An entertaining fascinating first-person account of working in the fields in California, at Wal-Mart in Michigan, and at Applebees in NYC.

Published in 2012, a bit dated now, but no significant problems.

The author provides a multitude of reasons for home cooking. ( )

Too kind to be Barbara Ehrenreich, and too much of an ingenue to channel Jessica Mitford past the homage of the title, Tracie McMillan gets points anyway for throwing herself into a year of being several links in our food chain. She talks her way into thankless jobs, becoming an anonymous food elf upon whom American eaters don't realize they rely so heavily.

I learned a lot (and will never, never again eat at Applebee's), but since I'm part of the choir, her preaching didn't convert me. Fresh food is good. We need more of it in the hands and on the plates of the working poor. I already knew that. But she gets gold stars for moxie, and good for her for writing this important book. ( )

I don't think this book is groundbreaking. It gives a lot of information that's available elsewhere and packages it together with a personal narrative. That, however, may make it more useful and accessible. The three part structure works well and helps highlight different phases of now we eat.

There are a lot of comparisons to Nickel and Dimed, a book that people often love or hate. While I can see the comparison, it's not the same book. There's more focus to her decisions; she's not really pretending that she can show you what it's like to be an immigrant farm worker by doing the job. If anything she's all too conscious of how she's different. Going out and working in the fields is a little bit of a gimmick, but it throws you into it more than just an interview. I think it would have been a less interesting and effective book if she had not gone and reported firsthand.

Overall, I liked this and felt that she did a good job of illustrating the problems with our food system without being overly preachy or elitist in the Mark Bittman "if you have time to watch TV, you have time to cook" mold, or pretending that buying those $9 tomatoes and being a locavore is the solution. This is a systemic problem that is much more complicated than where your tomatoes are grown and whether the fertilizer was organic. Who picks the food at your farmers' market? Do you know? I don't. It's about labor law, immigration, land use policy, corporate structure, logistics, and much more. ( )

I really enjoy reading foodie type books. I love Marion Nestle and Michael Pollan and the like that I even have a label for these type of books. Upon seeing this, I was immediately intrigued but after finishing it I'm left wondering what I was supposed to get out of this.

This book is like Nickle and Dimed meets Michael Pollan or Marion Nestle. A journalist goes undercover to follow the produce chain. She starts by working in the fields of California picking garlic,grapes and other American produce staples. She then "follows" the produce to Walmart's in Michigan where she goes undercover to the Walmart world. The book ends with her undercover at Applebees in NYC.

I'm not sure there was anything that was groundbreaking for me. The weakest part of the book for me was Applebees which I just couldn't get into as much as the other two section. I wondered why she choose Apple bees in NYC instead of in staying in Michigan or Middle America. I did enjoy her statements in that section of how Applebes and most causal dining restraints like are pretty much just fancy, marked up Hamburger Helper.

I found the Walmart portion the most interesting and sometimes I lost site that this was supposed to be about produce. The Walmart culture could have been a book in itself. I struggled at times keeping it all together because sometimes it felt like parts didn't flow together seamlessly.

Overall, this provides a very brief overview. It might be good for those newly interested on the subject of American Food Culture mainly because it pretty straight forward in depicting some staples of America- Walmart and Applebes. There was some interesting points and I learned a lot about Walmart's culture and just how many of the farm workers that help feed us are taken advantage of. Very eye opening on those aspects, the rest just reinforced the sad state of American food culture. Regardless, Its a struggle and I'm glad that Ms McMillian portrayed what its like to have to choose between healthy food and food that fits a certain lifestyles ( i.e. based on budget or time concern).

Books about food and food culture in America seem to be a dime a dozen these days. And any book in which the author works undercover is bound to have comparisons drawn to Elhenrich's now classic "Nickled and Dimed." All that said, McMillan's book is a unique investigation into three different sections of the food industry -- growing, selling, and serving. In her introduction, the author, a Midwesterner relocated to New York City, describes her attitude towards food when she first moved to the city (shopping at a roach infested supermarket because it was convenient and most similar to the stores she was accustomed to); and how it changed over the years as she spent time around affluent families and tried her hand at preparing "fancy foods." But because of her childhood, where the standard meals came out of a box and were accompanied by "salads of chopped iceberg lettuce tossed with diced carrots, celery, wedges of tomato, and some Wish-Bone Ranch dressing" (2), she still had the underlying assumption that "fancy food was for the rich, box meals were for the rest of us, and there was no point in making a fuss about it" (3).

McMillian works in three different sections of the food industry, starting with fieldwork in California, picking peaches and grapes, uprooting and trimming onions and garlic; during this last one, she seriously injures herself and has to go to a clinic, where they advise her, "no repetitive movement," to which her response is "But my job is to cut garlic. All I do is grasp. I'm just a farmworker. All I do is cut garlic" (91). Working amid immigrants, she stands out simply by being a white female, and at different jobs, many of the workers ask her to help them with their English. She also knows enough about wage law to realize that the farmworkers are being paid by the piece, not by the hour -- their paychecks are adjusted such that the total amount for their piecework is doled out according to hourly wages -- an eight hour shift where she only picked $19.20 worth of garlic is listed as two hours work. McMillan also works in the produce department at Walmart, where she learns the secrets of "crisping" produce to make it appear fresh and salable for longer, and in the kitchen at Applebee's, which she turns out to genuinely enjoy.

I found this book to be an interesting look at the food industry from multiple vantage points. As someone who can presently afford what McMillan calls "fancy foods," but who also grew up close to immigrant grandparents and family members who cherish traditional cooking, some of the author's observations about American habits baffle me. Having been ingrained with good shopping and food preparation habits, I can see from peers and those around me how different upbringings and values can affect their perspective and attitude towards food. This is a worthwhile read, and will hopefully provoke you to think about your own food habits and attitudes. ( )