Saturday, October 18, 5 PM: Andrew Barton, former Eugenian, Portland Teacher, Chef, Author, Presents his Latest Book “Free Food”
Meet and Greet, Reading, Book Talk, Signing, Food Sampling Free, Books available for purchase.
————————————-
"Free Food is a counterculture cookbook for these strange times. Mixing memoir and loose recipes, this book intends to inspire a “free” approach to cooking and eating. A literally down-to-earth approach – as in: food grown, purchased, cooked, and consumed with an awareness of the Earth. A reflection on an idealistic, optimistic, possibility-fueled young adulthood spent around tables of co-op houses and would-be communes. An appreciation for groovy, light-hearted, no-rules cuisine. Hippies of the past dreamt of a better world from their kitchens, and today we can do the same as we cook and eat in more informed, conscious, intentional ways. This book is a love letter to Eugene, Oregon – a small city where this free spirited food and mindset have long been commonplace – and takes a close look at the formative food memories that make us hunger for another taste. Free Food is a not-done-dreaming exploration of alternative ways of living in the now.
A little more about Andrew Barton and his book from the Portland Monthly
“It’s a whirlwind, but Barton is a good hang. As all these elements wash by, we learn he grew up in Eugene, Oregon, where Rain and River were such common names kids in school had to use their last initials: River F., and so forth. Eugene is also where Barton fell in love with the intangible thing that gives the book its title. Free food becomes both noun and adjective, a thing and an aura. Mantra might be the most fitting label. Ideally, free food doesn’t cost anything, but it’s also free of convention, untethered, uninhibited by cooking rules or cultural boundaries.
The excitement of food as a means for political protest, however, has historically overshadowed the merits of eating like a hippie.
Barton’s parents were neither hippies nor squares, but things as radical in the aughts as food co-ops, juice bars, and farmers markets gave every Eugenian a contact high: hippies by proxy. Today, in his 30s, Barton is in search of the curious jolt he first found drinking carrot-ginger Genesis Juice at Sundance Natural Foods, warts and all. He wants to revive the homey love bygone Eugene institutions delivered: dense cheddar cheese, sundried tomato, and artichoke heart Pizza Research Institute pizza, arranged like a mandala; the glee in a post–Oregon Country Fair breakfast at veggie diner Keystone Café.
Bennington, the free-loving liberal arts college in Vermont—and the inspiration behind Donna Tartt’s The Secret History—was another awakening, culturally and culinarily. “I’d never consciously eaten a parsnip before,” Barton writes. New friends spent their summers WWOOFing in France. “[I]f you met me at a party at that time and asked, ‘What are you into?’” he writes, “I might have produced the answer, ‘Back to the Land.’”
Andrew is the author of three books: ‘FREE FOOD’, ‘The Long Loaf’ and ‘The Myrtlewood Cookbook’