"Making West Home" Refugee Farmer Cookbook Project is now complete!

The Western Folklife Center has enlisted Boise-based photographer Guy Hand and ethnographer Sarah Barsness to document the stories and food ways of Somali Bantu, Congolese, Bhutanese, Burundian, Meskhetian Turk, Colombian, Ethiopian, Burmese and Bosnian families all living in the Treasure Valley.  Most of these families are also involved in Global Gardens. The fruits of their labor, a newly published cookbook, Making West Home in Idaho: Stories and Recipes of Boise's Refugee Community.

         Katie Painter, director of the Idaho Office for Refugees' Global Gardens and partner in the Making West Home project writes in the introduction to the new cookbook: "While many Boiseans are aware that we are a refugee resettlement community and welcome new neighbors of many ethnicities, rarely do we know very much about how and why our new neighbors arrive here.  We don't have the opportunity to go into their homes, meet their families, or taste the wide variety of food traditions they've brought with them to Boise.  Sarah and Guy have brought us that opportunity through this beautiful new cookbook.

            The stories and recipes collected by Guy and Sarah bring a deeper understanding of how these refugee communities have made the American West - and in particular Boise - their new home.  Making West Home in Idaho is a project of the WesternFolklifeCenter produced in partnership with the Idaho Commission on the Arts' Folk and Traditional Arts Program and Idaho Office for Refugees’ GlobalGardens project.  The Western Folklife Center's Making West Home project was made possible through the generous support of the National Endowment for the Arts, MetLife Foundation, Wallace Foundation, Ford Foundation, the J.R. Simplot Company and other community partners.

          This beautiful volume is now available online, at our farmer's market booth, at the North End Organic Nursery and Dunia Marketplace, and helps us raise much-needed funds for our program. 

Click here to order online!