes what he sets out to do - offer up an eating plan backed up by common sense, history, and science - with great writing. I haven't read Second Nature or A Place of My Own yet, but of the food books, this one is, well, the bomb-diggity. Thought-provoking, disturbing, depressing, but also inspiring, In Defense of Food made me realize how much I had bought into the concept of nutritionism. It also made me grateful for my little Tokyo garden, canning, and my mother for sharing my grandmother's recipes and family traditions. It also made me hungry for kale, but that's not hard to do. Pollan also made me think

I spotted the words gorilla gardening in a recent email from Grist.org , and followed the link to find this most awesome trailer about a truck garden in Brooklyn . What's new about a truck garden? Well, this one struck my fancy as it is, literally, a garden in a truck. It wends its way around Brooklyn to its CSA customers delivering vegetables about as fresh-picked as they can come. One of the best uses yet for one of those big old things. More on The Truck Farm Visit Wicked Delicate for more films on the Truck Farm and to learn more about what Curt and Ian (I'm not really on a first name basis with them, of course.) are brewing up. FYI, these are the folks who brought you King Corn . Check out this post at Inhabitat for a ton of good links to Truck Farm and other nifty notions in the Big Apple. Then head over to YouTube to watch the Truck Farm series ! (Image courtesy of Curt and Ian at Wicked Delicate.)

A friend shared this link about rice paddy art . My little adventure planting rice with One Life Japan resulted in something beautiful, but not quite like this...Check out the link for even more amazing images.