• Soup fishies

    Food Musings: Edible Communities

    First one at the co-op, that stylish matte paper displaying fluted, orange-hued orbs of winter squash, “celebrating the abundance of local foods, season by season.” Then another arrived in the mail, “celebrating the abundance of North Central New Mexico, season by season.” Proclaiming stories such as “A Homegrown Wedding” and “Got Raw Milk?” these publications of edible TWIN CITIES and edible SANTA FE are two of a collection of thirty-plus magazines published regionally around the United States to promote the bounty and beauty of local foods.

    As an organization, edible Communities strives to “connect consumers with family farmers, growers, chefs, and food artisans of all kinds” and believes that “every person has the right to affordable, fresh, healthful food on a daily basis and that knowing where our food comes from is a powerful thing.” The edible Communities website details how individuals can begin an edible publication in their region, and the benefits of belonging to a larger food-impassioned organization as opposed to starting up on your own. Current publications stretch from Toronto to San Diego and from Cape Cod to Portland. Individuals can purchase multi-region subscriptions and receive publications from three different regions throughout the year.

    Both edible publications I have in from of me are remarkable in their beauty and accessibility. Now delicious, elegant food is featured not only on the glossy pages of advertisement-heavy mega-magazines with intimidating titles. The recipes and writing in edible publications feel approachable because they are familiar. A Minnesotan has perhaps visited one of the featured restaurants, shopped at several of the farmer’s markets listed and certainly has the ingredients for all of the recipes available to them, if not in their own backyard. The Santa Fe issue feels appropriately less familiar to a reader from the Midwest in features such as “A Tribute to Red Chile,” but the passion for strong communities formed around good, regional food reverberates through its pages, uniting it with the Twin Cities edition and all of the regional publications.