Endangered Eating: America's Vanishing Foods [Paperback]

A Part travelogue, part history and part eulogy, [Sarah Lohmans] book plumbs not just the American plate, but its soul. From Coachella Valleys date gardens to heirloom cider apples in New Yorks Hudson Valley to Choctaw fil? powder in Louisiana, each stop Lohman makes is more interesting than the last.& But [ [Sarah Lohmans] enthusiastic charm and what you sense is genuine Midwestern niceness shine through. Shes also impressively plucky&[and] is assiduous in tracking down early recipes and describing cooking techniques. She also gets to show off her scientific fluency (she comes from a family of scientists). When Sarah Lohman describes herself as a historic gastronomist, she is being too modest. She is, in addition, an accomplished writer, an intrepid traveler, dogged researcher and pundit. She knows what Americans eat, what our ancestors ate, and why. Lohman is serious, but lighthearted, about her work; shes a skilled cook, but she seems to most enjoy the treasure hunts that certain recipes require. Through eight first-person essays, Loman tracks down the farms, restaurants, growers, and fisherman that are part of the life cycle of ingredients like heirloom cider apples from the Hudson Valley, dates from Californias Coachella Valley, and even Navajo Churro sheep in the southwestern United States. In doing so, she illuminates how the delicate balance of agriculture, demand and production impact what is available and how we can protect heritage ingredients from being lost forever. Lohman wanders the nation armed with a notebook and a fork in search of disappearing foodstuffs.& [ Sarah Lohman sheds light on the urgency of safeguarding Indigenous culinary customs through her tales of traversing America in search of endangered foods. In In From sheep to wild rice, the foods we eat for both hedonistic exploits and sustenance have been going extinct; every time we breed a food to survive the rigors of worldwide transport, we lose all its delicious attributesl£Ë