“If we save a vegetable but we don’t save the recipes and the farmers don’t benefit because no one eats it, then we haven’t done our work.”

drawing by marguerita- previously published OP Ed NYTimes - June 26,1976
SOME people would just as soon ignore the culinary potential of the Carolina flying squirrel or the Waldoboro green neck rutabaga. To them, the creamy Hutterite soup bean is too obscure and the Tennessee fainting goat, which keels over when startled, sounds more like a sideshow act than the centerpiece of a barbecue.
But not Gary Paul Nabhan. He has spent most of the past four years compiling a list of endangered plants and animals that were once fairly commonplace in American kitchens but are now threatened, endangered or essentially extinct in the marketplace. He has set out to save them, which often involves urging people to eat them.
“The daunting thing is that so much about American traditional foods comes out of people’s heads and isn’t in any book,” he said.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/30/dining/30come.html?hp
http://www.environment.nau.edu/aboutcse/Gary_Paul_Nabhan.htm