Spilling the Beans or Eating on the Wild Side

Spilling the Beans

Author: Clarissa Dickson Wright

As a child, Clarissa Dickson Wright was surrounded by wealth and privilege. Her mother was an Australian heiress, her father a brilliant surgeon to the Royal family. But he was also a tyrannical and violent drunk who used to beat her and force her to eat rotten food. When her adored mother died suddenly, Clarissa fell into a mind-numbing decade of wild overindulgence which eventually cost her entire fortune. After a long, hard road to recovery, Clarissa finally faced her demons and turned to the one thing that had always brought her joy—cooking. Now at last she has found sobriety and peace, and her TV parternship with the beloved late Jennifer Paterson as the Two Fat Ladies brought her fame and success. With stark honesty and brilliant wit, this is Clarissa’s own story of a life lived to extremes.

Traverse City Record-Eagle

[A] witty, eye-popping life story.

Interesting textbook: Good to Great Hair or Do I Look like a Daddy to You

Eating on the Wild Side: The Pharmacologic, Ecologic, and Social Implications of Using Noncultigens

Author: Nina L Etkin

People have long used wild plants as food and medicine, and for a myriad of other important cultural applications. While these plants and the foraging activities associated with them have been dismissed by some observers as secondary or supplementary—or even backward—their contributions to human survival and well-being are more significant than is often realized. Eating on the Wild Side spans the history of human-plant interactions to examine how wild plants are used to meet medicinal, nutritional, and other human needs. Drawing on nonhuman primate studies, evidence from prehistoric human populations, and field research among contemporary peoples practicing a range of subsistence strategies, the book focuses on the processes and human ecological implications of gathering, semidomestication, and cultivation of plants that are unfamiliar to most of us. Contributions by distinguished cultural and biological anthropologists, paleobotanists, primatologists, and ethnobiologists explore a number of issues such as the consumption of unpalatable and famine foods, the comparative assessment of aboriginal diets with those of colonists and later arrivals, and the apparent self-treatment by sick chimpanzees with leaves shown to be pharmacologically active. Collectively, these articles offer a theoretical framework emphasizing the cultural evolutionary processes that transform plants from wild to domesticated—with many steps in between—while placing wild plant use within current discussions surrounding biodiversity and its conservation. Eating on the Wild Side makes an important contribution to our understanding of the links between biology and culture,describing the interface between diet, medicine, and natural products. By showing how various societies have successfully utilized wild plants, it underscores the growing concern for preserving genetic diversity as it reveals a fascinating chapter in the human ecology. CONTENTS 1. The Cull of the Wild, Nina L. Etkin
Selection
2. Agriculture and the Acquisition of Medicinal Plant Knowledge, Michael H. Logan & Anna R. Dixon
3. Ambivalence to the Palatability Factors in Wild Food Plants, Timothy Johns
4. Wild Plants as Cultural Adaptations to Food Stress, Rebecca Huss-Ashmore & Susan L. Johnston Physiologic Implications of Wild Plant Consumption
5. Pharmacologic Implications of "Wild" Plants in Hausa Diet, Nina L. Etkin & Paul J. Ross
6. Wild Plants as Food and Medicine in Polynesia, Paul Alan Cox
7. Characteristics of "Wild" Plant Foods Used by Indigenous Populations in Amazonia, Darna L. Dufour & Warren M. Wilson
8. The Health Significance of Wild Plants for the Siona and Secoya, William T. Vickers
9. North American Food and Drug Plants, Daniel M. Moerman Wild Plants in Prehistory
10. Interpreting Wild Plant Foods in the Archaeological Record, Frances B. King
11. Coprolite Evidence for Prehistoric Foodstuffs, Condiments, and Medicines, Heather B. Trigg, Richard I. Ford, John G. Moore & Louise D. Jessop Plants and Nonhuman Primates
12. Nonhuman Primate Self-Medication with Wild Plant Foods, Kenneth E. Glander
13. Wild Plant Use by Pregnant and Lactating Ringtail Lemurs, with Implications for Early Hominid Foraging, Michelle L. Sauther Epilogue
14. In Search of Keystone Societies, Brien A. Meilleur

Booknews

Spans the history of human-plant interactions to examine how wild plants are used to meet medicinal, nutritional, and other human needs. Drawing on nonhuman primate studies, evidence from prehistoric human populations, and field research among contemporary peoples, the book focuses on the processes and human ecological implications of the gathering and cultivation of plants. Contributors include anthropologists, paleobotanists, and ethnobiologists. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)