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Coming Home to Eat
The Pleasures and Politics of Local Foods
Gary Paul Nabhan
Excerpt from Preface and Acknwledgments:
"This book is about a year of eating locally, a year that also happened to be a watershed in the history of global food politics. It is the story of finding kindred food-loving souls within a 250-mile radius of my home in Arizona, and sharing with them the pleasures of gardening and gathering, pit roasting and fermenting, feasting and frolicking.
"Fortunately, I am not the only one wondering what kinds of ancient culinary melodies are being drowned out by the noise of that transnational vending machine. One defining moment - the equivalent of a Boston Tea Party - can fittingly be said to have taken place at the turn of the twenty-first century. Farmers refused to grow certain patented seeds foisted upon them by transnational corporations, and students destroyed experimental fields and labs where genetically engineered crops were being developed. Consumers demanded that the contents of foods be labeled on their packages, and boycotted companies whose advertising was deceptive. Mobs attacked McDonald's and Starbucks as part of the protests against the annual meeting of the World Trade Organization in Seattle. Groups in other countries fought against the corporate control of farmlands, seeds, and genes, and banned U.S. agricultural products potentially harmful to butterflies and babies. The launching of the Slow Food Movement in the United States made me aware that there are at least 100,000 like-minded souls in Europe and Latin America. This book celebrates the sensual pleasures of food without ignoring its global politics, for we will hardly be able to savor such pleasures any longer if we do not decide how to disconnect that omnipresent vending machine."
Contents:
Gary Paul Nabhan
Excerpt from Preface and Acknwledgments:
"This book is about a year of eating locally, a year that also happened to be a watershed in the history of global food politics. It is the story of finding kindred food-loving souls within a 250-mile radius of my home in Arizona, and sharing with them the pleasures of gardening and gathering, pit roasting and fermenting, feasting and frolicking.
"Fortunately, I am not the only one wondering what kinds of ancient culinary melodies are being drowned out by the noise of that transnational vending machine. One defining moment - the equivalent of a Boston Tea Party - can fittingly be said to have taken place at the turn of the twenty-first century. Farmers refused to grow certain patented seeds foisted upon them by transnational corporations, and students destroyed experimental fields and labs where genetically engineered crops were being developed. Consumers demanded that the contents of foods be labeled on their packages, and boycotted companies whose advertising was deceptive. Mobs attacked McDonald's and Starbucks as part of the protests against the annual meeting of the World Trade Organization in Seattle. Groups in other countries fought against the corporate control of farmlands, seeds, and genes, and banned U.S. agricultural products potentially harmful to butterflies and babies. The launching of the Slow Food Movement in the United States made me aware that there are at least 100,000 like-minded souls in Europe and Latin America. This book celebrates the sensual pleasures of food without ignoring its global politics, for we will hardly be able to savor such pleasures any longer if we do not decide how to disconnect that omnipresent vending machine."
Contents:
- Preface and Acknowledgements
- Introduction
- Spring: The Cruelest Months
- Eating My Way through House and Homeland
- Purging the Canned, Making Room for the Fresh
- Coping with Death, and the Life Thereafter
- Riding the Dunes and Finding the Ghosts
- Dead Chemicals or Peaches Eaten Alive
- Summer: The Fertile Months
- Saguaro Fruit and Cactus Icons
- Mesquite Tortillas and Duck Eggs
- Tomato Hornworms and Summer Storms
- Scouting for Wild Greens and Chiles
- Seed Saving and Foraging in the Heartland
- The Fronteir Grill and the Frontiers of Technology
- From Toxic Cornfields to Rattlesnake Roadkills
- Autumn: The Feasting Months
- The Headwaters and the Foodshed
- The Fertile Valleys and Their Wild Varmints
- Sea Turtle Soup and By-Catch Stew
- The Nomad's Movable Feast and the Taste of Island Chicken
- Hunting Mushrooms and Grilling Salmon
- Feasting with the Dead
- Winter: The Reflective Months
- Of Vinegars Fermented and Memories Curdled
- The WTO in Seattle, and the Spirit of St. Louis
- Hunting Quail and Stalking Scavengers
- Mexico's Breadbasket of Toxins and Migrants
- The Desert Walk for Heritage and Health