Killing It: A Memoir of Love, Life, Death and Dinner

Description

After losing her job as a food journalist, Camas Davis felt totally lost, out of love with her life and the world. She had spent her career writing about food, but she had never forced herself to grapple with how it got to her plate. Now she wanted to change that, she wanted to experience something real. So she travelled to France to learn the art of butchery. There, in the rolling countryside of Gascony, surrounded by farmers and producers who understood every part of the process, she realised it was time to make a change. Killing It is a book about a woman doing something simultaneously extreme and unexpected, yet incredibly simple - a return to a relationship with food we only lost a few decades ago. It is story about turning your life upside down and starting again, it is about falling in and out of love, and it is about understanding what it means to be human and what it means to be animal too.

After losing her job in journalism in 2009, Camas Davis set out to learn the art of butchery and charcuterie. Unable to find appropriate classes or schools in the United States, Davis travelled to Gascony where she found dozens of mentors from which to draw experience and an endless supply of good stories. Upon her return to the USA, she founded the Portland Meat Collective, a one-of-a-kind meat school, and since then she has written about her adventures in butchery and has been on NPR's This American Life. In 2014, she formed and launched the Meat Collective Alliance, a nonprofit whose mission it is to help individuals and communities start their own Meat Collectives across the USA.

A brave book . . . I was reminded of Elizabeth David . . . very original * The Times * Killing It combines three popular, profound topics: where our food comes from, how to achieve purpose in life and how to find lasting love * Sunday Times * Camas Davis kills it indeed, gracefully and unpretentiously blending personal and universal, meat and flesh. If you're a carnivore, or even just wonder how others can be, you'll want to devour this well-crafted, engrossing account -- Colman Andrews, author of Catalan Cuisine Davis writes with the precision and pacing of a former editor, but one who has gained experience that extends well beyond Manhattan skyscrapers * Vogue.com * Killing It is as unflinching as one might imagine a book with that title to be, but it's also humanizing and thoughtful - with the butchery comes a journey of self-realization applicable far beyond the realm of animals or food. * Vanity Fair * Finding beauty and moral high ground in the abattoir . . . The making of a young female entrepreneur rendered in unvarnished detail * Kirkus * Whatever one's position on the meat politics spectrum, this book is an excellent testament to just how hard it is to push through to the magic kingdom of one's 'dream', and that anyone contemplating such a move is going to need adjectives like 'passionate' as a minimum requirement * Strong Words * Even if you don't have meat-butchering ambitions (or care for beef all that much), you'll enjoy going along with Camas on her journey into a totally new world * Bon Appetit * Killing It is both a sensual and sensitive ode to the necessity of lifelong learning and a deep look into the painstaking work of turning animals into 'farm to table' food that is simultaneously highly prized and depressingly devalued in U.S. culture * Salon * With grace and power, first-time author Davis tells of how she traded a keyboard for a cleaver . . . Her powerful writing and gift for vivid description allow readers to feel as if they, too, are embarking on a life-changing journey * Publishers Weekly *