A Hungry Society Heritage Radio Network

Today’s guests are chefs Sicily Sewell Johnson and Mavis Jay Sanders, founders of Food + People. Food + People operates on the belief “every community should have access to quality food and every person deserves the dignity of a hot meal composed of ecologically responsible ingredients that nourishes their body from the inside out.” On the show we talk about food memories, MJ shares stories of being a queer, masc presenting Black woman in kitchens and Sicily shares how being surrounded by women, people of color and the LGBTQIA community throughtout her career has helped her see how things should be done instead of just sticking to the status quo.

Chef Adrian Lipscombe, Texas native and owner of Uptowne Cafe & Bakery in Wisconsin, is a very busy woman. She’s a wife, mother of four, city planner and business owner and the founder of the 40 Acres & a Mule Project, which she launched in June to preserve, research and celebrate Black foodways. On today’s show we talk about the goals of the project and the importance of legacy which Adrian shares from her own personal, familial stories and from the point of view of a Black culinarian, interested in passing on knowledge about Black foodways to the next generation of Black chefs. If you’d like to support the 40 Acres and Mule project, head here.

Today’s episode is an interview with Derek Kirk, founder of soulPhoodie, an online community that celebrates black food and beverage culture. Derek founded soulPhoodie in 2016 to share timely and compelling content about all facets of Black foodways in a way that is fun, intelligent, nerdy, and at times provocative. Derek is a graduate of North Carolina Central University & The Wharton School of Business and is a restaurant branding and marketing executive with 20 years of experience.

Today's show is an interview with Karla Vasquez, founder of SalviSoul, food writer, recipe developer, and food stylist based in Los Angeles. Karla’s writing has been published by The Los Angeles Times, The San Francisco Chronicle, Teen Vogue and Eater LA among other publications and her recipe development work has been on Buzzfeed Tasty and Tastemade. Salvi Soul, which she founded in 2015 is a Salvadoran cookbook storytelling project focused on recipe documentation, cultural memory, and intergenerational healing for the Salvadoran diaspora and it is the only dedicated food platform for Salvadoran cuisine with weekly online cooking classes, events, and a forthcoming cookbook.

On today’s show I talk to chef, artist, model, photographer DeVonn Francis about food as art, the idea of expansiveness and hospitality. DeVonn runs Yardy, a pop-up series where he uses food, space, music and art to explore Blackness, queerness, immigration and more. He’s a first-generation Jamaican American and his cooking is influenced by the Caribbean.

What does the COVID-19 crisis mean for women-run food businesses? On today’s show I speak with Shaolee Sen, CEO of Hot Bread Kitchen, about the unique challenges women-run and immigrant-run food businesses face at this time. Hot Bread Kitchen is an organization in Harlem that’s a culinary incubator program and workforce development program that trains women for jobs in the culinary industry. You can support by visiting hotbreadkitchen.org.