Full Moon Feast - Annotated by Jessica Prentice (Paperback)

About the Book

Accomplished chef and passionate food activist Prentice champions locally grown, humanely raised, nutrient-rich foods and traditional cooking methods. The book follows the 13 lunar cycles of an agrarian year, and includes recipes for every season.

Book Synopsis

Full Moon Feast invites us to a table brimming with locally grown foods, radical wisdom, and communal nourishment.

In Full Moon Feast, accomplished chef and passionate food activist Jessica Prentice champions locally grown, humanely raised, nutrient-rich foods and traditional cooking methods. The book follows the thirteen lunar cycles of an agrarian year, from the midwinter Hunger Moon and the springtime sweetness of the Sap Moon to the bounty of the Moon When Salmon Return to Earth in autumn. Each chapter includes recipes that display the richly satisfying flavors of foods tied to the ancient rhythm of the seasons.

Prentice decries our modern food culture: megafarms and factories, the chemically processed ghosts of real foods in our diets, and the suffering-physical, emotional, cultural, communal, and spiritual-born of a disconnect from our food sources. She laments the system that is poisoning our bodies and our communities.

But Full Moon Feast is a celebration, not a dirge. Prentice has emerged from her own early struggles with food to offer health, nourishment, and fulfillment to her readers. She recounts her relationships with local farmers alongside ancient harvest legends and methods of food preparation from indigenous cultures around the world.

Combining the radical nutrition of Sally Fallon's Nourishing Traditions, keen agri-political acumen, and a spiritual sensibility that draws from indigenous as well as Western traditions, Full Moon Feast is a call to reconnect to our food, our land, and each other.

"Drawing upon mythology, history, and contemporary struggles, Full Moon Feast reminds us of ancient cultural wisdom, encourages us to deepen our connections to the sources of our food, and invites us to make these seasonal rhythms our own."--Sandor Katz, author of Wild Fermentation

Review Quotes

"Full Moon Feast is the perfect title for this surprising and ultimately hopeful book. It is full of fascinating information and lived wisdom about the plants and animals, fish and birds we consume and how we are misusing the planet we share with them. Prentice assigns a collage of traditional names to the thirteen moons of the lunar year, then leads the reader through the seasons, using ideas the moon's names suggest to introduce a rich stew of fascinating food lore topped off by recipes that illustrate the chapter's themes. Like a memorable meal, Full Moon Feast is convivial, stimulating, comforting, at times piquant, and always deeply satisfying. A feast indeed!"--Joan Dye Gussow, author of This Organic Life: Confessions of a Suburban Homesteader

"Fired by the abuses of modern industrialism, this poet-chef tells her life story as a vision-quest for a world of harmony and connectedness, which she finds in the voices of traditional cultures past and present, condensed in poems, myths, foods, feasts and fasts, tuned to the rhythm of the seasons. As we follow her lunar calendar from Hunger Moon to Wolf Moon, we discover in recipes for Nettle Soup, Sourdough Crackers, Yarrow Ale, new uses and new meanings in the gifts of earth and sea. Meanings multiply in a work that is not a quick bite, but a vertical tasting to be savored slowly."--Betty Fussell, author of The Story of Corn and My Kitchen Wars, A Memoir

"Jessica Prentice's far-ranging culinary explorations bring us back to the rhythms of seasonal being. Drawing upon mythology, history, and contemporary struggles, Full Moon Feast reminds us of ancient cultural wisdom, encourages us to deepen our connections to the sources of our food, and invites us to make these seasonal rhythms our own."--Sandor Katz, author of Wild Fermentation

About the Author

Jessica Prentice is both a professional chef and a passionate home cook. In her cooking, Jessica brings together creativity and imagination with a deep respect for traditional cuisine and time-honored culinary practices. Through her work, she seeks to provide a model for how communities can feed themselves in a way that is satisfying and health-supportive on all levels: delicious, environmentally responsible, and grounded in the wise nourishing traditions of our forebears. In her workshops, she seeks to both inspire people to cook, and help them develop the practical skills to feel successful in the kitchen. Jessica currently writes a New Moon Newsletter called Stirring the Cauldron that is sent out to internet subscribers around the world on each new moon. Jessica coined the term "locavore" and helps sponsor an annual Eat Local Challenge. She is one of the founding worker-owners of Three Stone Hearth, a community-supported kitchen in West Berkeley (http: //www.threestonehearth.com) and speaks nationally on building sustainable food systems.