Rediscover the traditional foods of America

Have you ever tried making squirrel stew?

No?

Waiting for the right recipe?

Well, your wait is over, my friends; let me point you to Gary Paul Nabhan's new must-read, "Renewing America’s Food Traditions: Saving and Savoring the Continent’s Most Endangered Foods", which compiles and chronicles the long-and-getting-longer list of traditional foods (i.e. plants + animals) at risk of becoming extinct here in the US. In doing so, he follows the following philosophy:

"If we save a vegetable but we don’t save the recipes and the farmers don't benefit because no one eats it, then we haven’t done our work."

In other words, he knows we can't mandate that farmers grow certain crops or raise certain animals from the top-down, simply for the sake of them being museum pieces (even as it *would* good for overall genetic diversity); farmers still need to make a living, so how would we fund this work? As such, Mr. Nabhan takes the bottom-up approach, stirring demand for heirloom varieties of traditional American foods, such as Chickasaw plum and free-range American bison, by working with organizations like Slow Food and the Chefs Collaborative to educate, first, "foodies", and, now, slowly, a broader public audience (like myself).

In any case, I found this book through an article in The NYTimes (big surprise, huh?):

An Unlikely Way to Save a Species: Serve It for Dinner
By Kim Severson
Published: April 30, 2008

While the book focuses on the stories of 93 ingredients, Mr. Nabhan's full list is actually over a thousand, organized into 13 culinary regions; the NYTimes created a wonderful interactive map of the system here.

For sure, check it. The map makes me hungry in every sense of the word; it makes me want to travel 'cross the country, sampling a bit of food (eat!) and a bit of air (breathe!) from here and a bit from there. And if you have the chance, find your local farmer's market and buy what's fresh and interesting; or see what heirloom goodies are on the menus of your local restaurants.

Perhaps, here, you can follow the old advice (challenge?) to an almost-literal degree: put your money where you mouth is.. because your loudest vote - even in a big election year like this one - is always done with your dollars. And if you end up rustlin' up the ingredients for a big ol' pot of Kentucky burgoo, let me know; I'll swing on over, mind open, spoon in hand, and tastebuds ready for action.