'On the brink of extinction': a food historian's hunt for ingredients vanishing from US plates

[marmar]

‘On the brink of extinction’: a food historian’s hunt for ingredients vanishing from US plates

Emily Cataneo
In her new book, Endangered Eating, Sarah Lohman chronicles disappearing foods – and why they need protecting


(Guardian UK) The American buff goose. Amish deer tongue lettuce. The Nancy Hall sweet potato. The mulefoot hog. When food historian Sarah Lohman stumbled on these fantastical-sounding ingredients in a database of vanishing foods called the Ark of Taste, she set off on a journey across the United States to discover more ingredients and traditions that had been abandoned in the annals of history.

The endeavor was the latest installment of a storied career that has included cooking 19th-century recipes at a living history museum and chronicling American cuisine in her book Eight Flavors, which documents how foods like black pepper and sriracha have helped reshape what Americans eat.

....(snip)....

So what is an endangered food, exactly?

.....But endangered foods are the focus of Slow Food International’s work. They catalogue thousands of international and hundreds of national foods that are considered delicious, distinctive and worthy of protection. In some cases, those foods are not endangered, just hyperlocal, and they want to protect that food because it’s important culturally in some way. In other cases, there’s a threat to the foods they’ve catalogued: there are few of them left or there’s a reason they’re not grown anymore. One theme in my book is that there’s a very diverse list of reasons why these foods are on the brink of extinction. Some are stable, meaning they’re not imminently going extinct – but stable doesn’t necessarily mean safe.

....(snip)....

And why is that culinary history important? Why preserve these foods?

It depends who you ask. For me, individual foods are important because they’re culturally important. Flavor is processed in the same part of the brain as memory. We often talk about the taste of home, whether that’s your family’s cooking or a food that’s only available in the geographical region where you grew up. Imagine that flavor being taken away and never experiencing it again. There’s something deeply psychologically important about these foods sticking around. Also, as I wrote in this book, it’s important to assist cultures across America, whether that’s native, Black, migrant or immigrant groups, to make sure that everybody has access to their particular cultural foods, and that the caretakers of those foods will have them for a long time to come. ..................(more)

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/nov/05/endangered-eating-sarah-lohman-americas-vanishing-foods

[burrowowl]

1. K&R

[Ferrets are Cool]

2. There is a reason why they are vanishing...

No one wants to eat that crap.

[eppur_se_muova]

4. Goose, lettuce, sweet potato, pork ?? Yeah, who wants any of that ? nt

[Ferrets are Cool]

7. None of the things you listed are in short supply.

[eppur_se_muova]

3. The Ark lists seed vendors who can provide some of these heirloom cultivars

https://slowfoodusa.org/ark-of-taste/ Scroll down for vendors

https://slowfoodusa.org/ark-of-taste/slow-seed/ Scroll down for organizations

The Ark is where I first learned of green-striped cushaw squash (aka Indian pumpkin) while trying to find a way to cook one which was gifted to us. Unfortunately any search for it now leads only to broken links.

[Farmer-Rick]

5. It's kind of strange what foods we eat and don't eat

If I told you there was a plant that grows as a weed, that has more omega 3 fatty acid then most fish and taste like mild lemon or lime, you would think it should be included in our diet.

But it's not cultivated anymore. I use it every year and have even planted it....but it grows wild all summer in East TN, So, I don't really do much cultivation with it.

It's purslane. I love that little lemony kick in my salad and my doctor approves of the omega 3's for my cholesterol.

Then there were all the gourmet mushrooms people in the US kind of gave up on. All you could get when I was growing up were button mushrooms, one of the blandest mushrooms around. Agaricus bisporus was the boring choice when you had nothing else.

I use to grow my own Oyster mushrooms, Lions mane and chicken of the woods. You couldn't buy them back then. And now everyone can get them or grow them.

But when did we decide to stop eating purslane and oyster mushrooms?

I have a bush by my patio, I use the leaves in sauces much like bay leaves. It's a sweet bush, taste orangy or lemony. So, many plants we have stopped cultivating for no apparent reason.

And then there are ground cherries and mulberries that make the best pies. Yet you can't buy them anywhere. And don't look in the grocery stores for these fruits.

[2naSalit]

8. I have to look for purslane...

I think it grows around here, maybe. I have spent much of my life exploring the natural wealth of nutritional plants in my surroundings wherever I happen to live.

I use things like stinging nettle to help the flavor of vegetables when they have been canned and eat lambs quarters in salads along with nasturtium flowers and leaves and I used to grow lovage for salads. I still use dandelion greens in spring. Sometimes I'll pick wild berries, if there are a lot of them and someone goes with me to watch for bears.

I had the blessing of a mentor for a few decades so I was well schooled in the art of foraging for and using many plants.

[2naSalit]

11. And...

I try to go mushroom picking every year. Morels are popular here but so are the abundance of oyster mushrooms they call "stumpies" around here... those can get pretty big. We also have chanterelles and king boletus.

[Igel]

12. Purslane.

I've grown it north of Houston partial success--it loves the climate, and small beetles love to take it over and strip it to naked stems in the course of a couple of days. But until then, it's great. Perhaps I should try again and spray for bugs?

At the same time I can get purslane at stores with a Latino focus, verdolagas. Around here, I know that Fiesta has them. Don't know about LaMichoacana, but Walmart claims to carry them (perhaps in some neighborhoods).

We stopped eating them like we stopped eating dandelion weeds--when gardening became a "poor" thing and old-timey food was displaced by new, fashionable stuff. Part class and part keeping up with the trends and fads. (Also it didn't help that major food stores didn't carry them--but probably would have if there was a demand for them.)

This is unlike Transparent apples, which are just a pain to transport and stock because they're touchy when it comes to showing bruises.

[BumRushDaShow]

6. Some of these sorts of things have been rediscovered and are being regrown

Case in point is what was dubbed "Carolina Gold" rice -

The Story of Carolina Gold, the Best Rice You've Never Tasted


By Keith Pandolfi Updated February 07, 2023

Growing up in California, Glenn Roberts knew what was coming each time his South Carolina–born mother cooked up a purloo or a pot of rice and gravy. And it wasn't pretty. "She used to open up a box of rice and swear at it," Roberts says. "She'd pour some of it into the pot without measuring anything, look at the box, swear at it again, and throw the rest in the trash. Our rice budget must have driven my dad crazy."

Roberts, founder of South Carolina–based Anson Mills, which specializes in organic heirloom grains, would eventually come to understand his mother's revulsion. She grew up in South Carolina's Lowcountry, enjoying rice at just about every meal. But it wasn't Minute Rice or Uncle Ben's she was eating—it was Carolina Gold. Her family used to buy the long-grain rice from a local grower, and she would hand-pound it herself, removing the hull and inner coat to reveal its pearly white grain. It was good rice, too—with a rich texture; starchy and sticky; a little hazelnutty, even. By the time Mrs. Roberts moved to California in the 1950s, Carolina Gold could no longer be found, not only on the West Coast but just about anywhere. Like Mrs. Roberts, many a southern home cook figured that the dishes they grew up with—the purloos, chicken bogs, et al.—would never be quite the same.

(snip)

A Sad and Storied Seed

While few people know about true Carolina Gold, it was once the most popular rice grown in America, and the first commercial rice the country ever produced. Thousands upon thousands of pounds of it were exported as far away as France, England, and Asia. In 1820, approximately 100,000 acres of it was growing throughout the South. The rice forged the plantation culture of the tidewater areas of South Carolina, Georgia, and North Carolina, fueling both their cuisine and their economies. The ugly side, of course, is that the great wealth it produced for its growers—and the city of Charleston itself—was built on the tortured backs of slavery. The success of Carolina Gold only made things worse, increasing demand for slaves from western Africa, the continent's so-called Rice Coast, who knew better than anyone else how to plant and harvest it. And, while other rices were grown in the region, by the mid–18th century, Carolina Gold was king.

(snip)

In his book, Shields writes that, while genetic analysis reveals that the rice's ultimate source was South Asia, whether it came directly from Indonesia, or indirectly from Madagascar, West Africa, or even Europe, remains a mystery. What we do know, says Shields, is that it thrived as America's primary rice crop up until the Civil War, when the end of slavery, and a series of hurricanes, destroyed many of South Carolina's rice crops. According to the same 1988 New York Times story mentioned above: "The final undoing of rice growing in South Carolina was the introduction of other strains of rice into states where harvesting machinery too heavy for Carolina's muddy fields bested the low country's hand labor." At that point, most of America's rice production moved to places like Louisiana, Texas, and even California, where an influx of Chinese immigrants searching for gold created an enormous demand for the crop.

(snip)

Read more: https://www.seriouseats.com/carolina-gold-heirloom-rice-anson-mills

USDA had actually banked seeds of it and some 40 years ago, an Optometrist and hunter from SC decided to try growing some from that seed bank to use as feed for ducks and eventually propagated more. Over time, others took that and hybridized it for disease resistance, and the rest is history reviving the storied rice.

Along with this, there has been an extensive effort to preserve what have been popularly named "heirloom" vegetables - whether tomatoes, beans, or even corn. Seeds have been banked and shared to produce more to put some of these items back into the cuisine.

Much that disappeared from dinner tables was due to mechanization and breeding for disease-resistance and storage, eventually replaced with other agricultural stock, whether plants or livestock.

[marybourg]

9. The kind of potatoes that I used to buy

that were good for boiling and making mashed potatoes out of, have disappeared from the supermarket.

[marybourg]

10. Oh, and REAL Roma tomatoes - not

regular shipping tomatoes bred to grow in an oval shape - have also disappeared.