Food for Thought: Endangered Eating

Join Piscataway Public Library staff to discuss Sarah Lohman’s book, Endangered Eating. Finishing the book is not required to join the conversation! 

Endangered Eating is available as a downloadable audiobook on hoopla and as an ebook on Libby. The title can also be placed on hold in the STELLA catalog. A limited number of complimentary print copies of Endangered Eating are now available at Kennedy Library.

Endangered Eating: In Endangered Eating, culinary historian Sarah Lohman draws inspiration from the Ark of Taste, a list compiled by Slow Food International that catalogues important regional foods. Lohman travels the country learning about the distinct ingredients at risk of being lost. Readers follow Lohman to Hawaii, as she walks alongside farmers to learn the stories behind heirloom sugarcane. In the Navajo Nation, she assists in the traditional butchering of a Navajo Churro ram. Lohman heads to the Upper Midwest, to harvest wild rice; to the Pacific Northwest, to spend a day wild salmon reefnet fishing; to the Gulf Coast, to devour gumbo made thick and green with filé powder; and to the Lowcountry of South Carolina, to taste America’s oldest peanut—long thought to be extinct.

Lohman learns from those who love these rare ingredients: shepherds, fishers, and farmers; scientists, historians, and activists. And she tries her hand at raising these crops and preparing these dishes.

Each chapter includes two recipes, so readers can be a part of saving these ingredients by purchasing and preparing them. 

This event is part of the library’s Food for Thought event series. The Food for Thought project was made possible by a grant from the New Jersey Council for the Humanities, a state partner of the National Endowment for the Humanities. Any views, findings, conclusions, or recommendations expressed in this event do not necessarily represent those of the National Endowment for the Humanities or the New Jersey Council for the Humanities.