Photo by Jeffrey Horvitz

By Nikki Jardin

Grocery Gardening Planting, Preparing and Preserving Fresh Food is a new book by Portland author Jean Ann Van Krevelen that evolved from a collaborative process amongst its four authors and the community of people that Krevelen regularly communicates with through a variety of blogs and social networking.

Krevelen keeps current on five blogging sites as well as being continually active on social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter. All of the sites revolve around Krevelen’s love of all things foodie. Gardening is a central passion, but so is exploring the harvest of the Portland area and sharing recipes with her real-time friends and the virtual community she has created nationally.

We recently caught up with her in New York City, attending a conference on social media. Dashing on her way to lunch, we were able to talk for a few moments about the new book, the need for community and her desire to share practical information about food with people.

id Magazine: Congratulations on the new book, how is that coming along?

Jean Ann Krevelen: It’s going great and heading into the copy-editing phase right now. We do have a preview of the book up online for people to check out.

How did the idea of this type of gardening book come about? Why did you feel the need to create another gardening book?

You know, a lot of this book is based on collaboration from the community, and I’ve always felt that the goal of gardening is to be in collaboration with nature, so we really wanted to reflect that. Nobody has time to be completely self-sufficient, nor should they be really. We need community to help provide a collaborative aspect of ideas that are actionable.

In what way?

Well, people aren’t going to grow these giant gardens, this great ‘ideal’ achievement. That’s not what this book is about. It’s about how you can grow food, sure. But it’s also about how you can store it and, if you can’t grow it tells you how you can buy it. It gives you information on what foods may be more prone to pesticide residue. It helps you to make better decisions in the stores. It’s practical and it was designed that way. Who wants a gardening book that’s not practical?

How did you and your fellow authors determine what to include?

The book itself was created by what people dictated to me. It’s interesting, I’ve learned more about what other people want to know from me, what they want to hear about. I answer these kinds of (gardening and foodie) questions on Twitter and on Facebook. The work I do is really much more follower driven than anything else.

You are all over the Internet. How do you keep up with it all?

(Laughs) What’s funny is that I didn’t really know about social media, but it’s an ever-evolving process and I wanted to explore it more. The more I did I thought, ‘this is groovy,’ but it also seems to me very logical.

There is definitely increasing social awareness around food right now, do you think given that these major food corporations are going to have to change what they’re doing?

Well, we live in a bubble in Portland certainly, but there is a ground swell nationally and this movement is gaining support on how we view our food. But, let’s be honest, we surrendered control of our food a long time ago and it’s going to take time. I think of it in terms of how we look at cars. We aren’t going from gasoline to alternative fuels overnight. Bigger food corporations are going to take longer to make those changes but the difference is that people can take action now. Simple action, and that’s empowering to people.

For more information about Jean Ann Van Krevelen’s new book or to catch up on one of her food blogs, check out the following websites:

Grocery Gardening (book)
Follow Jean Ann on Twitter
Gardener to Farmer Blog
Portland Foodie Blog