EAT IT: Harvested at the Earlscourt Community Garden.
“Because vegetables connect us to the earth, to that Mother Earth of whom ancients spoke, they occupy a very specific place in the history of food, as well as in our imaginations, our myths, our customs, our family heritages. They long constituted if not the foundation of food, as assured by grain, at least the most elementary part. From picking to gathering - even today, dandelions in the fields, mushrooms in the woods, blackberries along woodland paths - vegetation has sure value, one that guarantees subsistence when one has nothing. Vegetables were at the dawn of humanity; they form the elementary degree of social organization, the passage from the raw to the cooked, from nature to culture, from stage of gathering to that of cultivation. Humans have tamed vegetables the way they have domesticated animals, by selecting plants and observing the effects of those plants on their bodies. Plants, grains, herbs, and roots follow the beginnings of sedentarization: planting to grow something assumes that one is settling down for the time it takes to plant, allow plants to grow, and harvest the bounty.”
- - Vegetables, A Biography by Evelyne Bloch-Dano, p.11
