Festival Bloggers
BakingMeHungry is two sisters and food enthusiasts based in Massachusetts. Their blogging adventures began a year ago with short pieces about what they ate on their travels or recipes they’ve cooked. They started appreciating food at a young age, developing an appetite for spicy foods, condiments, Asian supermarket snacks, reading children’s cookbooks and making French baguette turkey sandwiches for their dad’s lunch. Although their mother cooked a lot of family dinners, she would make them fend for ourselves for their daily school lunches and summer vacations. Check out their blog at www.bakingmehungry.com and follow them on Twitter @BakingMeHungry.
Justin Cascio is a food writer and a supporter of local agriculture. Most of what he eats, he cooks “from scratch” from ingredients grown within bicycling range, by farmers he knows by name. He shares recipes and advice for eating seasonally on his food blog, “Justin Wants to Feed You.” Justin lives in Northampton, MA with his husband, their dog, and two cats. Follow Justin on Twitter @LikeTheWatch
Robin Cohen Robin Cohen has been cooking and baking since about the age of five and is an avid gardener with a great love of local and fresh ingredients. Robin writes a column for the Arlington Advocate on food and farmers markets as well as her blog and she contributes to several other blogs. She teaches classes on cooking, baking, and canning and leads learning tours of the farmers markets. Robin does the publicity and helps run the popular Arlington Farmers Market. She is completing a book titled Bounty of the Seasons filled with stories of Massachusetts farms and farmers markets and hopes to have it published later this year. Ms Cohen also owns a successful computer and marketing firm and mentors young business women and serve on the boards of several business and charitable organizations.
Michelle Collins Michelle has been a freelance food writer for over six years. She is currently a regular contributor toLocal in Season as well as her own money conscious food blog, The Economical Eater. Originally from New Hampshire, Michelle grew up with an appreciation for the taste of vegetables picked straight from the garden, and animals raised and eaten right on the same farm. Today, Michelle focuses on continuing to enjoy quality, delicious food, but all within a limited budget.
Alyssa Fry has been cooking and baking since around the age of 12. She has been a vegetarian for almost as long and has always loved learning new techniques and exploring cuisines from all over the world. Having grown up in San Antonio, Texas, she is quick to critique salsas and is steadfast in her love for cumin, cilantro and homemade tortillas. She is currently finding ways to blend her love of writing with her love of sustainable, healthy food. Alyssa also loves learning about food culture, nutrition, food access, and generally how food systems connect with other systems. She maintains an impressive collection of large kitchen appliances and is especially proud to own a 9-tray electric food dehydrator.
Elizabeth Ginsburg writes the food blog FreeFoodBoston, which chronicles food, farms, and restaurants in the northeast and beyond. She also manages farmers’ markets in Cambridge and Somerville.
Rachele Huelsman is a self-proclaimed foodie and vegan. Conundrum? Not at all. She absolutely loves food –– how it looks, how it smells, how it tastes, even how it makes her feel. Eating well, respecting our planet and treating animals with kindness are the focus of her dietary habits. She started veganinthehub.blogspot.com about a year ago to document her adventures in cooking and to prove that being vegan can be fashionable, affordable and easy. Huelsman graduated with a Bachelor’s in Political Science from Simmons College in Boston as well as from Trinity College in Hartford with a Master’s in Public Policy. She currently works for AIPAC in Boston.
Meghan Johnson is a second year Master’s student at Tufts University studying nutrition and public health. She is most interested in communicating health messages to diverse audiences to inform the public about where food comes from and how to make better choices, by taking small steps. Meghan enjoys running; exploring Boston’s food trucks and farmer’s markets; and searching for cheap flights. She writes the blog Eat Less Move More and can be followed on Twitter @EatLessMoveM0re.
Danielle Kennedy is the current Web & Editorial intern at BLFF partner Somerville Local First, where she manages the SLF blog and social media and publishes various rants and raves on all things local and Somerville. Danielle is a linguistics & psychology major at Northeastern University and has absolutely no idea what she plans to do with that (so stop asking!). But she knows she loves food, exploring, language and writing, nonprofit work, being a nerd, and living in Boston, so she hopes to cobble that all together into something she can get paid for one day. In the meantime, she’ll be watching cat videos onl…ahem, she’ll be hard at work, typing up her opinions and scoping out the local scene.
Meghan Malloy Meghan is the blogger behind traveleatlove.com, a blog that chronicles her adventures in travel, food, and wine with a little bit of running thrown in for good measure. A lifelong writer and lover of events and planning, Meghan spends her days working in Marketing Communications and the rest of the time trying new restaurants, cooking, traveling and planning trips, and trying to find new, fabulous things to do around the New England area. Most recently she has spent a good deal of time trying and learning about local wines. Her current interest is in developing recipes with local ingredients. You can find some of those recipes with wine pairings on her website, Travel Eat Love.
Brenda Pike is interested in food primarily as its production affects the environment. She strives for a local, organic, vegetarian diet—to varying degrees of success. She writes the blog Pragmatic Environmentalism, where she discusses the practical steps that she takes as a 30-something apartment-dweller to reduce her environmental impact.
Jon Ross-Wiley A professional educator for 15 years, Jon has made food his working textbook for much of his adult life. Unusual flavor combinations and ingredients always seem to find a way back to Jon’s home, and cooking is a cathartic labor of love. Dining out, experiments with new ingredients, and menu studies are all pieces of the life-long learning process that has led Jon to the website, Local in Season. For Jon, Local In Season, is by no means a side project. Good local and seasonal food, and the art of selecting and preparing it, is a way of life. Jon co-founded Local In Season, with good friend and Bowdoin College classmate, Patrick Kent. The site went live in September 2009, and has enjoyed a steadily growing readership and Twitter following.
Brian Samuels is an adventurous pescatarian (sometimes a very naughty one) whose great passion is to cook, write about and photograph food. Food has shaped the person who he is today and he believes that this is the case for many people out there.
A Thought For Food was started in 2009 as a way to share his culinary experiences with others. Through recipes, personal anecdotes, and historical/cultural information, he hopes to make people think about the role that food plays in our lives. Brian is also an accomplished photographer, his portfolio and contact info can be found at www.BrianSamuelsPhotography.com.
Brian resides in South Boston, MA, and live with his husband, Eric, and pup, Maki.
Meagan Spencer is currently a paralegal downtown Boston, but she is big into eating and cooking. Specifically interested in farm to plate and local sustainability and making yummy food. She currently has a food blog (www.bigeatersmallbody.
