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Showing posts from June 4, 2017

Forkways #1: Ethnobotany

This is what ethnobotanists do: We dream of eating our way through one ripened, locally abundant morsel after another. - Gary Nabhan Ethnobotany is the relationship between plants and people, primarily for food and medicine. This field of study is relatively new to me, but as soon as I stumbled upon it I felt like it could be a field that would hold my interest. Over the past two years I have been expanding into the study of food. I have been reading about it in a historical, social, and historical context. One of the fascinating things about food is the way that it can be invisible in our lives. The plate of the ethnobotanist should be filled with local foods. I, like Gary Nabhan, live in a desert. I believe, perhaps mistakenly, that locally sourced ingredients would not provide me with the abundance of food I am used to. Though I am well acquainted with the local farms in the area, I am just beginning to understand some of the foraging opportunities in the area. But