The scent of pine smoke, sea salt, and slow-simmered barley filled the hills of High Mere this past weekend, as culinary historians, foragers, and cooks from across the continent gathered for the fifth Hearthways Gathering—a growing celebration of ancestral food traditions, held on the equinox each year.
More than just a food festival, Hearthways is part research symposium, part outdoor kitchen, and part ritual of remembrance, rooted in the idea that recipes are archives, and that cooking can be a form of cultural recovery.
“Our elders remembered meals the way others remember maps,” said chef and folklorist Lurin Halveth, one of the gathering’s co-founders. “Hearthways is about stirring those memories back to life.”
A Return to the Fire
The event featured over 40 open-fire cooking stations, each representing a different food culture within the Raventhal Republic and its neighboring regions. Highlights included:
- Sourroot ash bread from the Aeyali river camps, baked under coals with foraged fennel and honey bark glaze
- Stone-fermented goat’s milk stew, an ancient mountain dish once reserved for springtime rites, now reinterpreted with sea herbs by coastal cooks from Embera
- Charred beet and wild plum paste, served in carved birch bowls, part of a ceremonial tasting led by the Talian Forest Guild
Elders taught children to weave reed baskets for steaming shellfish. Former fisherfolk smoked lake eels over driftwood fires. And in the twilight, a storyteller recited a poem that had once only been spoken while churning butter.
“Every dish carries a dialect,” said Dr. Rena Meris, a food anthropologist from the University of Marehaven. “And many of those dialects were almost lost.”
Recipes Without Recipes
A central ethos of Hearthways is what organizers call “recipes without recipes”—oral, sensory, and relational approaches to cooking that resist industrial codification. Instead of measuring spoons, participants rely on touch, memory, and the feel of flame and grain.
A public archive of these food practices is being assembled through The Telling Table, a living digital record of techniques, origin stories, and voices behind the meals. It’s part of a broader movement in Raventhal to preserve intangible heritage as climate and development pressures threaten traditional ways of living—and eating.
“The goal isn’t to freeze tradition,” said Lurin Halveth, “but to feed it.”
Global Palates, Local Roots
While Hearthways centers regional foodways, international guests brought their own traditions into the circle. Nuvorian salt fermenters shared techniques passed through fisher clans. Elestaran herbalists demonstrated bitterleaf stews used in solstice ceremonies. A small group from Halvenreach prepared a dish of fire-roasted rootfish wrapped in stonewort leaves, evoking trade journeys lost to time.
Across the open fields, food was exchanged not for money, but for stories, music, and thanks.
“It’s a market of memory,” said forager Doma Vess, handing a smoked beetroot to a curious child. “You leave full, even before you eat.”
Feeding the Future
Hearthways organizers plan to expand the gathering into a seasonal school, offering residencies for young cooks, language learners, and cultural apprentices. The next phase will include seed exchanges, oral history retreats, and a traveling kitchen cart that brings recipes to schools and elder centers across the region.
“We’re not just feeding bellies,” said Dr. Meris. “We’re feeding belonging.”
As dusk settled over the stone meadows of High Mere, the fires crackled low, and the scent of toasted barley hung in the mist. The gathering closed with a simple gesture: one ember carried to the next hearth, where the fire—and the story—will continue.