Making Dolma with California Native Grape Leaves with Ned Teitelbaum

What can the grape teach us about land, power, and history? How can its cultivation provide insight to other cultures, advance issues of justice, resistance and diversity in Los Angeles?

Join Plant the Vine founder, Ned Teitelbaum, as we learn how to make stuffed grape leaves. We will roll, stuff, and cook our way through the symbolism and cultural history of dolma, discovering its origins in the Ottoman Empire and its association with Greece today.

Simultaneously, we'll explore L.A.'s unique ethno-viticulture, understanding how its sequence of native grape (Vitis Girdiana), Spanish, and natural hybrid grapes serves as a template for exploring the city's past. Focus on grapes species DNA from pre-contact to today, including agricultural impacts for the indigenous peoples.

All materials will be provided, but students are asked to bring their own container to take home your dish.

Ned Teitelbaum is a viti-culturalist with an abundance of curiosity about the city, its history and many landscapes through time. He is the founder of Plant the Vine, a 501c3 that works with communities throughout the basin to catalyze new understandings of what it means to be Angeleno.

Website: Plant the Vine (www.plantthevine.org)

Resources: Growing Grapes in Containers video.

Recommended Reading:

· Cuisine and Empire: Cooking in World History by Rachel Laudan

· Grapes of Conquest: Race, Labor and the Industrialization of California Wine, 1769-1920 by Julia Hornelas Higdon

· Empire of Vines: Wine Culture in America by Erica Hannickel

· The Power of Place: Urban Landscapes as Public History by Dolores Hayden

· The History of Forgetting: Los Angeles and the Erasure of Memory, by Norman A. Klein

Refund Policy: If you are feeling sick or experiencing covid-19 symptons we urge you to stay home. Please note refunds/credit are not available within 7 days of the event.