In Hippie Food, a chronicle of the counterculture’s culinary contributions, Jonathan Kauffman describes a time when a simple bowl of brown rice layered with stir-fried vegetables and dashes of tamari could be an act as politically symbolic as hitchhiking to San Francisco with flowers in your hair ... His goal lies in uncovering the history of why so many Americans do ... Alongside playful prose (for Mr. Kauffman, alfalfa sprouts smell as if 'a field of grass were having sex'), the great joy of Hippie Food is its rich cast of characters. Some, like the madcap Boots, 'half cheer-squad leader, half generalissimo,' who stirred up the crowd at the restaurant’s weekly Back to Nature Luau night, might encourage readers to reconsider carob. Others, like Jim Baker, the whole-foods community’s answer to Charles Manson, will likely make many never look at a superfood the same way.
An engaging new book by San Francisco Chronicle food writer Jonathan Kauffman, Hippie Food, makes the case that the most durable contribution of the counterculture can be found in your kitchen. By uncovering the surprising histories behind the domestication and widespread adoption of foods once considered the exotic province of cultists and communards...Kauffman pays tribute to a generation of practical-minded idealists who forever changed our relationship to what we eat ... The heroes of Hippie Food are tireless in their quests to rediscover or reinvent traditional ways of coaxing vivid flavors from the humblest of ingredients. It’s hard to read more than a few pages without feeling compelled to do something — whether it’s digging a plot for lettuce in your backyard, taking a trip to the farmers’ market or busting out an old tamari-stained copy of Mollie Katzen’s Moosewood Cookbook to resurrect your mushroom moussaka.
Jonathan Kauffman’s briskly entertaining history, Hippie Food, makes a convincing case for adding yet another legacy to that list: the way we eat ...his book is the work of an enterprising journalist who has interviewed many in the cast of hippie farmers, cooks, communards and food artisans who together forged what Kauffman asks us to regard as a new and 'unique, self-contained cuisine' ... Kauffman has added a lot to it, in the way of both fresh information and narrative verve. In his telling, hippie food resulted from the convergence, around 1970, of three different strains of food ideology: health food faddism; ethical vegetarianism; and a post-Silent Spring critique of industrialized food and farming ... Capitalism’s genius for absorbing and integrating every challenge to it is on vivid display in this thoroughly absorbing history.
Jonathan Kauffman's new book, Hippie Food: How Back-to-the-Landers, Longhairs and Revolutionaries Changed the Way We Eat, follows the people and places throughout the country that brought organic vegetables and whole wheat bread into the counterculture, and then, eventually, mainstream supermarkets ... For the past five years, he's rifled through old alternative newspapers, studied archives — including one dedicated to soy alone — and interviewed hippie organizers and cooks. His research left him with a fascinating picture of what longhairs ate and where they got it ... So next time you see a shopping cart that features gluten-free ingredients or organic vegetables for a Whole30 recipe, consider the hippies that first found their way to those foods.
The book is a reminder of how bizarre even organic vegetables seemed to most Americans just a few decades ago. It tells how controversial macrobiotic diets introduced young cooks to Asian ingredients and cooking techniques, while giving 'the first shape to an emerging culture built on the foundations of eating seasonally, organically and often locally' ...the cultural changes Kauffman mapped were as much a product of rural towns as big cities. It turns out the 'hippie food' story is a cross-country tapestry of fascinating individuals and big visions ... Along the way, it informs us how many lively stories there are behind our most mundane meals.
...Kaufmann's affectionate history of the U.S. food revolution and how it infiltrated the mainstream ... Kaufmann tells the interconnecting stories of influential groups, farmers, performance artists, food writers and restaurants ... He breaks his story into three eras: the 'prehistory' reaching back into the 19th century; the 'revolutionary era' 1968-1974; and post-Vietnam War, when 'revolution gave way to lifestyle changes' ... Kaufmann explains how the alternative farm-to-table economy failed in many ways but also persists today ... In this entertaining history, a food writer traces the roots of the U.S. health food revolution and tells the stories of those who were there.
Kauffman tackles this subject journalistically, with interviews and commentary from the chefs and food co-op employees who became part of a larger movement to change the direction of the global diet while remaining mindful of its ecological footprint ... In an intelligently written narrative refreshingly free of personal admonitions or detractions, Kauffman comprehensively presents the history and the momentum of the organic food revolution while foraging for the keys to its increasing desirability and crossover appeal ... An astute, highly informative food exposé that educates without bias, leaving the culinary decision-making to readers.
... [an] informative, briskly paced first book... Kauffman is equally thorough in tracing how these early innovators inspired the food co-ops and whole food stores that exist today, as well as how, during the 1980s and 1990s, mainstream supermarkets across the country added natural food sections to sell what was dismissed as 'hippie food' in the 1960s. This is an outstanding food and cultural history.
