I started writing some rough drafts for what would become this blog during the late 2020/21 wave of Covid lockdowns. I've been reading about the history of American foodways, food activism, and restaurant culture since before I immigrated to this country and found my fixations mostly wrested in the personalities, culinary trends, and venues that exist on the margins of history but made an outsized impact on food and culture.

With a few exceptions, most of these stories are about community-builders with a culinary bent versus stories about prodigal chefs - people who sustained themselves and their communities (be it small or large) at different economic, social and cultural flashpoints in American history. These tumultuous past few years have drawn the collective eye to the cooks and grassroots organizations who feed and have fed the frontlines, the protesters, and the hungry, and I'm excited to include some of those stories here soon as well.

As for me, my name is Meg, and I'm a Canadian transplant living in beautiful New Orleans with my husband and an adorable 4-year-old. I'm not a historian or food studies major, just a voracious genre reader. I'm not a professional cook, but a pretty resourceful (or resentful, depending on the day) one at home. I'm not a journalist, but I know a good niche story when I see one. When I’m not spending my leisure time frittering with the above, I'm usually on a vision quest for the perfect market, collecting rare LPs, mispronouncing french words, gardening, and relating every interpersonal conflict back to a plotline of The Sopranos.