Vendor
	Mohrbooks Literary Agency Annelie Geissler

THE BLUE PLATE

Anthony Myint Mark Easter

A Food Lover's Guide to Climate Chaos

Do you really know what's for dinner? The Blue Plate is the perfect dinner companion for food lovers who also care about the planet.

Ecologist Mark Easter offers a detailed picture of the impact the foods you love have on the earth. Organized by the ingredients of a typical dinner party, including seafood, salad, bread, chicken, steak, potatoes, and fruit pie with ice cream, each chapter examines the food through the lens of the climate crisis. Not a cookbook, but instead, gathered like guests around the table, you will find the stories of these foods: The soil that grew the lettuce; the farmers, ranchers and orchardists who steward the land; the grocers and workers at dairies and farms who labor to bring food to the table. Each chapter reveals the causes and effects of greenhouse gas emissions, as well as the social and environmental impacts of the demand for out-of-season and far-from-home foods.

What can you do to eat more sustainably? Food lovers everywhere will be happy to know that the answer is not necessarily a plant-based diet. For each food group, Easter offers not recipes but low-carbon, in-season alternatives that make your favorite foods not only more sustainable but also more delicious.

The first step, however, is an understanding of how food is grown, produced, harvested, and shipped. In stories both personal and entertaining, the author offers a full understanding of what's for dinner.

Mark Easter is an ecologist who has conducted research in academia and private industry since 1988. Easter authored and co-authored more than 50 scientific papers and reports related to carbon cycling and the carbon footprint of agriculture, forestry, and other land uses. He contributed analyses to multiple reports published by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). In 2018 he was named a fellow of the Colorado State University School of Global Environmental Sustainability. Besides his scientific work, Easter cofounded the organization Save The Poudre and is a founding board member of Save the Colorado. He works with these organizations to help restore rivers to healthy conditions and protect rivers from water development.

Anthony Myint is an American restaurateur, chef, activist, author, and food consultant based in the Mission District in San Francisco, California. He is a founder of Mission Chinese Food, The Perennial, Mission Street Food, Mission Cantina, Mission Burger, Lt. Waffle, and Commonwealth Restaurant. He is a pioneer in the environmental and charitable restaurant movement.

An illustrator in ink and watercolor, Liam O'Farrell's clients include Tatler, Knight Frank LLP, The Times, Liberty London, Perspectives in Architecture, BBC Books, Macmillan, The Big Issue, One Housing Group, and Meed.

Available products
Book Published 2024-09-17 by Patagonia

Comments

THE BLUE PLATE is the food book of the decade, and it tastes like hope. With the story-telling chops of Michael Pollen, the ethics of Thoreau, and the climate expertise of James Hanson, Mark Easter lays it all out: We CAN feed the world and nourish the earth at the same time. Here is how it can be done. And here is how you can participate. Authoritative, entertaining, and useful -- this is the book I have been waiting for.

Mark Easter gives us a different way of looking at food and a different way of looking at climate change. He clearly loves food and has something important to say about it.

Anyone asking "Can we eat ourselves out of the climate crisis?" should begin with this book. Mark Easter offers not only a beautiful hymn to the elements, but a wonderful introduction to the difficult demands that science makes of us when we ask the most difficult questions with deep honesty and commitment.

Mark Easter's THE BLUE PLATE is a nominee for the 2025 James Beard Award for Food Issues and Advocacy. Read more...

Grounded in science, and yet told in story, this book teaches, inspires, and informs. From peaches to bread to beer to fish, THE BLUE PLATE is indeed about our planet, our plates, and our future.