Frugavore: How to Grow Your Own, Buy Local, Waste Nothing, and Eat Well, by Arabella Forge, 2010.
Publisher: Black Inc.; 338 pages
RRP AU$29.99.
Currently available on Fishpond at AU$26.86.
One of the difficulties of living sustainably in a western country today is that we have lost the skills of our foremothers and forefathers that would allow us to do so.
Many of us don’t know how to make our own stock, so we are forced to buy it from the supermarket, food miles, packaging and all. We don’t know how to make our own cleaning products, so we buy the expensive and toxic products the marketing campaigns tell us to, and then flush them down the sink into our rivers. We don’t know how to use the whole of the chicken that we buy (much less the parts that are usually thrown away before they get to us), so much of it ends up in landfill.
In Frugavore: How to Grow Your Own, Buy Local, Waste Nothing, and Eat Well, Australian writer and dietitian Arabella Forge does an excellent job of giving us some basic skills that were common to any peasant family not all that long ago, and indeed are still commonly found in many parts of the world today. But more importantly, she balances direct skill sharing with showing us what we’re missing.
Read the full review at Sustainable Suburbia.
I have a confession to make
I initially borrowed Frugavore from the library, but I accidentally got the US version, and I wanted to see how different it was from the original Australian version (not very, is the answer – see my note in the full review). So I emailed the Australian publisher, explained I was writing this review, and asked if they would send me a review copy. To my delight, it arrived within a few days. Initially I thought I might do another giveaway (after all, I am supposed to be avoiding adding to the clutter, right?).
But I’m sorry folks. This book is too good. I’m keeping it.