In Our Winter 2018 Issue

What a year: 2018 is truly one for the books. And as Jonathan Guerin, one of our home cooks featured in this issue, says about finding time in the kitchen to cook, “It’s something that you can fully control in a world where there’s so much that you can’t.” We focus this issue on cooking because it’s what we love to do when winter sets in. Pull out the cookbooks, stock up the pantry and invite friends and family over for a long dinner and conversation because, when so much in the world does seem out of control, the kitchen is always home base.

We’re thrilled baker Sarah Black has found her home with Tadd Petersen and his team at Seminary Hill Farm on the campus of the Methodist Theological School of Ohio, and we’re excited to see what they have cooking come 2019. Next year marks our 10-year anniversary, and we’re not the only ones. Local Matters celebrated their 10th anniversary in 2018 and we toast to co-founders Michael Jones and Noreen Warnock for being heroes of our local food system and helping so many.

We can’t help but also acknowledge Julia Turshen for her work nationally to create a table for all with her digital platform, EATT. Read our Q&A with her and get involved. Her new cookbook, Now & Again: Go-To Recipes, Inspired Menus + Endless Ideas for Reinventing Leftovers, is one of our favorites from 2018.

As I reflect on the year and imagine what’s to come in 2019, I cannot forget those among us who stood in the kitchen, or on the farm, for a lifetime who have since passed and left this dear Earth. For me, 2018 will always be the year that we lost Anthony Bourdain and, more locally, the community organizer and urban farmer of Franklinton Farms, Patrick Kaufman. Both men were guiding lights in the work all of us do in the local food movement, and we must remember them as we move forward, day after day.

The best way to remember: Cook together, walk together, tell stories together and toast to those who worked, and are working, to make this world a more equitable, beautiful place for us all. These are the women and men worth celebrating.

Eat Well, Love Well, Live Well,
- Colleen Leonardi