A Year of Practiculture: Recipes for Living, Growing, Hunting & Cooking

by Rohan Anderson

Rohan Anderson is all about cooking and eating real food. Food that has grown with the seasons and off the land that he's tended, or wild food that can be hunted and foraged from the fields and the bush. This is Rohan's year of living in his observations, victories and failures, questions and opinions, and over 100 delicious recipes that in total record the reality of living a practical, more sustainable life.

Rohan Anderson left his desk job in the city for the richer pleasures of living a simpler life on the land. Over the years he has developed his own principle of practical living. Practiculture is a lifestyle choice. It's about direct involvement in the day-to-day elements of living, and at the heart of it, the rewarding choice to grow, hunt and forage beautiful, healthy and sustainable food.

A Year of Practiculture features 100 of Rohan's simple, rustic, seasonal recipes along with a collection of honest stories and experiences of Rohan and his young family as they learn the realities of living a practical life surrounded by the bounty (and hardships) of the land through the seasons. Written in Rohan's passionate, funny and no-nonsense style, he uses a mixture of humor and poetic writing to tackle the deeper issues that our modern food system raises.

Recipes include rabbit backstrap with spring morel and sage; cold smoked bacon; grilled broccoli, almond and sriracha salad; salmon with pimenton crust and chili aoili; bottling fruit; elderflower cordial; crumbed quail with roast beetroot mash; sourdough bread; venison port pie and more!

This is the ultimate guide to living on the land in modern times, illustrated throughout with stunning photographs of the landscape through the seasons and the recipes created from it.

Genres: Cooking

304 pages, Hardcover

First published April 5, 2016

Reviews

[Martha☀ · Rating 2 out of 5]

Rohan Anderson is a rural farmer in Australia who has gone from unhealthy, depressed, obese office worker to living-off-the-land advocate, growing, foraging and hunting for his family's food needs. He is truly making every effort to do the right thing and shares both his successes and his failures along the way. His stories are inter-woven among recipes that use the very ingredients that he has grown, bartered or found. It is a testament to living life as a 'locavore' and knowing the farmer who grows your food.
I liked the idea of this book but sadly it did not play out. I had to wade through a lot of crap to find the gems of his knowledge. He is rough around the edges, to be sure, but I didn't think that so many penis references were needed to make his point. A stronger editor - one who would dare to remove all the swearing - could have made this a worthwhile read. One upside is that Rohan makes all aspects of growing and storing food seem doable. If someone with zero budget and zero experience can make it work then perhaps I can too.
I will go ahead and try building his $50 hoop house and I'll put more effort into canning this season but that is probably all I will take away from this.

[Jade · Rating 1 out of 5]

The photos are gorgeous, but I was expecting a book that actually went into the author's year, what he grew and maybe some practical tips.

Instead, the author is kind of a douchebag. So much ugly judgement over other people's choices. He repeatedly tells the reader that he's not a nutritionist / doctor / insert health professional here and then raises half formed questions about food that are really just unnecessary in the context.

He is that terribly unappealing combination of arrogance and low self-esteem, often full of himself and blustering about the singular appropriateness of his own lifestyle nestled next to repeated comments about other people's negative views of him and how poor he is. There are also way too many sexual innuendos coming from a gross old guy.

I bought his first book years ago. It also has a bit of ugly ignorance and arrogance, but it's balanced by beauty and an incredibly appealing lifestyle. This book is a very poor followup to that. Beautiful photos without any meaningful expression of the beauty of his life results in 300 pages of bitterness that taints the whole book.

I think he really missed the mark with this offering and I'm glad I borrowed it from the library before shelling out my hard earned.

[Duncan · Rating 5 out of 5]

As much an argument for eating 'real' food as a recipe book. Very good.