(Download or print the Food Heritage Survey)
The goal of this survey is to learn about unique foods and food traditions in Virginia’s central Piedmont region. This is part of a pilot project to build knowledge about food heritage of our community.
We hope the following questions will help you remember stories about food. You can participate in this project in many different ways. For example, you can download this form, write in your responses and mail or email it back to us, or you can fill in the answers online. Or you can call or email us to set up an interview conducted by one of our trained volunteers.
We hope you will let us share your story with others. However, we will not use your name or information publicly unless you grant us permission:
___ I grant the Virginia Food Heritage Project permission to use both my name and answers to these questions on the VFHP website and in other materials.
___ I grant the Virginia Food Heritage Project permission to use my answers to these questions – but anonymously, without publicly using my name – on the www.VaFoodHeritage.org website and in other materials.
___ I do not grant Virginia Food Heritage Project permission to use my name or answers to these questions publicly.
May we contact you? If so, please provide mailing address, email and/or phone and your preference for how you would like to be reached.
Full Name – (as you would like it to be published)
Address:
Phone:
Email:
Virginia Food Heritage Project
c/o Institute for Environmental Negotiation
P.O. Box 400179
(2015 Ivy Road, Ste 422)
Charlottesville, VA 22904-4179
Phone: (434) 924-1970
Feel free to use more space for your responses!
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1) What is your name? Where do you live?
2) How old you are? Where were you born? How long lived here?
3) What is your occupation?
4) What foods do you remember that are unique to our region, and significant to our history and cultural identity, whether they are “everyday” foods or special foods?
5) Are you aware of any foods traditionally foraged, fished, hunted or grown in this region that you would no longer be able to find?
5a) Are you aware of any foods that are “at risk” of being lost – not just in terms of being raised, but in terms of being known and used by our local culture?
5b) What might be done to help save – or even bring back – these foods?
6) For the foods you’ve suggested that are unique to this region:
6a) Who makes or used to make the food?
6b) What ingredients do you use? Where do they come from?
6c) Are there special events or times of the year when you eat this?
6d) Where did you learn to make it? Who taught you? Do you use a written recipe?
6e) When and where did you first taste it?
6f) Is this something that is easy to find today? Where can you get it?
6g) Do you have any other memories (or know any stories) about this food or dish?
7) Do you have an earliest food memory?
7a) How old were you?
7b) Do you still cook and eat that food? Has it changed since then?
7c) Do you remember where it grew or where and how it was processed or sold?
7d) Can you describe how it was cooked, presented or otherwise enjoyed?
8) Where did you grow up?
8a) Was it an urban or rural place? What was the community like?
8b) How many people lived in your home? In the community?
8c) What was your daily life like?
8d) What did you eat regularly? Who prepared it? Where did you get the ingredients?
9) Do you or have you ever grown food? What did you grow, and what do you grow now?
9a) What is one of the special things that you grow? What are your favorites?
9b) Are there any varieties of foods you grow that other people might not recognize?
9c) Where do you get your seeds?
10) Is there anything else about this topic you’d like to share?
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