What makes us healthy or unhealthy? Is it how many steps we take in a day? Whether we eat enough whole grains or leafy vegetables? Exercise and diet are important, certainly, but much is beyond our control. This can be simultaneously comforting and worrisome. We benefit from the public health accomplishments of the past, such
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By Dawn Kane and Bernard Brown It has been nearly 380 years since blueback herring have been able to swim up Cobbs Creek beyond what is now Woodland Avenue. Back in 1645, New Sweden’s governor, Johan Björnsson Printz, built a gristmill on the waterway the Lenape call Karakung. Water-powered mills generally rely on a dam
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Walk into Live! Casino in South Philly on a Saturday night, and the smell of cigarettes hits you immediately. The Clean Indoor Air Act prohibiting smoking in Pennsylvania establishments passed in 2008, but casinos remain a notable loophole — one of the last bastions of the old, vice-friendly service industry. They’re open 24 hours, they’re
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When the Fairmount Water Works was built in the early 19th century to provide clean drinking water to Philadelphia, it was a feat of modern engineering. Steam engines and a dam across the Schuylkill River powered water wheels large enough to pump millions of gallons a day uphill to a reservoir atop nearby Fair Mount.
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Over the years, Grid has published hundreds of recipes. For this food issue, we took a trip back to the stacks to find a sumptuous selection you can incorporate into any holiday spread. Spiced Pear Bread by Marisa McClellan, Food in Jars Makes one large loaf or two small ones. 2 cups finely chopped pear
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There is nothing easy about running a small business, especially when that business revolves around food. In most restaurants, there’s the mountain of to-dos that must be accomplished before the doors even open; the never-ending puzzle of scheduling employees; the toothy-smiled rigor of providing seamless hospitality; and actually serving up good food. For producers and
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On a warm Saturday morning in September, Mégane Simões and Sara Dufner — the volunteer managers of the Northern Liberties Community Compost Program — are tucked behind a playground at Liberty Lands, hard at work. Saturday is drop-off day, a time when neighbors bring buckets and bags of food scraps, which, over weeks and months,
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At the Pulaski Zeralda Community Garden in Germantown, the air is thick with the scent of green onions and okra. These vegetables grow from some of the 38 plots, including one dedicated to a local women’s center. This season alone, the garden yielded blackberries, strawberries, tomatoes, okra, peppers, corn and collards. The garden participates in
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As a kid, Wyatt Piazza connected with the natural world by helping his dad out in the family vegetable garden. He holds dear the memories of foraging with him in the woods of Vermont during summer vacations. In his work as a chef today, Piazza creates vegetable-forward recipes for Kiddo, the restaurant he and his
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Growing up in Philadelphia, Marcus Greene Sr. says his family struggled to buy groceries. Even with food stamps and other government assistance, it still wasn’t enough. “I specifically remember as a youth, standing in line on Lehigh Avenue, waiting with the rest of the community to get our food donations,” says Greene, now vice convener
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