Jessica Prentice - Full Moon Feast: Food and the Hunger for Connection

FULL
MOON
FEAST

FULL

MOON

FEAST

Food and the Hunger
for Connection

JESSICA PRENTICE

FOREWORD BY DEBORAH MADISON

CHELSEA GREEN PUBLISHING
WHITE RIVER JUNCTION, VERMONT

Copyright 2006 Jessica Prentice. 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.

Editor: Mary Bahr
Managing Editor: Marcy Brant
Copy Editor: Laura Jorstad
Proofreader: Collette Leonard
Designer: Peter Holm, Sterling Hill Productions
Design Assistant: Daria Hoak, Sterling Hill Productions
Illustrations by Sara Love

Printed in the United States
First printing, March 2006
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2

Our Commitment to Green Publishing

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Full Moon Feast was printed on Natures Book Natural, a 50 percent post-consumer waste recycled, old growth forest-free paper supplied by Maple Vail.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Prentice, Jessica, 1968
Full moon feast : food and the hunger for connection / Jessica Prentice.

p. cm.

eBook ISBN: 978-1-603580-19-9
1. Cookery (Natural foods) 2. Natural foods. I. Title.

TX741.P74 2006

641.5'63dc22

2005036540

Chelsea Green Publishing Company
Post Office Box 428
White River Junction, VT 05001
(800) 639-4099
www.chelseagreen.com

A listing of permissions for use of quoted material is on .

To the ancestors
and
the animals

World-Come-to-an-End Food

From a dialogue between two Karuk elders, recorded in northern California around 1900. Translated from the Karuk by Julian Lang.

Vaa vra kch pakunmharatihanik Peekxareyavsa.

Koovra vaa kunkuptihanik; pahut Peekxaryav kunkuptihanik, vaa kunkupti.

Xs pvaa pakunamtihanik Peekxareyav, vri vaa kch pakunamti.

Vaa kinpeeranik, Vek py kuamtiheesh.

Peekxareyav ama kunamtihanik, xuun kunptatihanik,
ama xkaan xuun. Kru pufchiish kunamtihanik.

Vaa vra pakunfhishtihanik, Peekxareyav
axakyanich vra kunpamtihanik,

Vaa vra kch pakunkuptihanik.

Paapxantnihich pakunivyhukanik, xs vaa kunpaanik,
Kemish pakunamti,

Kemishavaha, ithivthaneentanihavaha.

Achphan vra varaaras vaa kch papishich kunvanik paapxantiichvaha.

Vri pakunvshtar, vra kunvshtar. Puran kuniper,
Vra uum amyav.

Xs tkunpiip, Nkta vra uum puimtihara. Naa tniav, pasra.

Xs vaa koovra papihnichas kru pakevniikichas
xra xs kunvanik.

Nuu taifuchtimichas pvaa nuapunmuti
pvaa Peekxareyav pakunkuptihanik; vaa
kunamtihaak.

Pmitva kinpeentihat pananutaat in.

Vri vaa vra nuu kru vaa tapukinamtihara,
pmitva kinpeerat, Veek kuamtiheesh.

Hutheesh pananufuth vafapuhsa?

The Old People were following the Ikxareyavs, the
Spirit People, all the time.

All the People did the same long ago; whatever the
Ikxareyavs did, the People did.

And the things that the Spirit People ate, that was all
the Old People ate.

Thats what they were told, You must eat this kind of
food.

The Spirit People ate salmon and they spooned up acorn
soup, eating salmon along with acorn soup. And they
ate deermeat.

And the Old People claimed that the Spirit People ate
two meals a day,

And so thats the way the Old People did as well.

When the white people all came, the Old People said,
they are eating food poisonous to Indians.

It is poison food, world-come-to-an-end food.

The working-aged people were the first to eat the
white mans food.

When they liked it, they really liked it. Then they told
each other, Its good tasting food.

They said, He never died. Im going to eat it, that
white mans bread.

It was a long time before the Old Men and Old Women
ate the white mans food.

We are the last ones that know
how the Spirit People used to do, all that they used to eat.

Our mothers told us that.

And even we do not eat anymore,
what they told us before You must eat this kind.
And what will they who are raised after us do?

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I have been so blessed, and there are so many people to thank...

First, I want to acknowledge the communities that have so supported me: The loved ones in the Washington, DC, area who have known me since childhood; the communities at the Center for Ecoliteracy, the Headlands Center for the Arts, the Ferry Plaza Farmers Market, and the Brick Hut Cafthank you so much for your support over the years. The programmers at KPFA radio in Berkeley who saved me the cost of an advanced degree, and whose influence is on every page of this book. (A special thanks to Layna Berman.) The sustainable agriculture communities here in the Bay Area and nationally I hope I have made a contribution to this crucial work. The nourishing traditions communities here in the Bay Area, as well as all my fellow chapter leaders for the Weston A. Price Foundationlets keep it up! Peter Barnes and the staff and fellow writers at the Mesa Refuge, where I wrote the bulk of this bookwhat a gift! The Colley clanI am proud to be a part of you. And to the community of Saint Francis Lutheran Churchmy spiritual home, my precious villageI am so glad I found you.

Thank you to all those writers and thinkers who have so deeply influenced my work: Jeannette Armstrong, Wendell Berry, Marcus Borg, Caroline Casey, Annemarie Colbin, Wade Davis, Sally Fallon, Lewis Hyde, Sandor Katz, Helena Norberg-Hodge, Martn Prechtel, Weston Price, Joel Salatin, Vandana Shiva, Malidoma Patrice Som, Maya Tiwari, Marilyn Waring, Alice Waters.

Thanks to my wonderful family: My mother, Dinah, who shared with me her love of human culture in all its diversity, a deep respect for the traditions of everyone in the human family, a hunger for the spiritual life, and who took me travelingthank you! My father, Patrick, who shared with me his passion for clear thinking and the written word, and who has always believed I had something worth sayingthank you! My stepfather, Foster, whose quiet and steady support of my work has been a great gift to methank you! And to the rest of my extended family, with great gratitude for their presence in my life: Josh and Ketaki, Brett and Sarah, John and Marie, Lynn, Linda, Bill, Grandma, my cousins, nieces, and nephews, and those who are with us now only in Spiriteach one of you is a precious blessing to me. And to O. Z. Tully, with gratitude for his generosity and wisdom, and to the rest of my Tully family.

Thank you to all the wonderful friends and home cooks who tested my recipes: Christina Abuelo, Vanessa Barrington, Daphne Blumenthal, Teresa Brown, Jean Cherie, Porsche Combash, Jane Evans, Sarah Klein, Marilyn Fisher, Darcey Blue French, Maggie Gosselin, Linda Harrour, Michael Hiller, Ulrich Honighausen, Holly Howe, Stephanie Johnson, Misa Koketsu, Julia Kurtzer, Nicole Leong, Sharon Lutz, Luana Lyons, Kate Mendenhall, Arthur Morris, Natalie Peck, Sienna Potts, Yoko Sato, Bonnie Scott, Lynda Smith-Cowan, Joan Stear, Helen Tadeo, Erika Trayer, Denise Wilson, Larry Wisch, Krista Wood, Layne Zimmerman.