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Understanding
peasant cuisine
What is a peasant
In the context
of
this writing ...
A peasant is a small-scale farmer, rancher, herder, hunter, or
fisherman. Unlike the city dweller, the peasant is close to his food source.
By no means is he
necessarily impoverished
As with the members of the urban working class, some
peasants are nearly destitute but others have sufficient resources to prepare
interesting and high quality dishes. My peasant cuisine guide concentrates on the best
of peasant cookery.
The first peasants
Anthropologists
tell us that the peasant class came into being some ten thousand years ago, with
the birth of agriculture. The first peasants were, in the words of Daniel
Webster, "the founders of civilization."
Until fairly
recently,
practically everyone
was a peasant
Though a small, steady stream of peasants was migrating to the towns, the big exodus didn't begin until the dawn
of the Industrial Revolution in the eighteenth century. Farmers, forsaking the
soil, flocked to urban centers to search for jobs in factories. Nevertheless,
peasants still account for most of the world's population.
How many peasant
ancestors do you have?
You probably have
more peasant ancestors who've lived since the time when Columbus discovered
America than you might imagine. Because there have been roughly twenty-five
generations of your forebears since 1492, you have mathematically thirty- three
million direct ancestors (parents, grandparents, great grandparents, and so on)
who have walked on the earth during the past five hundred years. Unless your
blood is pure-blue royal, millions of
your progenitors were peasants.
NEXT PAGE
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Page 1 - Contents
Page 2 - What is a peasant?
Page 3 - Culinary heritage
Page 4 - Cultural & psychological
Page 5 - More tips & insights
Page 6 - More tips & insights
Page 7 - More tips & insights
Page 8 - More tips & insights
to be savvy about
about peasant cuisine

13 famous peasant cuisine recipes
Candid guide to 26 world cuisines

