Food Writing List no.1: conscious, contemporary food writing & reporting - the list
some of the writers and thinkers I turn to for well-rounded writing about food, and everything that writing and thinking about food encompasses
This is Part 2 of a series.
Part 1 (the intro) can be found here;
Part 3 (another food writing list) can be found here.
Alicia Kennedy
As well as in her weekly From the Desk of Alicia Kennedy essays, Alicia regularly publishes in various outlets on food - the joy of it, the politics of it, the excitement of it, the monotony of it.
When I first started reading her, it was like fireworks went off; I had never seen food written about like this - in honest ways, ways addressing the complications of it, ways that I have thought about it but never seen vocalised outside of my own (welcome, I’m sure) ramblings at family and friends. Those fireworks repeat every Monday, with every new essay. Alicia’s debut book - with one of the most beautiful covers ever - is something I’ve been excited about for a long time.
It isn’t an easy book to pigeonhole (just like all the best books). Its subtitle ‘The Cultural History and Culinary Future of Plant-Based Eating’ should give a rough idea, but I implore you not to assume “oh it’s a vegan cookbook”. It’s definitely not a cookbook, and it definitely shouldn’t be assumed it’s ‘just for vegans’ (hopefully we’re past that??). It’s more like a very accessible culinary textbook, weaving history with the contemporary with the personal with the political. It’s a book that I’m sure will showcase all the best aspects of her essays, meaning an almost seamless ability to weave all the intricate threads when it comes to what we talk about when we talk about food. I’m saying all this and I haven’t even read it yet, but that shows the unending faith I have in Alicia on this subject.
Here are some of my favourites from her newsletter as a small introduction to what I mean when I refer to food writing as more than food writing:
On keeping a pantry (or: on the food choices we make when so many of our food choices are made for us)
I could go on, but I best rein it in !
Rebecca May Johnson
In 2022, RMJ’s dinner document blog found its new home on this platform.
Like its predecessor, it makes for such peaceful, immersive, meditative reading. It is, quite literally, accounts of what she has eaten lately, where and why. They are written in simple, straight-forward language, but they are deceptively full of detail and importance. They showcase the reality of how many of us cook and eat, or don’t manage to, on a regular basis. Here, she writes about her discovery of a new way to enjoy baked potatoes - and her experiments stemming from that.
I do the exact same thing when I discover some simple but deceptively flavourful and comforting recipe - I make it again and again and again, until I’m fed up with it. But, because of that repetition and obsession, I know I have formed a connection in my brain: when I feel like it, make it, taste it again, it will be associated with joy and love and comfort.
RMJ’s book Small Fires: An Epic in the Kitchen builds on this idea of documentation and comfort and playfulness, but perhaps with a more academic slant than her Substack. Her thinking and writing about food shows a side of food writing that many might not have encountered before, but which demonstrates exactly what I mean when I talk about food writing incorporating the personal with the political, the cultural, the historical, the daily.
I read it earlier in the year, and I will re-read it again soon in order to fill in some proper, thoughtful notes here rather than trying to search through the recesses of my brain for something to say just for the sake of it.
Devin Kate Pope
Devin’s The Good Enough Weekly is another showcase of the thoughts and themes one grapples with when thinking about food. Her writing embodies the concept of food writing being interdisciplinary writing, always with the undercurrent of: I know all these complications and contradictions and inconsistencies make it very difficult for me to truly live the kind of life I would hope to live when it comes to my diet, my impact on the planet - but, I’m doing the best I can with what I have available to me.
On life in a society that feels often like non-stop attempts at untangling that Gordian knot of, locating that fine line between, indulging and treating ourselves and pepping ourselves up, and knowing that the things we're using to do the pepping are only briefly helpful because they are a plaster over a wound, a wound not of our making but a wound we have to learn ways to live with.
On asking ourselves: what am I eating, why am I eating it, and where did it come from; on the importance of interrogating what's behind food trends, sudden rises in popularity of “new” foods, “superfoods” etc. On trying not to berate ourselves for getting involved because we deserve to experiment and experience and explore; on trying to do it consciously.
Clare Michaud
In beurrage, Clare’s mediative yet clear-eyed writing about food weaves themes of culture; work, the systems we operate within, balancing the need to earn a living with a desire to cause as little harm in her moves to that end; identity, grief and loss.
Apoorva Sripathi
Apoorva’s food writing in shelf offering mixes the meditative and reflective with the grounded honesty needed when talking about food cultures and food systems. Reading her words has often felt like it gives me the chance to deep dive into a place, culture and ingredients that I thought I knew a bit about but soon remember, as always, that to ‘know’ something is a lifelong process of immersion - the next best way is to read someone who has lived that immersion.
She writes about ingredients, ritual, complexities, food politics and history. Some examples:
Feminist Food Journal
This is an online food writing magazine. It is an incredibly satisfying set-up in that they publish work on specific themes, and these are sectioned out along the top of their homepage as “issues” of a magazine. They make it clear when submission windows, and for what issue the window is currently open. So far, the themes are:
Vittles
Vittles hardly needs any introduction in the food writing scene. As far as I’m aware, it is the first food writing experiment that used this platform as its home, and it has expanded into the magazine that it is from there. Vittles was started very early on in the pandemic - the pandemic seems to have produced a new wave in food writing publications, and Vittles was at the forefront of inspiring and facilitating that. It is a very good thing.
The archive is really well laid-out, with sections along the top of the homepage, making it easy and enjoyable to dip into, and explore topics/themes that pique your interest. Some examples are:
Food and Policy series.
Food and the Arts series.
Food and Cities series.
Hyperregionalism series.
British Jewish Food series.
Whetstone
The Whetstone magazine is complemented by a plethora of audio projects, too - there are a lot of those, organised by topic, so I just subscribe to them individually in my podcast app to make sure new eps download automatically.
Whetstone is the brainchild of Stephen Satterfield, whose work I highly recommend you seek out - whether that be by watching High on the Hog: How African American Cuisine Transformed America on Netflix, or by reading this recent New Yorker profile.
Books
This is a beautiful book in the “In The…” series from Daunt with essays epitomising how broad a genre food writing really is, and can be.
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Eating to Extinction: The World’s Rarest Foods and Why We Need to Save Them by Dan Saladino
He of BBC Radio 4 Food Programme fame - here he is presenting an episode about the topic of endangered foods, and the importance of food diversity, and here he is talking about it at Borris Festival of Writing and Ideas in summer of 2022.
(I saw this talk in-person, and got tears in my eyes when he started talking about his Sicilian childhood - my friend was like: are you crying. Some of my best food memories come from my childhood in Italy. It never won’t hook me when I hear people talk about their childhood food memories, and it never won’t feel like a gut-punch when I hear people talk about Italy and food and family and a meaningful, impossible to return to moment in time that has long since passed. So, double whammy at Borris 2022!).
Websites for food journalism / reported stories:
I’ll add more as I go (and when I can face grappling with the extent of my Google Doc on this.. ), but for now I wanted to just get the ball rolling with a few that come to me immediately off the top of my head, rather than wait for it to not feel too overwhelming to start 😬 (spoiler: that is a time that does not exist).
And, feel freer than free to make recommendations and suggestions in the comments! Or, write to me personally if you’d rather not comment. I’d love for this to be a list that we build together.
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For those interested, I also made a Listening List - it’s a Reading List, but podcasts. I’ve included lots of programmes all about food and nature, and all the associated themes mentioned above.
Thank you for reading 🌼
If you feel the urge to comment (or write to me personally) and share any thoughts/words of your own; if someone came to mind as you read and you’d like to share this with them - please follow that instinct. It’s very welcome. While exposing yourself into the ether brings its own strange enjoyment, it’s always important and lovely to hear words ping back at you at some stage.
(The best way to follow along, if you’d like to, is to subscribe - here’s a little note about subscriptions, if you’d like to understand more).
I missed this incredibly kind mention of my newsletter when you originally published it! Thanks so much for reading and including my newsletter in this list that includes many of my faves❤️