New Beginnings

On the first sunny weekend after the last frost date in southern New England I brought a flat of seedling six packs to my community garden plot, ready to plant them. It was a garden clean-up day, and my fellow …

Do Locavores Get it Wrong? Thoughts on the book Just Food by James McWilliams

The term locavore has only existed in the English language since 2005. That’s barely 8 years, yet long enough to inspire legions of local eaters, “It’s Local!” labeling, memoirs documenting efforts to eat (almost) completely locally, as well as plenty …

Beyond the Crock: On Lacto-Fermenting

I was very proud this fall when I finally got to use my Nani’s heavy, lacquered earthenware crock – the same one that she used to make the cherry brandy that my cousins and I would lick pooled from the …

Locavore on the Road: Artisanal Cheese & the Marin County Cheese Trail

I’ve spent what would likely add to up to countless hours contemplating the purchase of various cheeses at locations ranging from Whole Foods to Stinky Bklyn to a “serve yourself” fridge on a country roadside in Western Massachusetts. I clearly remember …

Keeping the Sustainable Food Discussion Relevant

Thanks to Stella Park, author of the Brave Tart blog, I read First We Feast’s meant-to-be-provocative article “20 Things Everyone Thinks About The Food World But Nobody Will Say”. Many of their points are long overdue for making it into …

Locavore on the Road: Portland, Oregon

When I was planning my west coast research trip in support of my upcoming book Small Batch: The Fall and Rise of Artisanal Pickle, Cheese, Chocolate, and Alcoholic Spirits in America (Alta Mira Press) – I almost didn’t plan to …

The Changing Meaning of Locavorism

The term locavore was coined in 2005 by Jessica Prentice, who, along with Sage Van Wing and Dede Sampson, made a commitment to eat only food sourced within a one-hundred-mile radius of their homes in Northern California. This effort was …

“Coopetition” and the Spirit of Artisanal Food

I shouldn’t have been surprised in the least when Michaela Hayes, owner of Crock and Jar, a Brooklyn-based company that specializes in making pickles and the teaching the art of pickling and canning, said that a main tenet of her …

On “Artisanal” and “Sustainable”

As I’m researching and writing my book Small Batch: The Fall and Rise of Artisanal Cheese, Chocolate, Pickles, and Alcoholic Spirits, I purposely chose the term “artisanal” in part because it seemed to be the best to represent that handmade, …

An Everlasting Meal of Chicken Soup

Inspired by the poetic and lovely book An Everlasting Meal by Tamar Adler, I filled a pot with water and plunked in a salted, whole chicken. This might have seemed like blasphemy a week earlier. Boiled chicken had a very …