Upscale vegan eats warm your stomach and conscienceby Will DeanWith the rush towards eating locally, it’s surprisingly easy to forget about the original “ethical” eating choice that for hundreds of years has attracted people like Ben Franklin, Charlotte Bronte, Albert Einstein and, of course, me. While Kate Jacoby, co-owner and pastry chef of upscale vegan
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Food Politics: How the Food Industry Influences Nutrition and Healthby Marion NestleUC Press, 2003; $16.95When you bite into an apple, you’re probably not considering the laws and regulations, complex legal relationships and huge amounts of money that go into promoting food products. On your behalf, though, Marion Nestle is.
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The Philadelphia Orchard Project is harvesting edible agriculture one vacant lot at a timeby Natalie Hope McDonaldFrom Kensington’s Cambria Orchard to Chester Avenue’s Squirrel Hill and the Martin Luther King High School Farm on West Oak Lane, fresh fruits and vegetables are being harvested in once-vacant, crime-ridden lots. It’s all part of a massive nutrition
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How Haddington used guerrilla gardening to transform its vacant lots, and why the city should encourage everyone to do the sameby Haley LoramSomeone left a busted couch at the edge of the Conestoga Children’s Garden, directly under the “No Dumping” sign. Skip Wiener, who tends to the network of gardens in the West Philly neighborhood
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Patients as Person, City as Healer?by Nathaniel PopkinIn the earliest days of the Center for Community Partnerships at Penn, a project I was a part of for a few years in the mid-’90s, we considered (but never executed) a “misery/happiness index” for West Philadelphia. The index was an idea of the historian Lee Benson, the
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Southwark offers a connection to local foodby Will Dean and Ashley JeromeWhen you walk in the front door of Southwark, it feels a little like you’re going back in time, which makes sense. Southwark got its name from an 18th century district of the city and it fits because preserving history, including a tangible connection
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The Ecology of Commerce: A Declaration of Sustainabilityby Paul HawkenHarper Collins, 1993, $19.96Paul Hawken, author, entrepreneur and activist, debunks the tired notion that business and the environment are somehow at odds. “Common wisdom holds that ecologists worry about nature while economists are concerned with human beings,” Hawken explains. “But economists are in fact taking care
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An abandoned building becomes a hub for social activism in West Philadelphiaby Natalie Hope McDonaldJust off the Number 10 Green Line, west of the sprawling Penn and Drexel campuses and trendy restaurants, past the tiny street corner bodegas and dimly lit bars, a group of aspiring social activists saw something special in an abandoned building
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Philly returns to its beer making pastby Will Dean When Schmidt’s brewery closed in June 1987 after being bought by Wisconsin brewer G. Heileman, Philly officially switched from a beer-producing to merely a beer-drinking city. Although Schmidt’s wasn’t a taste explosion (my dad used to refer to it by a similar sounding expletive), the demise
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North Philly changes before our eyes by Will Dean with additional reporting by Dana Henry When you think about a sustainable city, what does it look like? Whether it’s a futuristic, shiny sci-fi wonderland or a green treehouse-like Ewok village, you probably don’t think of North Philly. With it’s abandoned industrial buildings and bad
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