February 23rd, 2024

Hi friends,

I’m looking for culinary legacy. Moments of digestible lasting impact shaping culture from my hands to yours. Not in any traditional, award nominated, zeitgeist shiting sense–in corners of practice. There is generational wealth in stained cookbook pages stuck together, heirloom cast irons, rows in your grandmother’s victory garden. In hoarded seed packets, Sunday sauces, and always-in-the-door condiments. Kitchen legacies are formed in a thousand repeated moments and revived in recipes, in habits reiterated.

Protecting the practices most near and dear is the heart of culture. What we pass down has intentional impact and whilst we do not always choose the things we are taught we choose what we hold on to, what we remember. We can learn the recipes that speak to resiliency, grow plants our grandparents ate, and carefully maneuver a steamer to pull those cookbook pages apart. Legacy is conscious learning; food, our most forgiving medium.

However minimal, what practices live on in your kitchen?

Stay hungry,Hawnuh Lee | Founder, Closed Loop Cooking

Heirloom varieties // @hawnuhlee

The dish >>

• Reimagining the grocery store landscape.

• Celebrating Charlie Mitchell–the first Black chef in NYC to earn a Michelin star.

• Major tablescape-inspo.

• Listening in on why groceries are so damn expensive.

• Seriously considering some abstract onion ink.

• Perfect time of year for this parsnip and meyer lemon loaf cake with toasted hazelnuts. 

• Loving the linocut farmer’s market.

• Have you heard about The Great Green Wall initiative?

Highlighting The Palestine Heirloom Seed Library

Research roundup + illustrations by Hawnuh Lee.

Overwhelmed in the devastation leveling Palestine, I am leaning into the utmost necessity of cultural preservation through native foodways. Heirloom plants are the literal roots of entire populations. Sourcing and sharing seeds is generational safeguarding. Food is, and always has been, political. To grow one’s own is to create autonomy. To cultivate access to traditional foodways is oft times an act of rebellion. It’s in this work we keep Palestine top of mind, we build on legacy.

Having recently discovered the incredible work of artist, conservationist, and founder of The Palestine Heirloom Seed Library and Traveling Kitchen, Vivien Sansour, I’m reminded the power of preservation. In collecting, protecting, and sharing these geographically vital seeds, Sansour is committed to honoring her heritage. Through a biocultural lens we can better understand social liberation and evolve together.

 In Palestine, we plant our seeds in ash. - Vivien Sansour

What is an heirloom seed?

An heirloom seed is from a plant that has been passed from one generation to the next, grown and saved because it is considered valuable. The value could be specific to flavor, productivity, hardiness or adaptability. Many heirlooms have been cultivated and shared for more than 100 years.

From The Palestine Heirloom Seed Library:

Part of the Fertile Crescent, Palestine has been considered one of the world’s centers of diversity, particularly for wheat and barley. This biodiversity, which has kept us alive for millennia, is being threatened by policies that target farmers and force them to give up their heirloom seeds and adopt new varieties. Heirlooms, which have been carefully selected by our ancestors throughout thousands of years of research and imagination, form one of the last strongholds of resistance to the privatization of our life source: the seed. These seeds carry the DNA of our survival against a violent background that is seen across the hills and valleys through settlement and chemical input expansions.

Heirloom seeds also tell us stories, connect us to our ancestral roots, remind us of meals our families once made at special times of the year. The Palestine Heirloom Seed Library (PHSL) is an attempt to recover these ancient seeds and their stories and put them back into people’s hands. The PHSL is an interactive art and agriculture project that aims to provide a conversation for people to exchange seeds and knowledge, and to tell the stories of food and agriculture that may have been buried away and waiting to sprout like a seed. It is also a place where visitors may feel inspired by the seed as a subversive rebel, of and for the people, traveling across borders and checkpoints to defy the violence of the landscape while reclaiming life and presence.

Working closely with farmers, Sansour has identified key seed varieties and food crops that are threatened with extinction and would provide the best opportunities to inspire local farmers and community members to actively preserve their bioculture and recuperate their local landscape. The PHSL is part of the global conversation about biocultural heritage.

You can buy heirloom seeds to grow and share here.

This reminder, on planting seeds, from Vivien Sansour:

“...we planted seeds in their names so they may live forever in the form of leaves and roots that become part of our bodies and as a consequence they become us and we carry them forward in our skin and in our off springs so they may live forever. May they live forever… DON’T STOP SPEAKING ABOUT PALESTINE 🇵🇸”

More (recent) resources:Podcasts with VivienPalestinian seeds of survival, shelter, and subversiveness - Green DreamerPalestine Heirloom Seed Library - Million ExperimentsVideo InterviewTo Eat Alone Is to Die Alone: A Voyage into the Lives of Seeds and Their Communities - Harvard Divinity SchoolReadingThe Resilience of Rooted Beings - Mold MagazineSocialInstagram

Elevating and honoring these legacies in every way we can. Inspired by or know about other heirloom seed projects? Let's connect.

I wish I’d thought of these vegan strawberry pop tart squares.

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