“Stories covering everything from kitchen-prep to protests. ”
Read more stories of my food and beverage coverage at the Chattanooga Times Free Press
When I visit a new country, or move to a new city, I always want to see the local grocery stores.
Local grocery stores speak to the terroir of the places in which they find themselves -- sometimes hosting local produce from the earth right outside those front doors, and sometimes importing items from far away for a population who wants a taste of home.
I have memories of fresh pears and wedges of cheese I bought in a market in Cortona, Italy. I also have equal fondness remembering a hearty egg salad sandwich from an IGA in Wilmore, Kentucky, and a bag of Trader Joe's chocolate covered pretzels on the black market in a grocery store in Seoul, Korea.
So it's no surprise that, months after moving to Chattanooga, I found myself in Tienda El Aguila.
It’s a drizzly gray day in the fall of 2019, yet everything remains picturesque in a way only a French landscape in the most abysmal of weather can manage to appear.
I’m in Soligny-la-Trappe, a small town in the Normandy region of France visiting my aunt, who lives here with her French husband and children. I’ve asked to meet the cheesemaker who created the most delicious goat cheese I’ve ever tasted.
Mylene Raoult is the woman behind this delicious cheese.
It’s golden hour in the West Bank. In the basement of Fawanis Sweets, a beloved pastry shop in Bethlehem, Palestine, employees are melting ghee, brining cheese, and sprinkling pistachios for the beloved dessert, knafeh.
Everyone has different memories of the same event. To hear my mom tell the story, we had salmon and champagne every Christmas Eve. To hear my dad tell the story, we had an explosive familial fight every Christmas Eve. All I remember is the blender.
Executive chef and partner Mashama Bailey and founding partner John O. “Johno” Morisano renovated what was once a segregated Jim Crow-era Greyhound bus terminal in Savannah, Georgia, into award-winning restaurant The Grey. The restaurant reopened for dine-in service in July 2020 after a pandemic shutdown. Their forthcoming book about their partnership and experiences, Black, White, and The Grey, will be released January 12, 2021.
“If we give up on small pieces of our heritage, we’ll lose ourselves.”
Nader Muaddi is a Philadelphia-born Palestinian who has a passion for showcasing his country’s culture. He does this through laborious and meticulous production of the ancient alcoholic beverage called arak. Most people have heard of ouzo from Greece, or pastis from France or Italian sambuca, but not as many people know that they are all derived from the mother spirit, arak. Distilled from indigenous grapes that are used in winemaking and infused with anise seeds, it is a smooth drink with a kick of licorice that pairs well with meze. But it’s so much more than a beverage; it’s a tradition.
Pinky Cole is founder and CEO of Slutty Vegan in Atlanta, a restaurant focusing on vegan comfort food. She also founded the Pinky Cole Foundation, which helps support entrepreneurs of color through education, training, networking, and fundraising assistance.
It’s my mission to help people reimagine food, especially people who look like me—people of color.
Suzy Karadsheh’s popular website, The Mediterranean Dish hosts hundreds of recipes as well as an online store for spices and EVOO. She creates all the content and I help with writing some of her creations for the site.
Juicy, thick filet mignon steaks were sizzling on the grill, soups were bubbling on the stove, fresh pasta was rolled, and pizza dough was spun. The chefs at Double Zero were cooking what looked like a feast, but these meals weren’t for customers. The dining room was empty.
With thousands of dollars worth of produce and meats in their fridges, Double Zero and the other restaurants belonging to Castellucci Hospitality Group (the Iberian Pig, Cooks & Soldiers, Bar Mercado, Recess, and Sugo), as well as ones across Atlanta and beyond, were quickly trying to use up their supplies and hand out free meals to hourly restaurant workers—who will likely be without work for the foreseeable future.
It started with the soil.
The kitchens at home.
The hearts and minds.
It started there.
The stirring that led to these five women reclaiming their time, their narrative and their crops.
A photo essay on photographing famous Buddhist nun, Jeong Kwan for GRLSQUASH Magazine.
In November 1994, my family moved from our sunny, two-bedroom apartment in Los Angeles into a gray, two-story house in Lilburn. At the time, the neighborhood looked like your average suburb, with modest homes on half-acre lots winding down the street from soccer fields and public schools.
We made friends at our church, through our homeschool network, at taekwondo classes. But the basis of every social gathering for my family always has been food. And we were lucky enough to grow up in Lilburn, with a close-knit group of friends who would gather to cook together on a regular basis, each bringing a taste of their home: Greek, Lebanese, and Filipino recipes and flavors.
B.T. Harman is bringing Atlantans a history lesson in the form of a podcast called Catlick. The idea came about after a discovery of four specific stories from Atlanta’s past around 1910; each one salacious and tragic. “As a railroad town, Atlanta attracted a lot of shady characters, which made it a bit like the wild west,” Harman said. “There was a lot of violence, and that often played out between races and social classes.”
Two article for the December issue of The Atlantan Magazine.
Reem Kassis didn't set out to be an author. Or a chef for that matter.
In fact she made it a point to stay as far away from the kitchen as possible.
But a desire to preserve her Palestinian heritage for her daughters led her towards her destiny in an unlikely way.
It began by collecting recipes and stories from the women in her family and before long she had gathered enough that she began to formulate a book proposal.
The only way to arrive on the shores of Cumberland Island is by boat. Once you step off the dock, you have entered into a living history book. Tangled branches overhead lock antiquity and mystery into the fabric of the island. Under Spanish moss tinseled throughout the branches of Southern Live Oaks, and up the well-worn dirt paths laden with prints from horses’ hooves, there is a gracious southern mansion from a bygone era. This was the playground of the Carnegie family and now the legacy lives on as the Greyfield Inn.
Cumberland Island boasts a long lineage of strong women. While most have heard of steel-tycoon Andrew Carnegie and his brother Thomas, as some of the founding men of America, it is less likely that the names of Margaret Carnegie Ricketson and Lucy R. Ferguson ring a bell.
Yet, it is these tenacious women that helped make Cumberland what it is today.
This year was a reckoning for women all over the country.
This year we saw more women run for office and we saw women confront those who used power to perpetuate a culture of sexual abuse, harassment and coercion. Tarana Burke’s #MeToo movement gained momentum and the women in the entertainment industry created the Time’s Up initiative.
So one year after they flooded the streets to make their voices heard, women were back at it, rallying for justice on everything from immigration to racial and gender equality. The march is a platform for women and men to not only talk the talk but walk the walk.
When the media rushed to the scene of the attack at Istanbul’s Ataturk airport, photographer Furkan Temir took a moment to mentally prepare before going in.
Temir was born and raised in Turkey and has become all too familiar with these catastrophic scenes of violence. He has been photographing the aftermath of terrorist attacks since he was a teenager.
“I feel the responsibility,” said the 21-year-old. “I would like to tell our story.”
