PORT ANGELES — Laura Lewis, director of the Jefferson County Extension Office, will talk about where food really comes from in a presentation, Deconstructing Dinner, at noon Thursday.
She will introduce gardeners to the origins of plant species and discuss the importance of this knowledge on crop breeding at an hour-long Clallam County Master Gardener Brown Bag presentation in the county commissioners meeting room, Room 160, at the Clallam County Courthouse, 223 E. Fourth St., in Port Angeles.
She will provide an overview of plant geography and how plant species have diffused from their centers of origin and become domesticated.
She plans to deconstruct a menu of polenta, Asian salad, and pear, apple and cranberry tarte to reveal the origin of the plant species for the grains and fruits and vegetables in that menu.
Organic farm work
Lewis worked on an organic farm in high school and earned her bachelor degree in agriculture from Washington State University.
She worked with farmers and gardeners in Niger, West Africa, as a Peace Corps volunteer and upon returning to the U.S., she worked for the U.S. Department of Agriculture in its National Genetic Resources Program with nut and tree fruit species.
Following her interest in how organisms diversify, she completed a doctorate in geography from the University of California at Davis, examining the biogeography and genetic diversity of pearl millet in Africa.
She then took a position with the University of Maryland in Baltimore County as a professor of biogeography before accepting her current position in the fall of 2011.
She now is researching plant and animal germplasm conservation, farmer education and food justice.
The presentation is part of the Brown Bag series held on the second and fourth Thursday of each month.
For more information, call 360-417-2279.
