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Book Group: Taste, Memory: Forgotten Foods, Lost Flavors, and Why They Matter, by David Buchanan

April 10, 2014 @ 7:00 pm - 9:00 pm

Free
From Taste, Memory: Forgotten Foods, Lost Flavors, and Why They Matter, by by David Buchanan

The SFRR Book Group is currently reading David Buchanan’s Taste, Memory: Forgotten Foods, Lost Flavors, and Why They Matter.

Our next meeting is April 10 and the reading is the remainder of this inspiring book by David Buchanan, Taste, Memory: Forgotten Foods, Lost Flavors, and Why They Matter, Chapters 6 – 11 (110pp.)

The book traces the experiences of modern-day explorers who re-discover culturally rich forgotten foods and return them to our tables for all to experience and savour. David Buchanan explores questions fundamental to the future of food and farming. (Goodreads)

A meander, with hoe, through organic vegetable patches, lost orchards, seed catalogs and produce markets with a dedicated gardener in search of a small farm. From experiments “trying to live off the grid” in Washington state after college to raising produce on semiurban plots around Portland, Maine, Buchanan has always followed his passion for heritage plants: the ugly heirloom baking apple, undersized pear, thin-skinned tomato and other relics of the old family farm lost or marginalized by bottom-line-obsessed agribusiness, environmental degradation and government regulation. In this combination of memoir and treatise for the back-to-the-farm movement, the author laments the loss of 90 percent of America’s crop diversity over the last century. What that means to the average supermarket shopper is dinner without a world of region-specific savors―the fruit of what the French call the terroir. Seeking inspiration and the perfect place to start a market garden, Buchanan made research forays to thriving organic farms and nurseries in New England, talked with seed collectors, visited a USDA gene bank and hunted for heritage apple trees by highways and in backyards. He ponders the relevance of agricultural diversity in the contemporary world and the role individuals can play in keeping heritage varieties in our markets and on our plates. Buchanan ended up swapping work for equipment and the use of small parcels of tillable land around Portland, where he continues to battle late blight and caterpillars to raise a varied crop of rare apples for his own brand of raw cider. It’s a catch-as-catch-can lifestyle, but it’s deeply satisfying to Buchanan and demonstrates the way forward for a new generation of farmers and locavores. A specialized look at the small-farming movement, written with appealing self-knowledge, diligent research and occasional flair. (Kirkus Reviews)

We meet in Sebastopol.

We started looking for our next book. On the table are:
• Kristin Ohlson. the soil will save us. How Scientists, Farmers, and Foodies are Healing the Soil to Save the Planet (2014)
• Gary Paul Nabham. Coming Home to Eat. The Pleasures and Politics of Local Foods (2002)
• Janisse Ray, The Seed Underground: A Growing Revolution to Save Food (2012)
• Margaret Gray, Labor and the Locavore: The Making of a Comprehensive Food Ethic (2014)

To contact the Book Group send a message to Slow Food Russian River Book Group <sfrrbookgroup@gmail.com>

Details

Date:
April 10, 2014
Time:
7:00 pm - 9:00 pm
Cost:
Free
Event Category:

Organizer

Slow Food Russian River Book Group
Email
sfrrbookgroup@gmail.com

Venue

Private Home in Sebastopol
Address with RSVP
Sebastopol, CA 95472 United States
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