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Peasant cooking has always been close to the hearts of adventuresome travelers. It puts us close to the cultural roots of the lands we visit.

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What is a peasant?

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In the context
of this writing ...
A peasant is a small-scale farmer, rancher, herder, hunter, or fisherman. Unlike the city dweller, the peasant is close to his food source.

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By no means is he
necessarily impoverished
As with the members of the urban working class, some peasants are nearly destitute but others have sufficient resources to prepare interesting and high quality dishes. This article concentrates on the best of peasant cookery.

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The first peasants
Anthropologists tell us that the peasant class came into being some ten thousand years ago, with the birth of agriculture. The first peasants were, in the words of Daniel Webster, "the founders of civilization."

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Until fairly recently, practically everyone was a peasant
Though a small, steady stream of peasants was migrating to the towns, the big exodus didn't begin until the dawn of the Industrial Revolution in the eighteenth century. Farmers, forsaking the soil, flocked to urban centers to search for jobs in factories. Nevertheless, peasants still account for most of the world's population.

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How many peasant
ancestors do you have?
You probably have more peasant ancestors who've lived since the time when Columbus discovered America than you might imagine. Because there have been roughly twenty-five generations of your forebears since 1492, you have mathematically thirty- three million direct ancestors (parents, grandparents, great grandparents, and so on) who have walked on the earth during the past five hundred years. Unless your blood is pure-blue royal, millions of your progenitors were peasants.

Continued ...

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