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Taste of Place: Iowa’s Food Culture & Heritage
The Leopold Center for
Sustainable Agriculture at Iowa State University and the Iowa
Department of Cultural Affairs recently launched a project exploring the notion
of documenting and finding niche and specialty markets for “place-based
foods.”
A
place-based food is tied to the climate and soil of a region as well as to the
culture and traditions of its inhabitants. Think Oregon Pinots, Wisconsin cheese
curds, Chesapeake Bay blue crabs—these are all foods that evoke a ‘taste
of place.’ Whether you feel the actual squeak of that cheese against your
teeth or suck the sweet, spicy crab from its claw, these foods transport you to
Wisconsin’s bucolic farms or Maryland’s small-town coastal crab shacks.
What Iowa foods can create comparable taste memories and place associations?
“This
project is looking for Iowans to tell their stories about the fruits, vegetables,
and meats grown in Iowa, or items that have been processed or prepared here. The
place-based food should have some heritage basis, whether historical, ethnic,
ecological, or geographic, and a related story that makes its Iowa connection
clear. The resulting report will include a selection of narratives from the state’s
major ecological regions regarding place-based Iowa foods with the potential to
be used for marketing those foods, encouraging their production, and attracting
visitors to the communities and cultures that nurture them.” --excerpted
from “Taste of Place: Iowa’s Food Culture and Heritage,” Practical
Farmers of Iowa Quarterly Newsletter, July 2005. For the full article, go
to www.practicalfarmers.org/news_details.asp?I=58.
If you’re interested in participating in this project, please complete the Place-Based Food Survey before Sept. 1. There is also a recipe section for those with heritage recipes from families, communities, and friends. Or feel free to contact riki.saltzman@iowa.gov, 515.242.6195.
