" Once inside, Cookie Monster would become enamored with a painting of Amedeo Modigliani's mistress, Jeanne Hébuterne, not for its plaintive beauty for its potentially esculent quality: "See pretty picture with lady inside/It look delicious, me fit to be tied!
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The Propitious Esculent: The Potato in World History is a book by John Reader outlining the role of the potato (the esculent of the title) in world history. It was also published under the titles The Untold History of the Potato and Potato: A History of the Propitious Esculent. The potato has been present and influential during the major events in the last 500 years. These include the historical moments of discovery and culture change that have led to the present globalized world.
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Spores are brown and ovoid, with a diameter of 4.5–6 µm. They are thick-walled, and nearly smooth, with a central oil droplet, and a long, warted pedicel.A plain and easy account of the British fungi, with descriptions of the esculent and poisonous species, details of the principles of scientific classification, and a tabular arrangement of orders and genera. London, Hardwicke, 1871.
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Reader's explanation of what happened during the great European Potato Failure of 1845 to 1850 discusses the biosocial and biopolitical processes of the period. The Propitious Esculent proposes that the fate of Ireland was not solely the fault of a fungus but the result of a chain of governmental decisions that were set into motion because of the properties of the potato.
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The Rev. Dr Badham was more successful as a mycologist, writing a well-received Treatise on the esculent funguses of England, published in 1847. He seems to have become interested in the subject as a result of visiting fungus markets in Italy. Eating wild fungi was considered an eccentric and dangerous pastime in England at the time and the book attracted some popular interest, if only as a curiosity.Anon. (1847).
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The English privateer Sir Francis Drake, returning from his circumnavigation, or Sir Walter Raleigh's employee Thomas Harriot, are commonly credited with introducing potatoes into England. In 1588, botanist Carolus Clusius made a painting of what he called "Papas Peruanorum" from a specimen in the Low Countries; in 1601 he reported that potatoes were in common use in northern Italy for animal fodder and for human consumption.John Reader, John. Propitious Esculent: The Potato in World History (2008) The potato first spread in Europe for non-food purposes. It was first eaten on the continent at a Seville hospital in 1573.
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The > oxen would traverse the woods and the thickets; the mules would walk > securely among rugged rocks and hilly countries; the dromedaries would cross > the sandy deserts. Thus the expedition would be prepared for any kind of > territory that the interior might present. Dogs also should be taken to > raise game, and to discover springs of water; and it has even been proposed > to take pigs, for the sake of finding out esculent roots in the soil. When > no kangaroos and game are to be found the party would subsist on the flesh > of their own flocks.
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Sutorius eximius is typically considered an edible mushroom, and listed as so in several North American field guides. Charles McIlvaine and Louis Krieger both wrote favorably of the bolete's esculent properties, but a series of poisonings reported from the New England region and eastern Canada have cast doubt on its edibility. According to Greg Marley, author Roger Phillips was the first to include a toxicity warning in his 1991 book Mushrooms of North America. Despite its revised status in North America, the lilac-brown bolete remains one of the most common fungi used as food by locals in the Hengduan Mountains region of southwestern China.
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Potatoes had a single region of origin; how they moved from place to place has affected the variety of tubers and the people and places that received them. Reader's book aims to contextualize the potato in world history. Reader presents the information and ideas in The Propitious Esculent building on the work of two important scholars: Redcliffe N. Salaman and William H. McNeill. In 1949 Salaman wrote a book, The History and Social Influence of the Potato. After publishing the very influential The Rise of the West (1963) and Plagues and Peoples (1976), McNeill published an essay called, “How the Potato Changed the World’s History” in 1999.
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At times and places when and where most other crops failed, potatoes could still typically be relied upon to contribute adequately to food supplies during colder years.John Reader, Propitious Esculent: The Potato in World History (2008) Antoine Parmentier holding New World plants, François Dumont 1812 In France, at the end of the 16th century, the potato had been introduced to the Franche-Comté, the Vosges of Lorraine and Alsace. By the end of the 18th century it was written in the 1785 edition of Bon Jardinier: "There is no vegetable about which so much has been written and so much enthusiasm has been shown ... The poor should be quite content with this foodstuff.""Histoires de légumes" by M. Pitrat and C. Foury, Institut National de la recherche agronomique, 2003, p.
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In some cases, a portion of that Florida land is still owned by the Seminole and Black Seminole descendants in Florida. In the 19th century, the Black Seminoles were called "Seminole Negroes" by their white American enemies and Estelusti ("Black People"), by their Native American allies. Under the comparatively free conditions, the Black Seminoles flourished. US Army Lieutenant George McCall recorded his impressions of a Black Seminole community in 1826: > We found these negroes in possession of large fields of the finest land, > producing large crops of corn, beans, melons, pumpkins, and other esculent > vegetables.... I saw, while riding along the borders of the ponds, fine rice > growing; and in the village large corn-cribs were filled, while the houses > were larger and more comfortable than those of the Native Americans > themselves.
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The author Brinton wrote in 1885 in regards to the Lenape people, "Of wild fruits and plants they consumed the esculent and nutritious tubers on the roots of the Wild Bean, Apios tuberosa... which the Indians called hobbenis..." In 1910, Parker writes that the Iroquois were consuming significant quantities of groundnuts up until about thirty years before his writing. The Paris Documents of 1666 record that the sixth tribe of the second division of the Iroquois were identified as, "that of the Potatoe, which they call Schoneschironon" and an illustration of tubers is found in the Paris Documents with the explanation, "This is the manner they paint the tribe of the Potatoe." The author Gilmore records the use of groundnuts by the Caddoan and Siouan tribes of the Missouri river region, and the authors Prescott and Palmer record its use among the Sioux. The Indigenous peoples would prepare the tubers in many different ways, such as frying them in animal fat or drying them into flour.
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McMahon's most enduring contribution was his Calendar, the most comprehensive gardening book published in the United States in the first half of the nineteenth century.(Mann Library, Cornell University) "Harvest of Freedom: The history of Kitchen Gardens in America" It finished in its eleventh edition in 1857. It was modeled on a traditional English formula, of month-by-month instructions on planting, pruning, and soil preparation for the "Kitchen Garden, Fruit Garden, Orchard, Vineyard, Nursery, Pleasure Ground, Flower Garden, Green House, Hot house and Forcing Frames". In some particulars, McMahon followed his English models so closely that J. C. Loudon suggested in 1826 that the derivative character of the Calendar was such that "We cannot gather from the work any thing as to the extent of American practice in these particulars."(Thomas Jefferson Center) Peter J. Hatch "Bernard McMahon, Pioneer American Gardener" 1993 Ann Leighton notes the absence of Indian corn among the "Seeds of Esculent Vegetables" in 1806, though he lists old-fashioned favorites like coriander, corn-salad, orach, rampion, rocambole and skirret.
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