Valentina Peveri is a food anthropologist with experience in the fields of environment and development. She held a Fulbright and visiting scholar appointment at Boston University. She serves as an adjunct professor at The American University of Rome (AUR) and as an international consultant.

An ethnographic and literary homage to a unique plant from a unique part of Ethiopia. Dr. Peveri takes you deep into the secret ensete gardens of southwestern Ethiopia to explore, taste, and admire this life-nurturing plant and appreciate its role in shaping the culture, identity, and aesthetic values of the Hadiyya community."—Angela Raven-Roberts, Oxford University"Peveri's glorious ethnography offers nuanced understanding of how plant and people meet, of the nostalgia and hope, work and play, love and beauty expressed by ensete and its human relatives. She helps us see like a farmer and see like a perennial tuber. She shares her love for ensete – a botanical relative of the banana — and of the women of Hadiyya who cultivate intimate relations with the plant in gardens and kitchens, even as hybrid maize threatens the plant that has fed people for 200 years." —Harriet Friedmann, University of Toronto

• List of IllustrationsGrazie (Acknowledgments)Prologue. Plotting the Ensete GardenPart I. The Politics Of Plants1. The Riddle of Beauty: Aesthetics in Agriculture2. Seeds of Empire and Unruly CreaturesPart II. Vegetal Love3. The Secret Life of a Root Tuber Crop4. Gendered Communities5. Deep RootsPart III. Appetite And Aversion6. Shape-Shifting Cuisine: A Trickster in the Kitchen7. The Hungry PlateEpilogue. Abundant Futures: A Perennial Plant’s Eye ViewHadiyya GlossaryNotesReferencesIndex

Valentina Peveri is a food anthropologist with experience in the fields of environment and development. She held a Fulbright and visiting scholar appointment at Boston University. She serves as an adjunct professor at The American University of Rome (AUR) and as an international consultant.

An ethnographic and literary homage to a unique plant from a unique part of Ethiopia. Dr. Peveri takes you deep into the secret ensete gardens of southwestern Ethiopia to explore, taste, and admire this life-nurturing plant and appreciate its role in shaping the culture, identity, and aesthetic values of the Hadiyya community."—Angela Raven-Roberts, Oxford University"Peveri's glorious ethnography offers nuanced understanding of how plant and people meet, of the nostalgia and hope, work and play, love and beauty expressed by ensete and its human relatives. She helps us see like a farmer and see like a perennial tuber. She shares her love for ensete – a botanical relative of the banana — and of the women of Hadiyya who cultivate intimate relations with the plant in gardens and kitchens, even as hybrid maize threatens the plant that has fed people for 200 years." —Harriet Friedmann, University of Toronto

• List of IllustrationsGrazie (Acknowledgments)Prologue. Plotting the Ensete GardenPart I. The Politics Of Plants1. The Riddle of Beauty: Aesthetics in Agriculture2. Seeds of Empire and Unruly CreaturesPart II. Vegetal Love3. The Secret Life of a Root Tuber Crop4. Gendered Communities5. Deep RootsPart III. Appetite And Aversion6. Shape-Shifting Cuisine: A Trickster in the Kitchen7. The Hungry PlateEpilogue. Abundant Futures: A Perennial Plant’s Eye ViewHadiyya GlossaryNotesReferencesIndex

Valentina Peveri is a food anthropologist with experience in the fields of environment and development. She held a Fulbright and visiting scholar appointment at Boston University. She serves as an adjunct professor at The American University of Rome (AUR) and as an international consultant.

An ethnographic and literary homage to a unique plant from a unique part of Ethiopia. Dr. Peveri takes you deep into the secret ensete gardens of southwestern Ethiopia to explore, taste, and admire this life-nurturing plant and appreciate its role in shaping the culture, identity, and aesthetic values of the Hadiyya community."—Angela Raven-Roberts, Oxford University"Peveri's glorious ethnography offers nuanced understanding of how plant and people meet, of the nostalgia and hope, work and play, love and beauty expressed by ensete and its human relatives. She helps us see like a farmer and see like a perennial tuber. She shares her love for ensete – a botanical relative of the banana — and of the women of Hadiyya who cultivate intimate relations with the plant in gardens and kitchens, even as hybrid maize threatens the plant that has fed people for 200 years." —Harriet Friedmann, University of Toronto

• List of IllustrationsGrazie (Acknowledgments)Prologue. Plotting the Ensete GardenPart I. The Politics Of Plants1. The Riddle of Beauty: Aesthetics in Agriculture2. Seeds of Empire and Unruly CreaturesPart II. Vegetal Love3. The Secret Life of a Root Tuber Crop4. Gendered Communities5. Deep RootsPart III. Appetite And Aversion6. Shape-Shifting Cuisine: A Trickster in the Kitchen7. The Hungry PlateEpilogue. Abundant Futures: A Perennial Plant’s Eye ViewHadiyya GlossaryNotesReferencesIndex