It's Only Slow Food Until You Try to Eat It
Misadventures of a Suburban Hunter-Gatherer
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- $17.99
Publisher Description
From the beloved Field & Stream columnist: “Heavey takes us back to the joys—and occasional pitfalls—of the humble edibles around us” (The Wall Street Journal).
For Bill Heavey, being a sportsman is more than a hobby—it’s a way of life. So despite living inside the DC Beltway, raising a daughter who has an aversion to “nature food,” and having zero experience with foraging or gardening, Bill attempts the ultimate sportsman’s dream: living off the land.
Unsurprisingly, Bill’s foray into catching, finding, and growing his dinner doesn’t go exactly as planned. From battles with tomato-eating squirrels to a grizzly attempt at gutting perch to multiple failures at harvesting an appetizing salad, Bill stumbles through his quest for wild food with blood loss, humiliation, and hard lessons. Still, with the help of his locavore girlfriend and an eccentric neighbor who runs an under-the-table bait business, he manages to eat the way our ancestors did—and uncovers the true meaning of being full.
“Bold, courageous, hilarious, honest, and touching” (Duff Goldman), Bill Heavey’s first full-length book is a must-read look at how we consume, consider, and source our most basic of needs.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Longtime Field & Stream contributor Heavey leads a delightful romp through the backwoods and front yards of the D.C. Beltway area as he tries to eat wild. He notes that his adventure "was anything but radical. For most of our history, eating wild was what people did." Heavey's no expert, and read-ing about his stumbles through harvesting a salad from his lawn or learning to gut perch ("It looked like the bedroom scene from Macbeth") is surprisingly both amusing and touching. Perhaps this is be-cause Heavey has a gift for capturing the people around him: his skeptical young daughter; his ex-tremely competent foodie girlfriend; and especially his friend Paula, a live-off-the-land expert and "about as eccentric as you could get and still be on the right side of crazy," who takes him to harvest sour cherries right in the middle of the nation's capital. Heavey doesn't shy away from the potentially off-putting extremes of locavore living: he hunts, fishes, and even catches frogs, and his book is en-gaging, thoughtful, and truly funny.
