Buchanan - Taste, memory: forgotten foods, lost flavors, and why they matter

PRAISE FOR Taste, Memory

Taste, Memory may well be the most beautiful book ever written about food biodiversity and how it has landed on earth, in our mouths and in our hearts. Once you have read and digested Davids book, you will never again regard this two-word phrase as an abstraction, but as a vital element of our common food heritage, one that continues to nourish and enrich our lives.

from the foreword by GARY PAUL NABHAN

As we increasingly seek to reconnect to our agrarian roots and restore our relationship with the land, we need guides who have been down the path before us and already negotiated some of the tangles along the way. There is no better guide than David Buchanan. Taste, Memory is the captivating work of a writer who is alert to the world around him and ready to learn from it. Buchanans elegant celebration of the ongoing conversation, as he calls it, between generations of heirloom food plants and the families that have lovingly kept them alive, will inspire a new generation to nurture the happy marriages of plants and place that make communities lively, resilient, and deeply meaningful.

ROWAN JACOBSEN, author of Fruitless Fall and American Terroir

Taste, Memory is not the typical storybook novel about finding redemption on an isolated old farm, but a 21st-century success story built around collaboration, innovation, and vibrant new models for sustainable farming. Davids book helps us explore agricultural models past and present, in order to help us find our own unique niche, rhythm, and flow in the emerging local food economy. His ability to help us appreciate the nuances of heirloom crops and regional flavors reminds us that we can help to preserve agricultural and food traditions for the future one seed, one bite, and one backyard at a time!

JOHN FORTI, garden historian, The Heirloom Gardener

With a scientists intellect and the heart of a 21st-century Noah, David Buchanan goes beyond biodiversity to explore the true place of Taste, Memory, a sensory experience that ties all of mankind together at lifes dinner table. Using taste as his compass, Buchanan uncovers authentic endangered flavors, making us all long for another serving.

POPPY TOOKER, New Orleans food activist and host of LouisianaEats

Buchanan shows us that reconnecting with the sources of our food reconnects us with what it means to feel alive. His unbridled enthusiasm for all things agriculturalfrom a forgotten peach variety to the proper soil balance for a rooftop farmis infectious.

CURT ELLIS, FoodCorps

Taste is one of the great joys in life, a sense and sensibility that all of us share. But it is a common pleasure we are in real danger of losing, as our modern world seems bent on a collision course with ever greater homogeneity and the lack of distinctive local flavors and cultures. In this thought-provoking book, David Buchanan captures taste experience from whence it once flowed, from an overpowering, life-enhancing diversity.

TOM BURFORD, orchardist, historian, and author of The Apples of America

Every peach, every turnip, every ear of corn becomes a local food in the fullest sense when gardeners and fruit growers opt for regional advantage. There are stories to be told here, be it the lore of the Fletcher Sweet apple or the enduring affair of that blonde cucumber from the Boothbys. How well David Buchanan weaves the human element into this celebration of plant selection and provincial cuisine. Good eating goes hand in hand with our dance with place. Let Taste, Memory bring appreciation for varietal delight to your dinner table.

MICHAEL PHILLIPS, author of The Holistic Orchard and The Apple Grower

In Taste, Memory, David Buchanan shares his quest to promote fruit and vegetable biodiversity in New England. Plant it to save it is his mantra. In his thoughtful meditation and memoir, Buchanan reveals a powerful commitment to collecting and conserving the apples, blueberries, rutabagas, potatoes, and other foods long part of this rocky and harsh landscape. As important, though, is his clear-sighted understanding of the necessary innovations that will be required to preserve the fantastic Baldwin apples, Bordo Beets, and Amazon Chocolate tomatoes not just for this generation, but for the next seven generations. An important book.

AMY TRUBEK, author of The Taste of Place:A Cultural Journey into Terroir

David Buchanan takes on his subject, some of it prickly, with grace and eloquence. Taste, Memory is hard to put down. It is beautiful read that illuminates the challenges to and importance of biodiversity, a subject that David frames with our taste buds and personal food histories. A wonderful book, and an important one!

DEBORAH MADISON, author of Vegetable Literacy and Local Flavors

A Greek proverb states, A society grows great when old men plant trees whose shade they know they shall never sit in. David Buchanans book about food, agriculture, community, and connections to soil and climate embodies the spirit and vision of the Greeks. Beyond weaving an engaging narrative about farming, the past twenty years of his life reflect the extraordinary changes occurring in American agriculture and a rediscovery of taste and quality in food. We are indeed fortunate that, as a young man, he has many years to plant apples, peaches, and other notable foods!

Taste, MEMORY

FORGOTTON FOODS, LOST FLAVORS, and WHY THEY MATTER

DAVID BUCHANAN

FOREWORD BY GARY PAUL NABHAN

Chelsea Green Publishing

White River Junction, Vermont

Copyright 2012 by David Buchanan.
All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be transmitted or reproduced in any form by any means without permission in writing from the publisher.

Project Manager: Bill Bokermann
Editor: Benjamin Watson
Copy Editor: Laura Jorstad
Proofreader: Helen Walden
Indexer: Margaret Holloway
Designer: Melissa Jacobson

Printed in the United States of America
First printing October, 2012
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 12 13 14 15 16

Our Commitment to Green Publishing

Chelsea Green sees publishing as a tool for cultural change and ecological stewardship. We strive to align our book manufacturing practices with our editorial mission and to reduce the impact of our business enterprise in the environment. We print our books and catalogs on chlorine-free recycled paper, using vegetable-based inks whenever possible. This book may cost slightly more because it was printed on paper that contains recycled fiber, and we hope youll agree that its worth it. Chelsea Green is a member of the Green Press Initiative (www.greenpressinitiative.org), a nonprofit coalition of publishers, manufacturers, and authors working to protect the worlds endangered forests and conserve natural resources. Taste, Memory was printed on FSC-certified paper supplied by Thomson-Shore that contains at least 30% postconsumer recycled fiber.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Buchanan, David, horticulturist.

Taste, memory : forgotten foods, lost flavors, and why they matter /
David Buchanan ; foreword by Gary Paul Nabhan.

p. cm.

Includes index.

ISBN 978-1-60358-440-1 (pbk.) ISBN 978-1-60358-441-8 (ebook)

1. GardeningAnecdotes. 2. Biodiversity conservationAnecdotes. I. Title.

SB455.B926 2012

635dc23

2012025581

Chelsea Green Publishing
85 North Main Street, Suite 120
White River Junction, VT 05001
(802) 295-6300
www.chelseagreen.com

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