Readers of Rebecca Wood’s Eating Locally column — or just anyone interested in whole foods — can catch up with the author and cooking instructor Wednesday evening at Ashland Food Co-op.
Wood lived for about five years in Ashland and for two years wrote a biweekly column for the Mail Tribune’s A la Carte section. The story introducing Wood’s column can still be read online.
Since returning to Colorado in 2007, Wood published a revised edition of “The New Whole Foods Encyclopedia,” for which she first earned her reputation in 1983. Wood also took vows as a Buddhist nun, explaining the traditional saffron robes and shaved head she’ll sport while lecturing on “How to Enjoy Healing Foods in Your Daily Meals” at 7:30 p.m. in the Co-op’s community classroom, 195 A St.
More than 1,000 foods are profiled in Wood’s Encyclopedia, the product of “exhaustive” research, says Mary Shaw, who organized the event for the Co-op’s outreach program and is Wood’s longtime friend.
“This book is invaluable, really,” says Shaw. “I don’t really think anybody else has done quite as good a job coming from the whole-foods perspective.”
The updated version contains more information on the “medicinal qualities” of food, as well as food sensitivities, a perspective that cropped up in Wood’s columns several years before the concept caught on in the larger Rogue Valley community. Shaw notes that since its original publishing, Wood’s Encyclopedia only appeals to a wider audience. Indeed, the book’s foreword acknowledges increased availability of whole foods amid the movement toward “eating locally.”
Books will be available for purchase at the free event, and Wood plans to sign copies. Cover price is $20 for the 450-page tome published by Penguin.
