I found , and am still finding, this book an incredibly fascinating read. As someone who has had a lifelong interest in food, its origins, and how it is prepared etc the knowledge in this book is incredible. Once I had read the prologue and the first chapter I decided that I wasn't going to read this book conventionally chapter by chapter, page by page. I decided to read the chapters that really interested me first ie; Hard Cheese. I am a Yorkshire lass raised on proper Wensleydale , or at least I thought I had been until I read this enlightening chapter on the original Wensleydale recipe. I found out that the original Wensleydale had been a blue cheese, open textured and soft, very similar to a French cheese which is understandable as it was first made at Jervaux Abbey by the Cistercian monks. Thanks to this chapter I am now going to pay The Courtyard near Settle a visit and try some of Andrew and Sarah's Northern Dairies cattle cheese. Following on from that I will be reading the next chapter about Puglia and The Death of the Immortals. An absolutely cracking 5

Grescoe looks at the state of modern food production and dives back in time to see if ancient foodstuffs and ways of tending them offer any answers to the environmental apocalypse on the horizon. There are no recipes in this book and each section deals with his hunt for a particular ingredient, something that takes him all over the world, far from his Canadian home. It was unfortunate for me that the first, hefty chapter deals with eating bugs, which he describes in frankly, unalluring detail. For me, it wasn't the showstopper I needed to lure me to change some of my eating habits. Things pick up as the book progresses. I really enjoyed his tracing the history of Wensleydale cheese and looking at sustainable farming practices. Also fascinating was tracing the Indigenous Canadian tribes use of a root called camas which was their version of the potato. At times I loved this. At other times I found it deeply frustrating. Of course, Grescoe is right in sounding the alarm over processed, convenience foods and the damage being done to both ourselves and the land we hope will sustain us. Having said that, this is very much a niche volume that explores what might be possible with different thinking and approaches. It doesn't, at any point deal with the reality of a family on a punishing budget who might understand that it is right and fair to pay ethical farmers a high price for their produce, but who, if they did, would run out of food money after the first day. Nor does it acknowledge how much single minded focus and time it takes to live like this. I applaud the sentiment of the book, but all the way through it I kept thinking about how impossible it would be for most families to live like this.