Adventures in Reading

I know I’ve mentioned this before, but I’m so excited to read Renewing America’s Food Traditions: Saving and Savoring the Continent’s Most Endangered Foods by Gary Paul Nabhan that I keep looking up more information on it.

Most recently, I discovered that Slow Food U.S.A. has published online its Ark of Taste, which provides information on the history of many of the items in Renewing America’s Food Traditions and lists contact information for producers!

You can click here to read more about:

• Bronx grapes (Clambake Nation)
• Chapalote corn (Chili Pepper Nation) - among America’s top 10 endangered foods
• Guinea hog (Chestnut Nation)
• Gulf Coast native sheep (Gumbo Nation) - among America’s top 10 endangered foods
• Java chicken (Maple Syrup Nation) - among America’s top 10 endangered foods
• Meech Prolific quince (Clambake Nation)
• Narragansett Turkey (Clambake Nation)
• Nevada single-leaf pinon nut (Pinon Nut Nation)
• Ossabaw Island hog (Crab Cake Nation)
• Pineywoods cattle (Gumbo Nation) - among America’s top 10 endangered foods
• Silver Fox rabbit (Bison Nation)
• Tennessee Fainting goat (Corn Bread Nation)
• Zimmerman pawpaw (Crab Cake Nation)

The Slow Food U.S.A. Ark of Taste also provides information on many more “endangered” foods that may or may not appear in Renewing America’s Food Traditions:

• Amish Deer Tongue lettuce
• Dry Monterey Jack Cheese
• Early Blood Turnip-rooted Beet
• Geoduck
• Greenthread tea
• Guajillo Honey
• Hand Crafted Root Beer
• I’itoi onion
• Napa Gamay/Valdiguie Grape of California
• O’odham Pink Bean
• Poi / Kalo
• Red Fig Tomato
• Rio Zape Bean
• Southern Louisiana Hog’s Head Cheese
• Tennis Ball lettuce (black seeded)
• Traditional Sea Salt from Hawaii (Alaea)

For many of you out there, I’m sure my “discovery” of this site is old news; Still, it brought me joy to read more about these precious and rapidly disappearing foods of America’s cultural heritage.

Just heard about another reading-related book:

Word Myths: Debunking Linguistic Urban Legends by David Wilton

The description from Daedalus Books (my favorite overstock bookseller) says:

Were you ever told that “Ring Around the Rosie” is about the Black Death of the Middle Ages? Or that the “whole nine yards” refers to the length of a machine gun ammo belt on a World War II fighter plane? Or that Eskimos have dozens or even hundreds of words for snow? Verbal debunker David Wilton is here to tell you that you have been taken in by a “linguistic urban legend.” As popular and pervasive as their folktale counterparts, linguistic legends spread stories and “facts” about language and words. They are usually false—as Wilton explains in dozens of examples from “OK” to a certain four-letter word Norman Mailer spelled as “fug”—but they often contain elements of truth that reflect on us and our society.

Sounds like this book combines two topics of interest to me…words and history (particularly myth debunking)!

Though, I don’t know anything about Wilton other than that he runs a website called wordorigins.org so I hope he’s a legitimate expert on the topic. Looking at his resume on his website, I can see that he’s worked in high-tech product management and security/defense and arms controls for most of his professional life. Hmm…