Today is a holiday and we're off, enjoying the warm weather while it lasts.
We're also taking the opportunity to reflect on the great diversity and bounty of New World foods. There were no chili peppers in India before traders brought them from the New World, no potatoes in Ireland and no corn or squash anywhere but here. Since then we've done some interesting things with our oddly distributed irrigated agriculture and our mass-produced food products, resulting in a globalized food system that all started with Christopher Columbus and his fellow explorers.
Here's a menu to celebrate the New World and our wonderful, infuriating, paradoxical, and bountiful culture of food...
There's a gorgeous book with great recipes from many different chefs and cultures in the Americas
and it's now pretty widely available in remainders and other cheap sources . . .
Foods of the Americas: Native Recipes and Traditions
by Fernando and Marlene Divina
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No tomatoes in the old world either. No corn (maize). No avocados. No chocolate, cashews, pineapple, peanuts, raspberries, cranberries, blueberries, blackberries. No beans...
view ebrown's profile
It was a holiday? Really? Well, I thought it was strange that nobody went to work except the people at our office, but I assumed the rest of the country was just lazy...
view Jim of ChewOnThat's profile