Endangered Eating
America's Vanishing Foods
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- $15.99
Publisher Description
A New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice
A Food & Wine Best Book of the Year
An Eater Best Food Book
“A thoughtful, compelling read about why…food traditions matter and are worth preserving.” —Bettina Makalintal, Eater
American food traditions are in danger of being lost. How do we save them?
Apples, a common New England crop, have been called the United States' "most endangered food." The iconic Texas Longhorn cattle is categorized at "critical" risk for extinction. Unique date palms, found nowhere else on the planet, grow in California’s Coachella Valley—but the family farms that caretake them are shutting down. Apples, cattle, dates—these are foods that carry significant cultural weight. But they’re disappearing.
In Endangered Eating, culinary historian Sarah Lohman draws inspiration from the Ark of Taste, a list compiled by Slow Food International that catalogues important regional foods. Lohman travels the country learning about the distinct ingredients at risk of being lost. Readers follow Lohman to Hawaii, as she walks alongside farmers to learn the stories behind heirloom sugarcane. In the Navajo Nation, she assists in the traditional butchering of a Navajo Churro ram. Lohman heads to the Upper Midwest, to harvest wild rice; to the Pacific Northwest, to spend a day wild salmon reefnet fishing; to the Gulf Coast, to devour gumbo made thick and green with filé powder; and to the Lowcountry of South Carolina, to taste America’s oldest peanut—long thought to be extinct. Lohman learns from those who love these rare ingredients: shepherds, fishers, and farmers; scientists, historians, and activists. And she tries her hand at raising these crops and preparing these dishes. Each chapter includes two recipes, so readers can be a part of saving these ingredients by purchasing and preparing them.
Animated by stories yet grounded in historical research, Endangered Eating gives readers the tools to support community food organizations and producers that work to preserve local culinary traditions and rare, cherished foods—before it’s too late.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Historian Lohman (Eight Flavors) examines eight "endangered" foods in this satisfying trek through American culinary history, starting in California with Coachella Valley dates and ending in South Carolina with Carolina African Runner peanuts. Lohman's quest for foods that "will not be around in another generation or two without immediate action" involved meeting with "farmers, shepherds, fishers, and makers"; attending food-related celebrations and ceremonies (she helped to butcher a Navajo-Churro sheep in the Navajo "Sheep Is Life" festival); and untangling the history of each ingredient, from the influx of "date gardens" in 1900s California to the cultivation of heirloom cider apple trees in Puritan America (and their destruction during the temperance movement, when it was considered "shameful" to have the trees). While the author's personal musings occasionally butt awkwardly into the historical details, the history is vivid and fascinating, astutely probing the ways that many of these foods have been nearly eradicated by colonization and violence (in the mid-1800s, U.S. troops drove flocks of Navajo sheep off New Mexico land where they wanted their own flocks to graze) or harnessed by Westerners for their own gain (Western-owned distilleries in Hawaii produce rhum agricole—made of Hawaiian legacy sugarcane—using the images and stories of Hawaiian culture for their branding). Part travelogue and part history, this is ideal for curious foodies.
