Summer 2025 Publisher’s Letter
Publishing a quarterly food magazine involves a lot of forward thinking and sometimes a bit of trickery. Not the sort you’re thinking of—we’re not using epoxy or paint to mimic real food like the glossy commercial mags do; our recipes are cooked, styled and shot on-site using real ingredients (and devoured for lunch just as soon as the shutter clicks). But we do have to get tricky in other ways: To release an issue at the very beginning of a season, it needs to be produced in the shoulder period before that season starts in earnest, which means we often have to employ out-of-season produce from very far away to stand in for the abundant local veg that will appear later, during that issue’s three-months circulation.
Most of this is just aesthetics, and since we work with the best in the business, you won’t recognize the far-too-early Mexican tomatoes standing in for local heirlooms, or the frozen peas swapped for freshly shelled. It’s not real deception (like glue or paint), because invariably, year after year, the peas and tomatoes will arrive; they’re just not here yet. For a publication so staunchly pro-local, it’s definitely a trick, but it’s how our schedule works and I’d be willing to bet you’ve never noticed—perhaps until now.
But forward thinking can only get you so far when working with an elongated timeline like ours. Without the luxury of daily—or even weekly—publication, anticipating how stories commissioned months earlier can change in the interim is a real challenge. So, the writing in Edible has always been timeless, diving into the backstory of local food businesses rather than breaking significant news about them. We’ve never been the go-to source for boots-on-the-ground reporting, and we don’t write about imminent openings or events. You come to us to discover a small farm or bakery and the perspective of the people who run it—the why and how of it all, their inspiration and motivation. You read us for our in-depth looks at philanthropic organizations or agricultural ventures, deep dives into particular ingredients and recipes that will stand the test of time. We’ve always intended for each Edible to remain fresh for months and even years after it’s been published, and for the most part, aside from a few business closures here and there, we’ve succeeded.
But in this issue, for the very first time in my tenure as editor, I made the choice to commission a breaking news story in the final week before press because it was just so important it couldn’t wait three more months to be told. Thanks to nimble writer Jackie Cain and our crack design team, we rapid-responsed a short piece about the closure of The Daily Table grocery stores, a lifeline for residents of Nubian, Codman, Central Squares and Salem (the Mattapan location closed earlier this year). We covered the chain in its infancy, back in 2016, and have distributed our magazines through their shops for years; we’re devastated for their customers and concerned about what this means for the local food economy down the road.
Paired alongside Alison Arnett’s great reporting on the USDA’s recent cancellation of the Local Food Purchase Assistance Cooperative Agreement and the Local Food for Schools (two successful programs that guaranteed sales for local farms and healthy produce for local kids and food pantries), it’s clear the repercussions of this indiscriminate end to existing policy will trickle down through all sectors, including agriculture. Alison spoke with people in communities across the Commonwealth who are negatively impacted by the cuts, as well as with some state legislators, right as the growing season begins. Just this week in congress, Rep. Jim McGovern was leading the fight against cuts to Medicaid/SNAP benefits for his Central MA constituents and people across the country, too (and our hearts go out to him and his family after the recent passing of his beloved daughter, Molly). Of course, all this could change before you even pick up this issue—for better or for worse—but as far as we can tell right now, in late May 2025, we’re heading off a food insecurity cliff. Says Usha Thakrar, executive director of Boston Area Gleaners, “The whole thing is terrible.”
The rest of this issue is rounded out by more traditional Edible fare: Kaitlyn Hardy wrote about efforts to reduce plastic waste in the post-pandemic era; Nicole Estvanik Taylor discovered an environmental educator’s popular summer internship program studying native plants and invasive species; Jackie Cain delved deeper into another urban food program we’ve covered before, visiting Eastie Farm to chronicle its development since its founding a decade ago; and Barefoot Books’ Edible for Kids section is all about baseball—including a recipe for homemade cracker jacks by yours truly. Matt Tota saw up close how Worcester’s first farm-to-table Neapolitan pizzeria has thrived since 2013; Lesley O’Connell visited the new outpost of Concord Market on MIT’s campus; Kara and Marnie Powers profiled a local pickle-and-preserves business committed to using gleaned ingredients; and Amy Allen previewed this season’s iteration of Nightshade Noodle Bar’s Clam Shack—giving the word shack a whole new meaning.
For your dining and drinking pleasure, two veteran cooks and one local mixologist have cooked up a trio of recipe stories worthy of your table. Longtime friend of the magazine Tom Schlesinger-Guidelli created a seafood feast inspired by the Farm Coast, his summertime home near the Rhode Island border. Suman Shah brought Indian sensibility to New England ingredients and built a vegetarian banquet to be shared in the garden, at dusk, surrounded by family and friends. Fred Yarm, expert in all things drinks, visited three local distillers and tasted umpteen local amari before building some delightful aperitifs for the season. And as a bonus, Mass Farmers Markets is back this season with a straight-from-the-market lobster taco recipe stretching a small amount of a luxe ingredient into a dish I’ll be making all summer long.
Perhaps in future issues I’ll have better news to break—how the folks on the right side of the food insecurity battle have won their funding back—but in order to cover the gaps in service happening now, it’s going to fall to us. Food access hubs can’t keep up with demand, so please, if you’re able, donate to your local food pantry, the Greater Boston Food Bank, the Worcester County Food Bank, the Merrimack Valley Food Bank, the Food Bank of Western MA or any of the wonderful organizations featured in Alison’s story. Mutual aid has never been more important.
Peace,
Sarah
