Below are bios of some of the contributors of this blog. We welcome new writers who are also interested in cooking vegetarian meals for their families with local produce. If you are interested in contributing to our blog, on a regular or occasional basis, please email theveggieproject AT gmail DOT com.
amy and moshe weitzman live in arlington, MA with their two daughters. we belong to waltham community fields CSA this year. our favorite part of farm shares is the pick your own. i am always looking for yummy recipes with lots of vegetables in them.
Carla
We're a blended family of 6 with picky eaters, from 9-17! I am native New Englander with a passion for preserving regional farms by eating local. We've been members of Waltham Fields Community Farm CSA for 5 years, where I formerly served on the Board of Directors. Our favorite Summer tradition is to pack a picnic supper, bring along lots of friends, and go to our CSA farm for veggie pick-up night. I taught myself to can in order to preserve the multitude of veggies we get during the peak. Oh, and I'm a longtime vegetarian with hubby who likes steak!
Emily
I have been a vegetarian since I was an exchange student in Liberia, West Africa, in 1988. During my time in Africa, I felt much closer to my food sources – specifically, to the animals – than I ever had before that year. I realized that I was willing to eat meat only when I did not have to think about where it came from, and this made me uncomfortable. One of my favorite cookbooks is Mollie Katzen's "The Vegetable Dishes I Can't Live Without," and I'm currently using it to help me incorporate more vegetables into the center of what we eat on a daily basis. I'm married to a meat (and vegetable) lover, and we have two kids who eat poultry and tofu (and vegetables, sometimes!) with equal gusto. One major challenge I face is that I have noticed that the flavors that I love are not always the ones that other family members love, and that our kids tend to like food that is less spicy (less tasty!) than we do. We try to make just one main meal each night for all of us – sometimes making one recipe but adding meat to half and beans to the other half – but we are constantly trying to simplify this process.
Katie
I became a vegetarian at age 9, when I looked down at the lamb I was eating for dinner and realized it was a dead lamb. My omnivorous husband Josh and I have two kids, born 10/04 and 10/06, and we are raising the kids as vegetarians until they are old enough to choose for themselves. We are committed to supporting small farms and eating locally, and try to always consider the environmental impact of our family. We have been a member of CSAs in the past, but this year will be shopping at the farmers' markets.
Lee
I spent most of my working life as a journalist in New York. Now I’m a stay-at-home-mom, occasional freelance writer, and would-be novelist in Cambridge, Ma.
I became a vegetarian after meeting my husband when we were both in our early 20s. I was an environmentalist but not vegetarian; he had been veg since he was a teenager. After about a year of dating I became a vegetarian as well. We even had a vegetarian wedding -- and our families and friends still talk about the food we served, almost eight years later.
But as much as I love animals my vegetarianism has always sprung from my feelings about the environment. It’s been a short-hand way for me to limit my own impact on the earth. Eating whole and local foods is a natural outgrowth of that, for me. I also love to bake my own bread and make my own cheese, and would probably grow a lot more of my own vegetables if my “farmlands” encompassed more than the patio of an urban townhouse.
We’re raising our daughter vegetarian, though we plan to give her the choice decide for herself when she reaches her preteen years. Even if she choses to eat meat I sincerely hope the she keeps hold of the things we’ve taught her about where her food comes from, and the effect of what she does on the world around her.
“Only when the last tree has died and the last river has been poisoned and the last fish has been caught will we realize we cannot eat money.” Native American saying
Nili
I live in East Arlington with my partner, Todd Bearson, my five year old son, and my almost-toddling daughter. I've recently read Barbara Kingsolver's Animal Vegetable Miracle and Omnivore's Dilemma by Michael Pollan so I'm quite jazzed to try to cook more using seasonal, locally grown produce. We're generally vegetarian, but not vegan, and occasionally give the kids chicken and fish. My son is so picky that I don't imagine he'll eat anything I make for the blog. Unless it's a dessert. =-) I've belonged to CSA's in the past, but got tired of all these beautiful vegetables going bad in my refrigerator while I didn't cook them. Now I'm trying to shop more at the farmer's market and hoping this blog experiment will expand my cooking repertoire.
Rachel
My family, which includes myself, my husband, and my two boys (a 4 year old and a 14 month old), are members of the Waltham Fields Community Farm CSA for the 2nd year. We try to eat as locally as possible, especially in the summer when it is most easily accomplished. We tend to treat our vegetables very simply, and my 4 year old really just wants it all raw on a plate. We are trying to have fun with new recipes, though admittedly we do tend to fall back on a few tried and true favs. One of our goals for this summer's CSA experience is to let no vegetable die a wilty/moldy/withered death in the back of our fridge...last year there were a few casualties.
Sally
WhatACard, aka Sally, lives in the suburbs of Boston with her husband and twin boys who were born in July, 2005. While the whole family are omnivores, they're having a love affair with vegetables, new recipes, unusual ingredients, and local food. Or at least the adults are. The boys are devoted bread-and-cheese-atarians. They're all enjoying their first season as shareholders at Waltham Fields Community Farms and Sally also loves to shop the farmers' markets with her boys.
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