How Carrots Won The Trojan War
Download How Carrots Won The Trojan War PDF/ePub or read online books in Mobi eBooks. Click Download or Read Online button to get How Carrots Won The Trojan War book now. This website allows unlimited access to, at the time of writing, more than 1.5 million titles, including hundreds of thousands of titles in various foreign languages.
How Carrots Won the Trojan War
Discover why Roman gladiators were massaged with onion juice before battle, how celery contributed to Casanova’s conquests, how peas almost poisoned General Washington, and why some seventeenth-century turnips were considered degenerate. Rebecca Rupp tells the strange and fascinating history of 23 of the world’s most popular vegetables. Gardeners, foodies, history buffs, and anyone who wants to know the secret stories concealed in a salad are sure to enjoy this delightful and informative collection.
The Seed Detective
Author: Adam Alexander
language: en
Publisher: Chelsea Green Publishing
Release Date: 2022-09-29
Meet the Indiana Jones of vegetables and join him on his quest to save our heritage produce. Named BBC Radio 4's The Food Programme "Book of the Year" 2023 GardenComm Media Awards Silver Laurel Medal of Achievement Shortlisted for the Garden Media Guild’s Garden Book of the Year Award 2023 Longlisted for The Art of Eating Prize 2023 "[This book] is a clarion call to think about our food in new ways and carefully consider where it comes from."—New Scientist Did you ever wonder how peas, kale, asparagus, beans, squash, and corn have ended up on our plates? Well, so did Adam Alexander. Adam Alexander is The Seed Detective. His passion for vegetables was ignited when he tasted an unusual sweet pepper with a fiery heart while on a filmmaking project in Ukraine. Smitten by its flavor, Adam began to seek out local growers of endangered heritage and heirloom varieties in a mission to bring home seeds to grow, share, and return so that he could enjoy their delicious taste—and save them from being lost forever. In The Seed Detective, Adam shares his own stories of seed hunting, with the origin stories behind many of our everyday food heroes. Taking us on a journey that began when we left the life of the hunter-gatherer to become farmers, he tells tales of globalization, political intrigue, colonization, and serendipity—describing how these vegetables and their travels have become embedded in our food cultures. “We are a nation of vegetable growers and this book explores the wonderful world of rare and endangered heritage and heirloom vegetables – and why we must keep growing them and saving their seed, not only for our gardening and culinary pleasure, but to pass these stories on – vegetables are truly our history on a plate.”—The Seed Detective "Copious but thoroughly engaging research . . . Alexander shares his excitement over the potential for rescuing this lost heritage. . . All of which makes this title worth a serious look."—Booklist (starred) "[The Seed Detective] traces the origins and evolution of vegetables that have shaped human civilization."—Atlas Obscura “[A] spirited introduction to the contemporary seed-saving movement. . . . With entertaining anecdotes that feature Syrian fava beans, Ukrainian sweet peppers and broad beans from Myanmar, Alexander's horticultural adventures will surely stimulate and unleash readers' inner gardeners.”—Shelf Awareness "For Adam Alexander seeds are more than just a job, hobby or passion. They’re a lifeline."—Modern Farmer
The Carrot Purple and Other Curious Stories of the Food We Eat
Author: Joel S. Denker
language: en
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing PLC
Release Date: 2015-10-01
How many otherwise well-educated readers know that the familiar orange carrot was once a novelty? It is a little more than 400 years old. Domesticated in Afghanistan in 900 AD, the purple carrot, in fact, was the dominant variety until Dutch gardeners bred the young upstart in the seventeenth century. After surveying paintings from this era in the Louvre and other museums, Dutch agronomist Otto Banga discovered this stunning transformation. The story of the carrot is just one of the hidden tales this book recounts. Through portraits of a wide range of foods we eat and love, from artichokes to strawberries, The Carrot Purple traces the path of foods from obscurity to familiarity. Joel Denker explores how these edible plants were, in diverse settings, invested with new meaning. They acquired not only culinary significance but also ceremonial, medicinal, and economic importance. Foods were variously savored, revered, and reviled. This entertaining history will enhance the reader’s appreciation of a wide array of foods we take for granted. From the carrot to the cabbage, from cinnamon to coffee, from the peanut to the pistachio, the plants, beans, nuts, and spices we eat have little-known stories that are unearthed and served here with relish.