About Brian Halweil
The publisher of Edible Manhattan and the editor of Edible East End, Brian Halweil has been at the forefront of the growing "eat local" movement. As a student at Stanford University, Brian worked with California farmers interested in reducing their pesticide use, and set up a two-acre student-run organic farm on the Stanford campus. In 1997, he joined Worldwatch Institute as a Senior Researcher and John Gardner Public Service Fellow. At the Institute, Brian writes on the social and ecological impacts of how we grow food, focusing recently on organic farming, biotechnology, hunger and rural communities. He describes the evolving local food movement in his recent book Eat Here: Reclaiming Homegrown Pleasures in a Global Supermarket. Brian's work has also been featured in the international press, and he has testified before the US Senate Committee on Foreign Relations on the role of biotechnology in combating poverty and hunger in the developing world. He has traveled throughout Mexico, Central America and the Caribbean, and East Africa learning indigenous farming techniques and promoting sustainable food production. He works on Edible East End and other Edible publications from his home in Sag Harbor, New York, where he and his wife tend a home garden and orchard.
I’ve been thumbing through the short, final chapters of Joan Gussow’s most recent book, Growing, Older. They’re humorous even if the themes include dying, lifelong regrets, sea level rise and climate change. The later geological preoccupations are shared by both of us—we both garden in floodprone areas—and the balmy, 60-degree afternoons this past weekend reminded me that the future-oriented predictions of climate scientists seem more and more to have arrived in the here and now. (And, my colleagues at Edible Brooklyn tell me, the annual winter festival at Prospect Park was just cancelled, due to weather too warm to make snow.)
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For two decades the international movement to preserve taste called Slow Food has produced a guide to Italian wine in conjunction with Gambero Rosso– an Italian Zagat that puts out food and wine guides and produces massive wine tastings around the world. Now, to encourage a new era of sustainabile wine sipping , Slow Food has rolled out a wine classification system and bringing it to America for the first time, along with a sampling of Italian Slow Wine-designated producers that will visit New York on January 30. (Get your tickets here.)
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As the New Year approaches, with its cavalcade of “best of” and “top 10″ lists, we invite our readers to vote in a very Edible way–for your favorite farmers, brewers, bartenders and food systems innovators as part of Edible Communities Sixth Annual Local Hero Awards. The process is already underway and ends this Friday, December 16, so nominate your favorite farmer, chef, eatery, food shop, food artisan and non-profit now.
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Now that we’ve tested our spud-mashing skills at Thanksgiving, it’s time for those of us celebrating Hanukah to turn our attention to the potato pancake. Specifically, the third annual Latke Festival our sister publication Edible Brooklyn is putting on with Great Performances at the Brooklyn Academy of Music on December 19th. (If you haven’t snagged your ticket here, now’s the time.)
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For this Long Island boy Brooklyn sometimes seems endless. Like when you can exit the Bedford Avenue L station in Williamsburg, as we did last week, and head half a mile south on Wythe Avenue and come upon a whole neighborhood of little food shops and new and renovated condos that didn’t seem to exist a few years go. Perhaps its this vast newness–realtors citywide, we’re told, are now pushing the part of Williamsburg called the Southside–that was part of the inspiration for Isa on South Second Street.
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On Wednesday night, at Guastavino’s under the 59th Street Bridge, we tasted the new face of Italian food in New York, like salumi from Cesare Casella of Salumeria Rosi. What tied all these dishes together wasn’t just their Old World inspiration, but their locavore sensibility: They were all made from mostly New York grown ingredients: In fact this batch of sopressatta was Casella’s first made with Empire State meat.
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On Wednesday night at our Edible Escape at the Angel Orensanz Center there will be wine, spirits, cheeses and veggies from across the state. ILOVENY will be bringing some swanky farmers market totes and t-shirts to give away. And, to sweeten the pot, we will be giving away prizes to attendees. We’ve already told you about the mixed case of New York State wines, and some other lucky ticket holder will get two gallons of Organic Valley New York Fresh milk. In other words, something for the evening and something for the morning.
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As a teaser for all you ticket holders to Edible Escape–our mouth-watering, border-crossing food and drink party next Wednesday, we’ve been leaking selected menu items over the past weeks. But now we’d like to tell you about some giveaways that a few lucky attendees will receive. (Yes, tickets are still available here. Our first prize is a mixed case of wines and the Cape Wine Braai Masters recipe book, courtesy of our friends at Wines of South Africa. We have two of these to give away, and we’ll be choosing winners at random from our ticket holders.
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