Quarterly Magazines Showcase America’s Local Food Sources from Sea to Shining Sea (and Lots of Places in Between)
How do you get Americans to focus on local food sources? To Tracey Ryder and Edible Communications, the answer was to create a national chain of beautifully illustrated and written food quarterlies, each focused on a specific city or region. And then they give the magazines away for free by distributing them through food and other culinary suppliers in each area (although subscriptions are available to each of the publications).
From Brooklyn to Los Angeles, Chicago to Austin, from Iowa to the Blue Ridge Mountains, from Cape Cod to Hawaii, from Vancouver, Canada, to Bozeman, Montana, Edible Communications has made a living knowing that people care about good, locally resourced food all around the country (and Canada). Since Edible Ojai (California), the first publication, debuted in 2002, the publishing company has partnered with local publishers/editors to highlight area farmers, chefs, and “food artisans” and to bring its magazines and philosophy of “cultivating communities through food” to consumers. The chain now has 48 magazines in the U.S. and Canada and plans on adding 10 more a year.
To see how the different Edibles support the local food communities, check out Edible’s blog. It offers a sampling of stories from each of its publications. A sampling of recipes of the different Edible magazines is available here.
The Edible publication I am most familiar with is Edible East Bay (near San Francisco), and I try never to miss an issue. The “Harvest 2008″ magazine includes pieces on Dumpster diving; City Slicker Farms, an organization that farms backyards and empty lots in an Oakland low-income neighborhood to help provide affordable organic produce to the residents; home canning; local vineyards you may never have suspected existed; and a feature (with recipes) on cooking with apples.
To find out if there is an Edible publication near where you live and to see what it’s featuring this month , check the list of publications. Then click on the publication that interests you to get a taste of what it covers and where it is available in your area.
————–
Photo Credit: Photo from Edible East Bay, Edible Communications
