Imagine if we had a food system that actually produced wholesome food. Imagine if it produced that food in a way that restored the land. Imagine if we could eat every meal knowing these few simple things: What it is we're eating. Where it came from. How it found its way to our table. And what it really cost. If that was the reality, then every meal would have the potential to be a perfect meal.

The longer I've looked at these questions, of the American diet and the public health crisis that we face because of that diet, the more I've come to the conclusion that the collapse of cooking is a big part of the problem.

A lawn is nature under totalitarian rule.

Why don't we pay more attention to who our farmers are? We would never be as careless choosing an auto mechanic or babysitter as we are about who grows our food.

Tree planting is always a utopian enterprise, it seems to me, a wager on a future the planter doesn't necessarily expect to witness.

A natural historian is somebody who looks at something in terms of its relationship to the rest of the natural world. You look at things ecologically. When you see a cow on a feedlot, you don't just see a cow; you see a cow that is eating certain food. You follow that food and that food takes you back to a corn field.

Not that I'm against meat eating. But I think we're eating too much.