My work explores intersections of food, identity and culture. It often includes strong ties to the environment and celebrates the power, pleasure and human need to share food and stories and the traditions behind them. I work to put individuals at the centre of the stories I help to tell through the lens of food.
How a peanut butter stew decolonised diets, an interview with Zoe Adjonyoh commissioned by TOPIA
Disarmingly charming with her humour, honesty and sense of self, Adjonyoh is a chef-powerhouse who has more plates spinning than many of us have in our cupboards.
Protecting Food Sovereignty in New Mexico, a collection of oral histories commissioned by Whetstone Journal
“Many of us in New Mexico are mixed,” says Moises Gonzales, a professor at UNM from Cañón de Carnué Land Grant. “I mean some people keep their Pueblo identity, some their Spanish identity. Us at the buffer zones, we’re Genízaros.”
This lineage and history are directly connected with land-based food traditions practiced throughout many of the communities within the state. Active seed trading networks and seed saving, natural salt bed expeditions, collecting wild herbs and vegetables for everyday cooking and teas, plant-based medicine practices and gathering piñon for cooking and incense burning are among those practices. Most people will have experienced at least one, some with regularity.
“Pick a direction and walk.” An interview with Vittles founder, Jonathan Nunn. Commissioned by TOPIA
Nunn has since commissioned hundreds of writers and illustrators from vastly different backgrounds and perspectives, and quickly changed the landscape of British food media.
As Vittles has expanded exponentially to over 21,000 subscribers (and counting), it’s also subverted the industry standard that in order to be commissioned, one must have already been commissioned previously. The Vittles community now spans the globe.
Meet the Deli Guy Whose Vegetable Charcuterie Is as Good as His Pastrami, commissioned for Heated by Bittman
“A [turn-of-the-century] delicatessen wasn’t just a place to get food, it was where the local politician would set up his soapbox, where women would go to get away for a few hours,” he said. “We wanted to foster that community.”
Putting modern Indigenous food on the map, commissioned for Courier Media
From non-profit test kitchens and training centers to beer breweries, here are some brands leading the revitalization of Native foodways in the US, New Zealand and Canada.
Through food: Learning the importance of preserving the land parts 1 & 2 commissioned by Sourced Journeys
The act of cooking and feeding is one of the ways through which community and interconnection, values which play a central role in the life and health of many Native communities, is expressed.
Could the Pandemic Greenify Comfort Food? Commissioned by Sierra Club
Even before the pandemic struck, many restaurateurs had been exploring the notion that plant-based eating could be not only delicious but also celebratory and indulgent—which suggests that even in the After Times, this collective retreat from meat could continue.
Rituals of Love, Loss and Lokshen Kugel. A personal essay on grief, food and community published with Whetstone Journal
Intertribal Foodways: An interview with Brian Yazzie for Vittles and Free Word
“The Indigenous community within the Twin Cities was also being overlooked. They were put on the backburner. And so with our project, that was also my way of staying connected to my culture and my roots. I wanted to light up a fire and start some type of project to help. I was trying to find a way to stay connected to the community through food. Finding this project, starting this project – it’s something beautiful that has come out of all of this and from going with the flow. It’s been a life changing experience…”
London’s Urban Farms Move Underground, commissioned by Modern Farmer
As London-born architect Carolyn Steel points out in her book Hungry City, “The relationship between food and cities is endlessly complex, but at one level it is utterly simple. Without farmers and farming, cities would not exist.”
In an overcrowded city like London, with its housing shortages and box-flat living, urban farmers are facing an ever-increasing challenge of where to grow their produce; how to withstand the weather and the city’s pollution, and in ways that utilize any and all available space.
