Seasoned by Salt is the fascinating account of a one-year cruise, from Connecticut to Grenada and back, undertaken by a sailing couple. The book alternates throughout their complementary voices as they relive their journey. They are not your average tourists. Their story is brimming with humor and high adventure, and reflects a deep understanding of the history, people, and economy of the many islands that they visited.
Salt is an invisible object for research in archaeology. However, ancient writings, ethnographic studies and the evidence of archaeological exploitation highlight it as an essential reference for humanity. Both an edible product and a crucial element for food preservation, it has been used by the first human settlements as soon as food storage appeared (Neolithic).As far as the history of food habits (both nutrition and preservation) is concerned, the identification and the use of that resource certainly proves a revolution as meaningful as the domestication of plants and wild animals. On a global scale, the development of new economic forms based on the management of food surplus went along an increased use of saline resources through a specific technical knowledge, aimed at the extraction of salt from its natural supports.Considering the variety of former practices observed until now, a pluralist approach based on human as well as environmental sciences is required. It allows a better knowledge of the historical interactions between our societies and this "white gold", which are well-known from the Middle-Ages, but more hypothetical for earlier times.This publication intends to present the most recent progresses in the field of salt archaeology in Europe and beyond; it also exposes various approaches allowing a thorough understanding of this complex and many-faceted subject. The complementary themes dealt with in this book, the broad chronological and geographical focus, as well as the relevance of the results presented, make this contribution a key synthesis of the most recent research on this universal topic.
The early-modern Venezuelan Caribbean did not lure seafarers with the saccharine delights of cane sugar but with the preserving qualities of solar sea salt. In this book, the historical archaeological study of this salty commodity offers a unique entryway into the hitherto unknown maritime mobilities and daily lives of the seafarers who camped at the saltpans of Venezuelan islands from the seventeenth to the late nineteenth centuries, cultivating and harvesting the white crystal of the sea.For the first time, this study offers a comprehensive documentary history of the saltpans of La Tortuga Island and Cayo Sal in the Los Roques Archipelago, uncovering the surprising importance of their salt. Long-term archaeological excavations at the campsites by these saltpans have brought to light the plethora of material remains left behind by seafarers during their seasonal and temporary salt forays. The exhaustive analysis of the thousands of recovered things - pipes, punch bowls, plates, teapots, buttons, bones - contrasted with documentary evidence, not only enables us to understand where these things came from but also by whom they were used. By engaging the evidence through my theoretical framework of assemblages of practice, I demonstrate how seafarers and things were vibrantly entangled in the everyday assemblages of practice of salt cultivation, dining and drinking.This multisited approach spanning 256 years, reveals that seafarers were fervent buyers of fashionable products, drinking hot tea from porcelain tea bowls, using colorful ceramic chamber pots for their hygienic needs and imbibing exotic rum punch by the scorching saltpans of the uninhabited Venezuelan islands. Intended for scholars, students and the interested public alike, this historical archaeological study positions humble seafarers in the limelight, not as the anonymous movers of international trade and facilitators of imperial interests, but as avid trans-imperial and extra-imperial consumers of the fruits of those very empires.
AN INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER THE WASHINGTON POST NOTABLE BOOK OF 2021 A GOOD MORNING AMERICA BOOK CLUB PICK WINNER of the Isabel Allende Most Inspirational Fiction Award, She Reads Best of 2021 Awards • FINALIST for the 2022 Southern Book Prize • LONGLISTED for Crook’s Corner Book Prize • NOMINEE for 2021 GoodReads Choice Award in Debut Novel and Historical Fiction A sweeping, masterful debut about a daughter's fateful choice, a mother motivated by her own past, and a family legacy that begins in Cuba before either of them were born In present-day Miami, Jeanette is battling addiction. Daughter of Carmen, a Cuban immigrant, she is determined to learn more about her family history from her reticent mother and makes the snap decision to take in the daughter of a neighbor detained by ICE. Carmen, still wrestling with the trauma of displacement, must process her difficult relationship with her own mother while trying to raise a wayward Jeanette. Steadfast in her quest for understanding, Jeanette travels to Cuba to see her grandmother and reckon with secrets from the past destined to erupt. From 19th-century cigar factories to present-day detention centers, from Cuba to Mexico, Gabriela Garcia's Of Women and Salt is a kaleidoscopic portrait of betrayals—personal and political, self-inflicted and those done by others—that have shaped the lives of these extraordinary women. A haunting meditation on the choices of mothers, the legacy of the memories they carry, and the tenacity of women who choose to tell their stories despite those who wish to silence them, this is more than a diaspora story; it is a story of America’s most tangled, honest, human roots.
'One must never underestimate the power of salt: life, nourishment, and certainly flavour. Anyone, including chefs, can learn how to master the finesse of salt from this book'. Daniel Boulud, chef and restaurateur Salt is magical. What other single ingredient enhances our food to make each component taste more of itself, and brings together all the elements of a dish so it sings with deliciousness? And it's not just about flavour, these crystals contain trace elements needed for our very survival. Do Sea Salt will change the way you think about salt and how you use it. Written by the founders of Halen Môn, the Anglesey sea salt used by home cooks and world-famous chefs alike, you will discover: How to season your food properly; The role that sea salt plays in our health; How to make your own sea salt. With favourite recipes from salt-baked fish to sea-salted chocolate truffles, Do Sea Salt shows how this humble ingredient has the ability to take food from bland to brilliant.
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This book-which took me over ten years to complete-will reveal you to be a beneficiary of an ancient heritage of dazzling depth and beauty. By the sheer fact of being a human being, you are connected to the heroes of the past, who through their relentless pursuit of truth, beauty, moral excellence, and mental discipline have moved the world incrementally forward. It is time for you to become acquainted with this heritage-and this book will do just that. We will trace the coming into consciousness of the human race from its tribal beginnings all the way up to the modern day. We will focus not on the succession of wars and kings, but on the soul-stirring and brave individuals, who with their ideas and insights have shaped our world, our self-perception, our understanding, and our freedom, and whose stories can give rich meaning to our lives. We start our story when humanity finds itself in a foreign body in the midst of nature, interpreting the world as an interplay of gods and demons. The West increasingly placed the individual center stage, seeing human beings as agents with a free will, able to comprehend the world through reason and science, and deserving of inalienable rights. In the East, the emphasis was on finding a timeless reality within ourselves, resulting in a relentless quest to understand and control the mind and rid ourselves of its illusions. It is the greatest story ever told.
In Search of Sublet: A Story of Wyoming is a story of a mans search for an abandoned coal mining town of the early 1900s in the High Plains Desert of southwest Wyoming; the boyhood home of his father, and about the places that were visited and the people that were met along the way. The search and associated travels occurred during three separate journeys within an 11-year period. It is, in part, an ancestral biographical sketch of the authors paternal side of the family, as well as a sentimental journey to discover what remained, if anything, of the site of his fathers boyhood home; a place his father spoke of so often during his lifetime, but never was able to revisit. What began as a curious inquiry into the location of a coal town turned into a quest to unearth the past. The author writes from the heart, but attempts to refrain from being too nostalgic.
