If anyone goes, I’d be interested in hearing a summary or report of which are the endangered foods. My own take on it would be that we eat and have access to a vastly wider variety of foods from other other cultures than previous generations.
From Amazon:. They mention a few. I just requested it from the library.
"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."
Here’s the Slow Food USA Ark of Taste mentioned above. Don’t know why it’s displaying like this.
Yes, its true that we have more food stuffs delivered to us in the US from a much vaster geographical range than previous generations. This book is about foods historically grown in the US that are “disappearing”.
I just ordered the book from the library also. I’m curious about species of American fruits and vegetables that are endangered or already have disappeared, especially fruits such as paw paws and berries that are rarely grown or marketed outside their original growing areas and wild foods that are foraged, such as ramps and greens and mushrooms.
In the last two decades in the Boston area, there are many more fruits and vegetables labeled “heirlooms” at local farmers markets, especially tomatoes and apples. Heirloom grains and legumes are being revived in many US geographic areas (beans, corn, wheat, wild rice, etc.)
Two of the disappearing foods that struck home for me were the apple and the date. I used to LOVE a Red Delicious apple! They were slightly sweet and had the perfect chewy, crisp texture. Now they look like they are the perfect apple and taste like nothing good. The apple growers have bred the perfect appearance apple and completely ignored the qualities of taste and texture. [Kind of reminds me of an older book about why store bought tomatoes got so bad around the turn of the millenia]
The other food I will miss is the American date grown around Indio CA. I never had one until I moved there in 1988 but they were a curiously addictive treat that I had forgotten that I no longer ate after I left CA. They are sweet with a funky texture and just totally unlike anything I had had as I grew up.
I have heard that the banana as we know it in the States and the EU (the Cavendish) may be disappearing soon.The replacements are not too hard to see, but it will be odd to see the old familiar shape and texture disappear. Not sure how accurate that prediction is but it is an interesting one.
I once read a pommology book. It mentioned that the thing to look for when selecting Red Delicious apples is medium red color streaked with yellow-green. We instinctively equate deep red with ripeness and sweetness but the darker a Red Delicious, the more likely it is to be mealy and bitter.
Thank you, Erica!
“mealy” is a perfect description of a Red Delicious apple now. I will try RD apples a time or two when I get home in April!
Streaked with yellow green was NOT something I looked for, I just tried to get the smaller ones, but that made no difference in texture or flavor.
There are now so many red apple varieties that are more reliable than RD that I seldom buy the latter, and I notice that the RDs in supermarkets are rarely streaked. When they ARE, it’s in autumn, when almost all apples are at their peak.
