From the Desk of Alicia Kennedy

Alicia Kennedy

I’m a writer based in San Juan, Puerto Rico. I send out a weekly essay on issues in food, from politics and climate change to culture and labor. Paid subscribers also receive the Friday interviews and have access to recipes.

Created 09 Apr 2019

@aliciakennedy

207

Posts

2,695

Likes

857

Comments

172

Mentions

More ↓

On Words
11 Oct 2021 • 6 min read • 12 8
The first I’d heard of a vegetable butcher was in this 2010 blog post about Eataly, the grocery store, hiring the artist and culinary-school grad Jennifer Rubell to fulfill the role at the store. Shop...
A Conversation with Rachel Signer
08 Oct 2021 • < 1 min read • 1 0
I met Rachel Signer years ago while we were both freelancers living in Brooklyn. We were at a press dinner for a restaurant called Gristmill, which I just checked on: It’s now sadly closed. We’ve kept...
On Lionfish
04 Oct 2021 • 8 min read • 19 6
Omnivores seem to be under the impression that everyone who’s chosen not to eat meat for ethical or spiritual reasons is happy to eat anything offered to them, so long as it has no animal products. Ho...
A Conversation with Andrew Janjigian
01 Oct 2021 • < 1 min read • 2 0
I burst into the Zoom with Andrew Janjigian—a writer and the baker behind the newsletter Wordloaf—as though he were an old friend, telling him about my drama with the dentist that was happening that d...
On Seeing
27 Sep 2021 • 6 min read • 18 2
My dad doesn’t know that I intended to sit down today and write about the role of photography in my life, but he is grieving, and thus he is sending me pictures of pictures through text message. Many ...
A Conversation with Erin Alderson
24 Sep 2021 • < 1 min read • 3 1
I loved talking to Erin Alderson because I think we have a similar mission that we go about in different ways, and that mission is to just get people to eat more vegetables. (Her recipe-driven way mig...
On Salt 🧂
20 Sep 2021 • 5 min read • 19 5
What do I know about food if I didn’t know that Diamond Crystal Kosher Salt has been owned by Cargill since 1997? Perhaps nothing. I think I just found out that I am, on this matter, very trusting: I ...
A Conversation with Dr. Hanna Garth
17 Sep 2021 • < 1 min read • 5 0
I was wildly excited to get to chat with Dr. Hanna Garth, professor of anthropology at Princeton University, when I had just finished reading her brilliant book Food in Cuba: In Pursuit of a Decent Me...
From the Kitchen #02: Let’s Char
15 Sep 2021 • < 1 min read • 10 7
The best thing I’ve been cooking lately are little charred eggplants. One farm at our market, La Microfinca, brings these beautiful long skinny white eggplants that I don’t dare mess with too much. I ...
On Baking
13 Sep 2021 • 4 min read • 17 2
The standard story of why I started baking begins with me miserable in my day job as a digital copy editor for New York Magazine. I became full-time there at the end of 2009 after I’d been fired from ...
View More on Substack »