The cultivation of the three sisters (corn, beans, and squash) on subsistence farms in El Salvador is a multispecies, world-making, and ongoing process. Milpa describes a small subsistence corn farm. It is derived from the word milli (‘field’, or a piece of land under active cultivation) in Nahuatl. The milpa is a farming practice that uses perennial, intercropping, and swidden (fire and fallow) techniques that predates the Spanish conquest of the Americas. Kneeling Before Corn focuses on the intimate relations that develop between plants and humans in the milpas of the northern rural region of El Salvador. It explores the ways in which more-than-human intimacies travel away from and return to the milpa through human networks. Collective and multivocal, this work reflects independent lines of investigation and multiple conversations between co-authors—all of whom have lived in El Salvador for extended periods of time. Throughout the six chapters, the co-authors invite readers to consider more-than-human intimacies by rethinking, experimenting with, and developing new ways of documenting, analyzing, and knowing the intimacies that form between humans and the plants that they cultivate, conserve, long for, and eat. This book offers an innovative account of rural El Salvador in the twenty-first century.

This enriching cookbook celebrates eight important plants Native Americans introduced to the rest of the world: corn, beans, squash, chile, tomato, potato, vanilla, and cacao—with more than 100 recipes. When these eight Native American plants crossed the ocean after 1492, the world’s cuisines were changed forever. In Seed to Plate, Soil to Sky, James Beard Award-winning author and chef Lois Ellen Frank introduces the splendor and importance of this Native culinary history and pairs it with delicious, modern, plant-based recipes using Native American ingredients. Along with Native American culinary advisor Walter Whitewater, Seed to Plate, Soil to Sky shares more than 100 nutritious, plant‑based recipes organized by each of the foundational ingredients in Native American cuisine as well as a necessary discussion of food sovereignty and sustainability. A delicious, enlightening celebration of Indigenous foods and Southwestern flavors, Seed to Plate, Soil to Sky shares recipes for dishes such as Blue Corn Hotcakes with Prickly Pear Syrup, Three Sisters Stew, and Green Chile Enchilada Lasagna, as well as essential basics like Corn Masa, Red and Green Chile Sauces, and Cacao Spice Rub. The “Magic 8” ingredients share the page—and plate—to create recipes that will transform your world.