Barbara Kingsolver: "Animal, Vegetable, Miracle"

I'm reading the new book by Barbara Kingsolver, author of one of my favorites, The Poisonwood Bible. Here is a wonderful quote:

Once you start cooking, one thing leads to another. A new recipe is as exciting as a blind date. A new ingredient ... is an intoxicating affair. ... We make things from scratch just to see if we can. We've rolled out and cut our pasta, raised turkeys to roast or stuff into link sausage, made chutney from our garden... .

A lot of human hobbies, from knitting sweaters to building model airplanes, are probably rooted in the same human desire to control an entire process of manufacture. Karl Marx called it the antidote to alienation.... When I ponder the question of why Americans eat so much bad food on purpose, this is my best guess: alimentary alienation. (p. 130-131)

Thank you, Evelyn, for the wonderful Mother's Day present.