Book: Full Moon Feast

Food and the Hunger for Connection by Three Stone Hearth co-founder Jessica Prentice, was released in March 2006 at the same time that TSH was coming into being. Jessica weaves together many aspects of our relationship to food: ecological, cultural, personal, nutritional, and spiritual, following a lunar calendar through the year. 

In Full Moon Feast, accomplished chef and passionate food activist Jessica Prentice champions locally grown, humanely raised, nutrient-rich foods and traditional cooking methods. (She coined the term "Locavore" in 1997!) The book follows the thirteen lunar cycles of an agrarian year, from the midwinter Hunger Moon and the springtime sweetness of the Sap Moon to the bounty of the Harvest Moon and the Moon When Salmon Return to Earth in autumn. Each chapter integrates modern nutritional understanding with traditional wisdom, along with recipes that display the satisfying flavors of foods tied to the ancient rhythm of the seasons.

Prentice decries our modern food culture: megafarms and factories, the chemically processed ghosts of real foods in our diets, and the suffering – physical, emotional, cultural, communal, and spiritual – born of a disconnect from our food sources. She laments the system that is poisoning our bodies and our communities.

But Full Moon Feast is a celebration, not a dirge. Prentice emerged from her own early struggles with food (as a committed vegetarian facing health issues) to offer health, nourishment, and fulfillment to her readers. She recounts her relationships with local farmers alongside ancient harvest legends and methods of food preparation from indigenous traditions around the world.

Combining the radical nutrition of Sally Fallon’s Nourishing Traditions, keen agri-political acumen, and a spiritual sensibility that draws from indigenous cultures, Full Moon Feast is a call to reconnect to our food, our land and each other.