syrup—a whole food made only from the sap that rises in the tree only after a long, cold winter—can taste different depending on whether the maple tree grows in areas rich in limestone (giving flavor notes of caramel, vanilla and bitter almond) or schist (where minerals yield a slightly moldy note), giving it a unique taste of place.
Wild Bounty
Before European settlement here, Na- tive American tribes were often identi- fied—and strengthened physically and spiritu- ally—by the regional foods they ate, whether gathered by hunting or fishing in the wild or raised themselves. Early visiting explorers and naturalists noted such delicacies as wild strawberries growing along the New Hamp- shire shoreline, native persimmons in Virginia and beach plums on Cape Cod. In Early American
Gardens: For Meate or Medicine, gardener and author Ann Leighton chronicles which plants were native to New England and which ones the 17th-century colonists brought or had sent from England. The resulting cuisine evolved into a fusion of English recipes with New World ingredients. Through many
generations, regional cuisines developed along the Eastern sea- board, often featuring maple syrup, cranber- ries, wild blackber- ries, corn, pumpkins, Carolina gold rice, cod, clams, blue crab, shad and shrimp. Grafting new and old world plants produced the happy accidents of the
Bartlett pear, Concord grape and New- town Pippin apple. What grew in these innovative gardens naturally began to grace American tables.
“Native corn became a truly Amer-
ican food,” observes Lenore Greenstein, a food and nutrition journalist who has taught at several U.S. universities. “The corn of the settlers, however, was not the sweet corn we know today, but the field corn used to feed livestock and make corn meal, syrup and starches. Sweet corn was unknown until 1779, yet by 1850 it had replaced field corn on American tables.”
Ethnic Traditions Beyond the land itself, regional foods con- tinue to be influenced by the transportation routes followed in early trading ventures; the ways of the English homeland were soon joined by those of Afri- can slaves. Greenstein relates
“In this wine, you can taste
the magical place where our children, Hailey and Loren, grew up. Aromas of blackberries and bay leaves, like those that grow along the spring-fed creek with subtle notes of tobacco, smoke and earth, dance in the background, derived from the soil itself.”
~ Janet Trefethen, of Trefethen Family Vineyards, in Napa, California, about its HaLo cabernet sauvignon.
that New Orleans’ famous gumbo comes from the African ngombo, for okra, its principal ingredient. The thick stew gets some of its distinc- tive flavor and smooth texture from gumbo file powder made of dried, wild sassafras leaves. In other parts of the South, a cuisine that became known as soul food grew up around dishes made from pro- duce that slaves could grow in their own kitchen gardens: boiled peanuts, sweet potato pie, boiled greens and black-eyed peas. Immigrants from
Ireland who arrived in the New World during the potato famine of the 1840s and those Europeans promised
natural awakenings July 2010 27
free land under the Homestead Acts of the 1860s brought garden seeds, favorite plants and ethnic food traditions with them, further enlarging our country’s collective eating repertoire to include sauerkraut, coleslaw, cheesecake, cin- namon rolls and potato salad. Mennonite farmers who had emi- grated from the Netherlands to Ger- many and then on to Russia, as their pacifist views clashed with the prevail- ing governments, finally left the steppes of the Ukraine for the similar terroir of the Kansas prairie in 1875. (This was
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50 |
Page 51 |
Page 52 |
Page 53 |
Page 54 |
Page 55 |
Page 56 |
Page 57 |
Page 58 |
Page 59 |
Page 60 |
Page 61 |
Page 62 |
Page 63 |
Page 64