Homegrown Foodways in West Virginia: Turkish Cuisine with Mehmet Öztan

About

In the small mountain community of Reedsville in northern West Virginia, sits a farm where hundreds of varieties of heirloom seeds are preserved, but relatively few of these varieties are known as Appalachian heirlooms; they're mostly Turkish seeds from Mehmet Öztan's home country. Mehmet, who is the owner of Two Seeds in a Pod Heirloom Seed Company, and is a teaching artist in the 2020-2021 West Virginia Folklife Apprenticeship Program, got into saving seeds after he moved to the U.S. and had a difficult time accessing ingredients he knew growing up in the Turkish capital of Ankara. He has used seeds and communal meals prepared in the traditional brick oven he and his partner Amy Thompson built in their backyard to establish new connections with the rural community where he now lives. In this video, Mehmet prepares a hearty bean stew and lavash, a traditional rustic bread, in his backyard oven.

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Library of Congress

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English

Country

United States

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