Maple Syrup Nation
Yet another NY Times article from my bookmarks. It discusses obscure or lost regional food varieties and how we can go about preserving/reviving them. If you don’t feel like reading the article, at least check out the cool food region map attached to it. It comes from a book called Renewing America’s Food Traditions by Gary Paul Nabhan. Apparently he created the map partially based on Native American food traditions. According to the map, we here in CNY are located in the “Maple Syrup Nation” and some of our endangered regional foods include: sugar maple of the Allegheny Plateau (this was a surprise to me!), Java chicken, Cayuga duck (google this bird; it’s beautiful), Oldmixon free peach (yum), Seneca hominy flint corn, and Buckeye chicken.
I haven’t yet read this book, but maybe we could use it in the future as a springboard for discovering more on our indigenous/local food traditions. I’m sure there’s all kinds of goodies in the bibliography (can you tell I’m a grad student?).
I love that we’re right of the cusp of the Maple Syrup Nation and the Wild Rice nation. Two nations in one! We should definitely include this information in our application.
Yes, I think our “convivium-shed” would encompass both, since it seems Oswego is well within Wild Rice nation. Also, I’ve requested the book through inter-library loan so hopefully I can bring it for show and tell at our next meeting.