Save a Food From Extinction: Eat It for Dinner

'Food coalitions' aim to keep ingredients, recipes key to US heritage in circulation
By Paul Stinson,  Newser User
Posted May 1, 2008 7:40 PM CDT
Save a Food From Extinction: Eat It for Dinner
Pictured here, the buckeye chicken is widely believed to be one of the five most endangered poultry breeds.    (http://www.albc-usa.org/cpl/buckeye.html)

Vanishing culinary breeds are getting a new lease on life, thanks to the efforts of an ethnobotanist with an interest in America's foodie past, the New York Times reports. While Makah ozette potato sounds like a "Final Jeopardy" answer, the once-endangered vegetable is one of the many culinary artifacts Gary Paul Nabhan aims to bring back to America's dinner tables.

Nabhan has amassed a 1,080-strong list of items on the verge of vanishing: among them, the Buckeye chicken and the Bronx cherry. Food coalitions such as Slow Food USA review the list, selecting tasty and meaningful items to resuscitate on local restaurant tables, thereby guaranteeing buyers and encouraging farmers to grow the rare foods. (More food stories.)

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