Jour­nal­ist and self-pro­claimed ​“crap­py gar­den­er” Tamar Haspel shows us that rais­ing or gath­er­ing our own food is not as hard as it seems. When she and her hus­band move to Cape Cod, they decide to adopt an active approach to their diet: rais­ing chick­ens, for­ag­ing for mush­rooms, and hunt­ing their own meat. They have more ambi­tion than know-how, but that does not stop them from trying.

With ​“first-hand food” as her guid­ing prin­ci­ple, Haspel embarks on a exper­i­ment to stop rely­ing on experts to teach her the ropes, and start using her own inge­nu­ity and cre­ativ­i­ty. Some of her exper­i­ments are a suc­cess (refin­ing her own sea salt). Oth­ers are a fail­ure (the turkey pluck­er engi­neered from an old wash­ing machine). Filled with prac­ti­cal tips and hard-won wis­dom, To Bold­ly Grow allows us to jour­ney along­side Haspel as she goes from clue­less­ness to com­pe­tence, learn­ing to scrounge din­ner from her sur­round­ings and dis­cov­er­ing that a con­nec­tion to what we eat can change the way we think about food – and ourselves.