Tasting Love and Legacy

Culinary heritage revitalization and local food movements re-embed food into the socio-cultural fabric that gives it meaning and value while conservation in international gene banks and the Global Seed Vault guarantees more systematic, long-term storage but progressively dis-embeds germplasm from its various contexts. Small fields and rustic kitchens where seeds and knowledge are tastefully transmitted through commensality and storytelling are hardly recognized for their service to biodiversity conservation. Yet, along with memorialization in festivals and other social movements, these warm milieus nurture diverse seeds and foodways. How are boundaries and designations of milieus and sites shifting in modernity? What makes for sensuous conservation? How much work is involved in memorywork? I examine the life histories of Luisa Huaman, a potato farmer in Cusco, Peru and Isabel Alvarez, a rural sociologist who has researched traditional food and founded a popular restaurant that serves these dishes in Lima, Peru for clues.