In This Issue: #33

Recently, I had one of those meals to remember. I was with family and friends under the moonlight in the place where I grew up. As we ate paella, the conversation led to why we all don’t eat more home-cooked food. We all had different ideas as to the reasons, and it led to an argument over our meringues with orange custard and raspberries. By the end of the evening, we agreed to disagree and hugged each other and took care in making sure we all made it home safely through the starry night.

Summer is for moments like this. And this is where, I think, the “good food movement” is headed: a humanizing shift where stories prevail over policy and people lead from their heart and their hands. More conversations, like the heated one we had about food justice, are happening around the kitchen table. And after years of printing quotes, statistics, experts’ opinions and predictions about how to build a local food system, I surrender.

I’m not willing to pretend I alone know what the future holds. I do know it’s personal, now, and we’re the ones who are becoming, like it or not, the “change we wish to see.”

For this, our “Sustenance” issue, we brought together people who speak on issues that matter deeply to them because this can sustain us. People like Bryn Bird, who speaks to migrant labor and farmworker rights because she knows from experience the critical significance of the issue. And Gale Martin, who invites us into the world of native plants because she grew up on a farm in Ohio and knows the value of the prairies to the ecology of the state. Chefs like Alice Waters, in her letter to a young farmer about why a career in farming is so vital, and local chef Marcus Meacham about how one’s kitchen can be the place to create. We bring you people with stories to tell so as you sit down at your kitchen table you can have a conversation and make the best choices for you and your family.

This season cook with the foods that sustain us from the hands and hearts of farmers and farmworkers who know the value of exertion, patience and gratitude.

Let melon juice run down your arm at the market, the smell of lavender change your day, fresh lettuces grace your plate and come to know the ecology of home by walking home from dinner with a friend under the stars. Be grateful.

Summer is for this. And this is what I know will shape the future of food: people, sense of place, heart. Here’s to a summer that sustains, one bite and hug at a time.

Eat Well, Love Well, Live Well,
Colleen Leonardi

Edible Columbus is brought to you by Franklin County Farm Bureau and its Board of Trustees:
President: Jeff Schilling
Vice President: Neall Weber
Treasurer: Leland Tinklepaugh
Secretary: Roger Genter
Board Members: Dwight Beougher, David Black, Veronica Boysel, Chuck Hines, Denise Johnson, David Lewis, Jack Orum, Cassie Williams, Nathan Zwayer