In spite of all the experiments undertaken by modern botanists,Native American peoples remain the developers of the world's largest array of nutritious foods and the primary contributors to the world's varied cuisines. In fact, Native Americans have given the world three-fifths of all the food crops now under cultivation. Columbus left Spain with bread, wine, meat and fish. Along the way he caught crab, tuna, and dolphin. But from the minute he made contact with the Arawak peoples of the Caribbean, the culinary history of the world changed. Columbus's diary is full of information about new foods that he enthusiastically sampled and then took back to the court of Spain. Thus, the rest of the world was introduced to tomatoes, potatoes, chilies, chocolate, vanilla, sweet potatoes, avocados, pineapple, grapefruit, peanuts, manioc, maize and dozens of other foods. In turn, the Spanish brought some new foods and animals to this hemisphere. What is sometimes overlooked is the technology of food production that the Europeans learned from the Native peoples. From the indigenous farmers, for example, the Europeans adopted the idea of planting seeds, rather than sowing them. Native Americans planted corn by placing the kernels firmly in the ground. They selected each seed to be planted, rather than merely grabbing a handful of seed from a bag and casting them on the ground. This process of individualized seed selection was one reason that Native Americans have been such successful farmers. In addition, they realized that planting corn, beans and squash in the same field not only reduced the destruction of the plants by insects and other pests, but also helped to retain the soil's fertility. The discovery of the Americas resulted in a culinary revolution and greater, balanced nutrition for the world's population. The staple diet of corn, beans and squash, often revered as the (three sisters) by Native peoples, contributes significantly to a balanced diet. Only a fraction of the foods domesticated in the Americas has been adopted worldwide. Still available in traditional cuisines are new foods that can feed an increasingly hungry world. From the highland Andean mountains and lowland drainages of the Amazon, from the remote villages of Chiapas and the scattered armadas of the Sonoran Desert, Native peoples are still using foods discovered by their ancestors. This publication includes more than 400 recipes which utilize many of the Old and New World foods in today's varied cuisines, as well as, traditional Native American recipes. Section dividers provide a brief history of the New World foods discovered by Columbus. Also interspersed throughout the book are vignettes on nutritious Native foods still being used by Native Americans the Southwest.