About This Site
The site is focused on finding and eating locally grown/produced food in Philadelphia, its surrounding suburbs, and South Jersey. Whether you consider yourself a locavore, an adherent to the 100 Mile Diet, a Slow Food-er, or something else, we can all agree that eating local is not only good for you, it's good for everyone!
Ten Reasons to Eat Local [click the link for more info]
- Eating local means more for the local economy.
- Locally grown produce is fresher.
- Local food just plain tastes better.
- Locally grown fruits and vegetables have longer to ripen.
- Eating local is better for air quality and pollution than eating organic.
- Buying local food keeps us in touch with the seasons.
- Buying locally grown food is fodder for a wonderful story.
- Eating local protects us from bio-terrorism.
- Local food translates to more variety.
- Supporting local providers supports responsible land development.
The writers
Lauren lives on two acres in the burbs with her husband and daughters, the Bean, 2, and the newborn Sprout. She works at a corporate job in Center City by day. Lauren’s favorite activities: gardening, cooking, reading anything about food politics/organics/local foods, and complaining about not having enough time to cook. A newcomer to the Philly area, Lauren has been impressed with the bounty of local foods available with a little searching.
By day, Kevin is a high school English teacher in South Jersey. By night, he's still a teacher, but one who loves to cook when he's not grading papers. He lives with his wife and cat (pictured) in Queen Village. He dreams of one day cooking as well as Marc Vetri.
Emily Teel, 25, currently works for Philabundance, the largest hunger relief agency in the Delaware valley. Her goal is to bring more [good] food to more people, more often. A former Project Manager for the White Dog Community Enterprises' Fair Food Farmstand in Reading Terminal Market, Teel has an intimate knowledge of the food systems at play in the Philadelphia region. An avid home cook and occasional cheesemaker, she is a member of both the Pennsylvania Association for Sustainable Agriculture and Slow Food International. She has also written for Foster's Urban Homeware and the Philadelphia Film Society. She lives in West Philadelphia with her partner and her cat, Fitzwater.
Never having owned a car, Allison has been dealing in local food for a long time. Happily, these days more "local" food is, actually, local. A big foodie, container gardener, and knitter (there's a local movement there, too), Allison lives in South Philly.
Eliza is 33, and Germantown born and bred. She loves to mesh her love for city living with her love for good, organic, local food. On disability due to her cystic fibrosis, she spends her days petting her three cats, being an aunt to her niece and nephews, hanging out in person or by phone with her family and friends,
reading Tintins, sleeping, and devising exciting lunches for her lovely partner of nine years, M.
Nicole [email], 35, lives with her husband, three cats, and one dog just outside of Lansdowne in Delaware County. Professionally, she is the fundraising/development guru for a reproductive rights/reproductive justice nonprofit. Outside of work, Nicole keeps a vegetable garden and loves to cook, read, and knit. She swears she's learning a bevy of skills [like cheesemaking and spinning yarn] so she can drop off the grid and live like a hermit or survive in case of the shit hitting the fan politically, but she really just likes to learn new things. Nicole also likes to go skydiving now and then, and is a member of a local dragonboat team. She volunteers at the Fair Food Farmstand and Planned Parenthood.
Mikaela is a 29-year-old momma to a super active 10-year-old boy and does marketing and PR work for a non-profit – though, she spends much of that time dreaming of ways to get paid to home school her monster! Being an aware consumer is important to Mikaela, who is always amazed at just how much stuff is out there. When she needs something, she asks around, hits the thrift or barters before buying. Mikaela has been a strict vegetarian for 17+ years, belongs to a CSA and a natural foods co-op, and loves hitting the markets and independently-owned businesses around town. When not obsessing about food and consumerism, Mikaela enjoys talking photographs, visiting people/places, cooking, making things and hanging with the family.
Jackie lives with her husband, son and three cats in Philadelphia, just blocks from the Wissahickon. When she's not cooking, reading or writing, Jackie knits sporadically, pushes a stroller up unfairly steep hills regularly, gardens seasonally, and is the treasurer of her local Friends of the Free Library branch.
Living on the 20th floor of a Center City high rise doesn't give Marisa much of an opportunity to grow her own food (although she would like to report hat the bay tree on the window sill is doing quite well). When she started trying to eat locally, she explored the farmers' markets, farm stands and community garden plots of friends to get her fix of local food goodness. When she's not hunting down the perfect local peach/tomato/squash, she's finishing up an MA in Writing Studies at St. Joseph's University, writing at Apartment 2024, Metroblogging Philadelphia, Stories from Reading Terminal and Slashfood and making a video podcast about food at ForkYou.tv.
Naomi lives in West Philadelphia and is a PhD candidate in neuroscience. When not in lab, she enjoys eating seasonally and locally. She also knits
and spins her own yarn.
Joanna lives in a tiny apartment in West Philadelphia with her cat, and when she's not out folk dancing in the evenings, she likes to cook in her tiny kitchen. (The cat, on the other hand, vocally expresses the opinion that she should provide amusement with string toys instead.) She is the market manager for Farm to City and volunteers at the Fair Food Farmstand. Vegetables make her excited and happy, especially when she can chat with the people who grew them!
