Something like the pre-industrial world of apples, where an apple lover had the choice of many varieties, was returning, not through heirlooms but through new breeds of super apples from other countries.
Just a few weeks ago, though, going through heirlooms that had been left by my wife's ailing ninety-three-year-old mother when she moved out of the family house in Montreal, we found a beautiful hand-lettered, framed recipe for something called Martha's Bread.
Say a Comcast guy put a hole through a priceless heirloom in order to run a cable through it — not exactly far-fetched by Comcast standards.
They shared hundreds of stories of sorting through family heirlooms and the sometimes awkward, sometimes liberating discussions about unwanted keepsakes.
Chela retreats into her boudoir, where she dabs reproachfully on a glum beige watercolour, aloof from the strangers who rifle through the heirlooms that are being sold off to manage debts.
"How would they feel if I drove over their grave and went through their heirlooms?" In his video, Finicum said that he was showing how the wildlife refuge has done a poor job maintaining the artifacts and keeping storage rooms clean.
Though there is a desperate attempt to reclaim the flavors and textures of wilder times through the reintroduction of "heirloom" varieties of plants and animals, the majority of our food's lost qualities are probably not recoverable.
It's hard to tell through the muzzle he wears and the cage he's confined to, but Caspar has the looks of a vintage mohair jumper and the charm of a pneumatic drill hammering through your nan's heirloom china.
It's "a crazy notion," he added, "to suggest that a professional diner, in the course of their normal duties, can somehow look through a plate of heirloom carrots and swirling sauces to see beyond to a dark heart at the stove and foretell a future of abuse and personal destruction".
Having munched and swooned our way through Fort Hill's chard, heirloom tomatoes, fingerling potatoes and other dewy fresh produce for a few years at local farmer's markets, we thought we would look into a C.S.A share: Pay the farmer up front in February and pick up a box of vegetables, herbs and fruit weekly from June to October at the farm or at designated drop spots.
