Page 37 - summer17

She was thrilled to get a job as a food
journalist. With reporting jobs scarce these days,
“I never expected to get a full-time journalism
job.”
The month she graduated, she and the rest
of the new editorial team got the first issue of
Edible out. In June, Kimble put together a formal
book proposal. By August, she had an agent; by
the next spring she had a book contract with the
revered William Morrow imprint, and by 2015 she
had a book.
“I’d like to write another book,” she says, “but
not right now. I’m writing and doing journalism.”
Her stories for the magazine have included
deep-dive pieces into the food delivered to the
48,000 schoolchildren in Tucson Unified School
District and the role of food and restaurants in
the recent revival of downtown Tucson.
As the author of “Unprocessed,” she’s often
asked how people can improve their diets. You
don’t have to be rich to eat well, she says. She
herself was “urban, broke, busy,” when she
undertook her real-food year. Cooking your own
food is cheaper than eating out, and buying in organic kinds that come from animals raised
bulk saves money. humanely and not treated with antibiotics. In her quest
“Buy great ingredients: bread, cheese, “I still probably eat 80 or 90 percent
great tomatoes,” she advises. “All of them are unprocessed,” Kimble says. “I’m 90 percent to eat food as
affordable.” vegetarian. I still cook most of my meals.”
Cooking your own food is the best way to eat And these days she’s happy to outsource when unprocessed as
healthfully, but, she says, “People think cooking she can.
is difficult and time-consuming. It’s really not as “We have a great guy in town for bread,” she possible, Kimble
hard as you think it is. Fifteen-minute dinners says: “Don Guerra of Barrio Bread.” Guerra makes
are my sweet spot: I roast veggies and eat a lot of his acclaimed bread with unprocessed wheat he exiled foods with
beans and grains.” gets from a local farm (see story on Page 37).
When it comes to produce, “the best thing So although her baking skills have improved, added sugars
is to buy from a farm. Second best is to buy nowadays, Kimble eats his bread — not her own.
organic.” And third best is to buy a pepper from and mysterious
the supermarket. Eating a vegetable from a big
corporate farm, she says, is better that eating no Megan Kimble’s book “Unprocessed: My City- additives.
produce at all. Dwelling Year of Reclaiming Real Food,” published
by William Morrow in 2015, is available in
Other rules to live by: Eat real foods, like
bookstores.
carrots or broccoli, that don’t have ingredient
labels. When there is an ingredient label, read it,
then choose foods with the shortest lists. Avoid
foods with added sugar. Make milk and meat
occasional treats, buying only the expensive

SUMMER 2017 35