Germantown Kitchen Garden’s farmer, Amanda Staples, who hails from Upper Darby, did not grow up on a farm. Although her grandparents operated a Christmas tree farm near Clarks Summit, Lackawanna County, Staples’ initial hands-on contact with farming was growing lima beans in her backyard for an elementary school assignment. After graduating from Temple University with
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Ebo Nunoo’s grandfather was part of a generations-long line of cocoa farmers in rural Ghana. In search of more opportunity, he moved his family to Accra, the nation’s capital, and became a shoemaker. Decades later, his grandson Ebo left Accra for the United States to attend college and find his own opportunities. It’s unlikely that
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Summer is over, but it’s not too late to capture its flavors in a jar. Scoop up late-season veggies at your farmers market and lean into the magic of pickling. Amina Aliako is eager to share her Syrian-style pickling secrets with you. At its most basic, pickling requires only four ingredients: water, salt, vinegar and
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After nearly two decades, Henry Got Crops, the farm at the W.B. Saul Agricultural High School, still doesn’t turn a profit. But that doesn’t bother senior farm manager Ali Ascherio. The partnership between the school and Weavers Way Co-op pays off in other ways. The vegetable farm takes up two acres behind the school. A
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Myriam Siftar cried tears of joy. It was March 2012, and she was at the grand opening of Mariposa Food Co-op’s new home, a Greek-revival style former bank building on Baltimore Avenue in West Philadelphia. (Full disclosure: This author is a member of the co-op.) For Siftar, it was the triumphant culmination of a journey
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It’s a balmy day in late August, but the Mycopolitan Mushrooms grow room feels more like a forest floor in mid-October. A thick mist sprays from the ceiling, casting a glowy haze across shelves filled with blooming oyster mushrooms, lion’s mane and a handful of other exotic species. Pennsylvania is home to the majority of
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Fifty minutes before the first pitch at a Friday night Phillies game in early June, the line at Greens and Grains already wrapped around and down the concourse at Citizens Bank Park. Looking on, Kevin Tedesco, Aramark’s general manager at Citizens Bank Park, and Jason Firestone, Aramark’s senior director of concessions, shared the story of
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The name Edible Alphabet might conjure images of sugary breakfast cereal or playful pasta shapes. That’s not what has drawn more than 1,000 adult learners to this innovative series of free, fun English language classes at the Culinary Literacy Center in the Free Library of Philadelphia since 2016. Lindsay Southworth, senior program manager, traces the
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Bakari Clark describes herself as a student and a gardener. As the 2025 recipient of the prestigious Douglas Dockery Thomas Fellowship in Garden History and Design, Clark can now claim to be a student of gardens. The 25-year-old Virginia native came to Philadelphia to study at Temple University, where she became interested in many aspects
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Ordering takeout from your favorite neighborhood spot is a treat. What’s not a treat? The disposable packaging that’s used for pretty much every to-go order. Whether you’re digging into a burger and fries or summer rolls and pad see ew, what you’re left with is a heap of unrecyclable trash that’s problematic for both the
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When Peter Merzbacher first started delivering loaves of bread around the city on his bicycle, he had no five-year plan to grow his small baking project into a wholesale business. But today, Merzbacher’s processes 12,000 pounds of dough into bread every week out of its Germantown warehouse. And still, the mission remains the same: nourish
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