Books

Item Description

Brand new! Absolutely beautiful book from an inspiring place. You will love it.

The Occidental Arts & Ecology Center Cookbook: Fresh-from-the-Garden Recipes for Gatherings Large and Small, by the OAEC Staff Collective and Kitchen Manager Olivia Rathbone, is a collection of inventive recipes from OAEC — a renowned farm, educational retreat center, and eco-think-tank nestled in the hills of western Sonoma County, California.

One of the first farms to be certified organic in California, OAEC has been a vocal advocate for the preservation of biodiversity and ecological agriculture since the early 1970’s. Through a living seed collection of over 3,000 heirloom vegetable, fruit and herb varieties well adapted to the local climate, the OAEC “Mother Garden”continues to feed and inspire activists, biologists, educators and artists seeking innovative and practical approaches to the pressing environmental, cultural and economic crises of our day ­while celebrating and eating well!

The Cookbook Includes:

• A Foreword by Alice Waters
• Over 200 recipes based on the Mother Garden’s collection of rare, open-pollinated food crop varieties from around the world as well as “weeds” and foraged ingredients from the OAEC wildlands ecological preserve.
• Lush photographs, rich with the beauty and magic of the OAEC experience.
• Measurements for family style (4 to 6) and for crowds (30 to 40); a unique resource for potlucks, family gatherings, and community celebrations.

“The OAEC has been at the forefront of seed saving, heritage food crop preservation, and stewardship since long before those terms developed the sort of cachet they have today—and you can see the ethos of the place in every dish in this book. These dishes represent the sort of hearty, nourishing, unpretentious fare that brings family and friends together at the table; I love that the recipes are scaled so that you can feed 4 people—or 30, should you so choose! But more than just being a collection of delicious recipes, these pages capture a way of life for a whole community, whose values of ecological research, sustainable farming, and environmental advocacy are so vitally important.”

-Alice Waters, Founder and Executive Chef of Chez Panisse, from the OAEC Cookbook foreword