Taste, Memory: Forgotten Foods, Lost Flavors, and Why They Matter

Taste, Memory traces the experiences of modern-day explorers who rediscover culturally rich forgotten foods and return them to our tables for all to experience and savor.In Taste, Memory author David Buchanan explores questions fundamental to the future of food and farming. How can we strike a balance between preserving the past, maintaining valuable agricultural and culinary traditions, and looking ahead to breed new plants? What place does a cantankerous old pear or too-delicate strawberry deserve in our gardens, farms, and markets? To what extent should growers value efficiency and uniformity over matters of taste, ecology, or regional identity?While living in Washington State in the early nineties, Buchanan learned about the heritage food movement and began growing fruit trees, grains, and vegetables. After moving home to New England, however, he left behind his plant collection and for several years stopped gardening. In 2005, inspired by the revival of interest in regional food and culinary traditions, Buchanan borrowed a few rows of growing space at a farm near his home in Portland, Maine, where he resumed collecting. By 2012 he had expanded to two acres, started a nursery and small business, and discovered creative ways to preserve rare foods. In Taste, Memory Buchanan shares stories of slightly obsessive urban gardeners, preservationists, environmentalists, farmers, and passionate cooks, and weaves anecdotes of his personal journey with profiles of leaders in the movement to defend agricultural biodiversity.Taste, Memory begins and ends with a simple premise: that a healthy food system depends on matching diverse plants and animals to the demands of land and climate. In this sense of place lies the true meaning of local food.

Taste, Memory traces the experiences of a modern-day explorer, one who doesn't discover new lands and new cultures, but who rediscovers our common food heritage and then works to bring it back to our gardens and tables for all to appreciate and enjoy.From a cantankerous old pear tree to a strawberry that's too delicate to ship to distant markets, David Buchanan has grown out and evaluated thousands of varieties of fruits, grains, herbs, flowers, and vegetables, capturing not only their flavors, but their fascinating stories and their place in the local harvest.What we grow is just as important as where we grow it, and a resilient food system depends on the ongoing search for regionally adapted varieties. Local food at its best differs in both kind and quality from commodity crops that are shipped around the globe. If everyone were to grow the same apples or tomatoes, for example, then we would miss out on the full palate of tastes available to us, as well as the sense that local food can reflect a particular people, place, and culture.Profiling his own efforts as a young garden-farmer who is still finding his own place in the world (using leased gardens and orchard space), Buchanan also writes about some of the most important people who are working to defend and promote biodiversity and meaning in our food system. From gardeners and cooks to environmentalists and food activists - all of these people are preserving the best of our traditional foods and ensuring that they will be around for future generations to enjoy.Taste, Memory takes readers on a beautifully written personal journey into what food diversity really means, and why it matters now more than ever.

David Buchanan is the author of Taste, Memory. He planted his first gardens in central Washington State more than 20 years ago, after learning about the heritage food movement through the Seed Savers Exchange. He has worked for farms, ranches, and nurseries; operated a landscape design company specializing in native plant restoration; managed an educational farm for a community nonprofit; and helped found the Portland, Maine, chapter of Slow Food USA. He oversees production for Old Ocean House Farms in Cape Elizabeth, where he grows more than 250 varieties of fruit as well as herbs and heirloom vegetables. Currently he is developing a farm winery and planting orchards to produce hard cider through his business Origins Fruit.