The Local Food Report: Recent Episodes
Elspeth Hay
The Local Food Report can be heard every Thursday on WCAI, the local NPR station for Cape Cod, Martha's Vineyard, Nantucket, and the South Coast. From farmers' markets to backyard gardens, wild forage to home kitchen recipes, the Local Food Report explores the Cape, Islands, and South Coast to find out what's in season and what to do with it.The Local Food Report airs Thursday at 8:35 AM and 5:45 PM and Saturday at 9:35 AM and is made possible by our Local Food Report sponsors.
This week on the Local Food Report, Cape Cod jail inmates find connection and hope in a program baking for those in need.
Amateur cooks get by with a little “kelp” from their friends and the results are pretty tasty.
Garlic scapes are in season at the Truro Farmers Market, and there are so many good ways to cook them.
A centuries-old Portuguese ritual rich with history, pageantry, and, most definitely, food.
Our native forests are full of food. The understories are packed with blueberries and huckleberries and for thousands of years, local overstories have been full of nut trees: hickories and chestnuts and walnuts and oaks.
Mob grazing is a strategy Dan Athearn is working with to try to control what’s growing on this unique stretch of grassland. His family took over managing the land with a group of other local growers and cattle farmers in 2021.
When Debbie Athearn’s father bought the 25 acres that started Morning Glory Farm in Edgartown, times were different.
Almost fifty years ago, when Haraldur Sigurdsson first came to the University of Rhode Island from Iceland, he got interested in what makes some clam shells more purple than others.
My friend Nicole Cormier is a registered dietician and studying for a masters in herbalism. And when she told me she eats pine pollen — and that in fact, it’s one of her favorite things to forage, I had to tag along.
Many of our native bees — and a few other surprising insects — evolved with and rely on many native edible species.
This week on the Local Food Report, a Korean Natural Farming teacher on the relationships that create healthy soil.
John Bunker has spent the past fifty years learning everything he can about North American apple varieties.
Earlier this year, I finally made the journey north to meet John Bunker — a farmer in his 70s who arguably knows more about apple varieties than almost anyone alive in New England today.
This week part three of a mini-series on big picture local food issues—today with a focus on what we can change with a little hyper-local creativity.
Liz Wiley is executive director of the Marion Institute — a non-profit focused on improving human and environmental health and food quality in southeastern Massachusetts. And when I asked her what she’s working on right now, she said regional communication.
This week part one of a mini-series on big picture local food issues—starting with the shellfish industry.
Years ago, Lou Quattrucci’s neighbor came home from a trip to Italy with a gift. It was a bottle of creamy limoncello.
Around this time every year, Elspeth talks with a local farmer or gardener about ordering seeds for the upcoming growing season. This year, she’s branched into aquaculture.
You’ve probably heard that you’re supposed to prune fruit trees. But did you know that it’s also important to prune berries?
I sat down with Russell Norton a horticulture and agriculture educator with the Cape Cod Cooperative Extension and started by asking him: why do we prune?
Back in 2001, Lauren Leveque and her husband Josh learned to seed save as professionals with High Mowing Seeds in Vermont.
When Brewster farmer Ron Backer first read about honeynut squash, he knew he wanted to grow it.
This summer, farmer Dave Dewitt of Truro told me he’s growing something I’ve always thought of as a southern crop — okra.
For years now, farmer Stephanie Rein of the non-profit Sustainable Cape in Truro has been teaching kids about growing food. She does this in multiple elementary schools on the Outer Cape, and when she first started, she had the kids make something she called a seed wish list.
A few years ago, a Philadelphia arborist named Max Paschall read an article about a man named John Hershey. Hershey ran a tree nursery and experimental farm in Pennsylvania in the 1930s.
Reishi has a number of different impacts on our bodies, but one of the major ways it works as a medicine is by influencing our gut microbiota.
Helen loved kvass. The flavor, the fizz, everything about this drink made from fermenting stale bread with water and sugar. But when she got home, she forgot about it for almost forty years.
I have a friend in Barnstable who’s always telling me about unusual edible plants, particularly perennials. Recently, he told me he’s planting something new called a Cornelian Cherry.
To plant a fig tree in our climate is an act of faith. Most figs are native to the tropics—and in the heat and sweat of this world they do amazing things. They’ve co-evolved with a wasp that crawls into the fruit and pollinates it from the inside out.
As a fisheries and aquaculture specialist at the Barnstable County Cooperative Extension, Abigail Archer spends a lot of time trying to help the public connect the dots between shellfish, nitrogen, and healthy estuaries. This relationship starts when nitrogen travels through freshwater streams and runoff into our marine environment.
In 2015, Jess Tsoukalas was living in Wellfleet at a rental property that the tenant before her had planted with an abundance of fruit trees.
Carrie Richter of Peach Tree Circle Farm in Falmouth is a self-proclaimed garlic fanatic."It makes every dish better. There's nothing about garlic that I don't like."
This time of year at the farmers markets, lettuce is the variety queen. It comes in heads and leaves, reds and greens, crisp hearts and soft butter leaves. Over the past few weeks, I’ve spoken to farmers about growing lettuce, and what varieties they like.
I’ve been hearing about the Herring River Restoration Project since I moved to Wellfleet in 2004. Restoring tidal flow to the 1100-acre saltwater estuary, which was diked in 1908, is an effort that’s been decades in the making — and hands-on work finally began in early 2023.
Have you ever been in a grocery store and seen items marked “WIC approved”? It stands for “women infants and children.” It’s a federally funded state run supplemental nutrition assistance program.
Over the past few years, I’ve started noticing how much I can control certain plants’ productivity by managing their flowers and seeds.
It’s that time of year where many of us are getting summer seedlings in the ground. And I don’t know about you, but my excitement is usually bigger than my garden — I can’t fit everything I want to plant.
Most cooks have heard of broccoli rabe. But what about other rabe varieties? This week on The Local Food Report, Elspeth Hay talks with growers at the Orleans Farmers' Market about this spring delicacy from the Brassica family.
There aren’t many things that will get me out of bed at 5:30 in the morning. But bagels—or really just the prospect of learning how to make them—is one. Recently, I stood in Wellfleet’s Bagel Hound with owner Ellery Althaus, while the windows were still dark, staring a pile of dough.
Beau Valtz is standing in his Wellfleet kitchen in front of a giant pile of fresh garlic.He's wrapping heads of garlic tightly in tin foil.
Recently I made a visit to the Sandwich fish hatchery. That’s where the state raises trout for stocking in local ponds and rivers and I spoke with Mike Clark who helps breed four different trout varieties.
This week, a young man in Truro on pruning wild blueberries and our relationship with the natural world.
For a long time, skate has been considered trash fish. But with local groundfish like haddock and cod increasingly off the menu, home cooks and local chefs are turning more and more to this tasty shark relative.
It’s that time of year again—we’re deep into storage vegetable season and I’m looking for recipe inspiration.
About ten years ago when farmer Stephanie Rein’s kids were in elementary school in Truro, she noticed something about local garden-based education.
This week on the Local Food Report, adapting Cape Cod menus to changes in local fisheries.
This week on the Local Food Report, soil building inspiration all the way from the Amazon.
This week a chef in Provincetown uses walnuts and almonds to create two Italian-inspired after-dinner drinks.
This time of year, I miss my grandmother. When I was a kid Biee always came to visit for Christmas and she spent most of her time in the kitchen.
This week on the Local Food Report, Elspeth’s daughter, Nora Hay, age 9, teaches us to make her favorite fall dish.
I’m walking the back roads of Truro with my friend Nicole Cormier, who works as a dietician and is studying herbalism. We’re looking for something called Aronia which grows dark purple almost black berries.
Helen loved kvass. The flavor, the fizz, everything about this drink made from fermenting stale bread with water and sugar. But when she got home, she forgot about it for almost forty years.
Helen loved kvass. The flavor, the fizz, everything about this drink made from fermenting stale bread with water and sugar. But when she got home, she forgot about it for almost forty years.
Reishi has a number of different impacts on our bodies, but one of the major ways it works as a medicine is by influencing our gut microbiota.
It’s a traditional fermented Korean dish made with vegetables and it's both sour and spicy. The sour flavor comes from the fact that the vegetables are fermented, and the kick comes from the seasonings.
Every gardener’s been there. You go away for a day, peer under the leaves, and are alarmed to find that the small, reasonable little squashes from yesterday have doubled in size. But I hate to see zucchini go to waste. So after talking with David, I roamed the market, asking vendors and customers for their best zucchini ideas.
Neily and Patricia live in Harwich, but they’re originally from Black River Jamaica and Neily says since he was a kid, he’s been eating roosters in a dish called cock soup.
Have you ever noticed how some blueberries are light blue and others are dark navy? How some are tart and some are sweet? Some tiny and some huge?
Many food systems around the world also revolve around plants that live for years in the same place—perennials like shrubs and trees.
My friend Drew Locke is a seventh-generation farmer in Truro. He’s always trying new things — partly because he’s curious and partly because even though he comes from a long line of farmers, a lot of intergenerational knowledge has been lost in recent decades and he’s focused on relearning the old ways.
This week on the Local Food Report, Elspeth learns about growing shiitake mushrooms in Truro.
Last spring, honeybee keeper Tim Colon of Vineyard Haven emailed me a fascinating recording.
For more than a hundred years, the state has been stocking ponds all over the Cape and Islands with locally raised trout. Mike Clark of Plymouth helps breed these fish at a series of outdoor pools in Sandwich.
This week on the Local Food Report, a Korean Natural Farming teacher on the relationships that create healthy soil.
Chris Trump grew up on a 750-acre family macadamia nut farm in Hawaii. His dad took over the farm in 1988, and by the time Chris joined the business in the early 2000s, it was struggling. Profits were low, and chemical use was high.
This week on the Local Food Report, a perennial vegetable you probably already have growing in your yard.
This week on the Local Food Report, a chef in New Bedford teaches students to cook with local seafood.
One fall, I lead a foraging walk with visiting fellows from the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown. I pointed out Prickly Pear Cactus — a plant that I’ve heard you can eat, but that we’re not allowed to harvest in Massachusetts, because here it’s considered an endangered species.
Around this time every year, Elspeth talks with a local farmer or gardener about ordering seeds for the upcoming growing season. This year, she’s branched into aquaculture.
This week on the Local Food Report, adapting Cape Cod menus to changes in local fisheries.
This week on the Local Food Report, soil building inspiration all the way from the Amazon.
The other night I had dinner with a friend who’s expecting a baby. The conversation turned to seafood — what’s safe to eat and why it’s important during pregnancy.
Elspeth Hay's great-grandfather kept his eggnog recipe in the safety deposit box - it's that good. This week on The Local Food Report, Elspeth reveals its secrets, and how it got the sexton drunk.
Josh Leveque and his family keep a few goats and time to time you’ll see an irresistible if incongruous photo of the goats at the beach…
The other day I finally put my garden to bed. While I ripped out the skeletons of tomatoes and tucked away eggplant cages for another season, I noticed some of my plants had gone to seed.
Peter Burgess is as interested in the history of farming as he is in the practice itself. His farm in Truro is called Sixpence Farm, after a silver coin he found in the soil that dates back to 1689.
This week on the Local Food Report, a re-telling of the Thanksgiving story with an unexpected narrator.
Winter squash is everywhere these days. I find it in my soup and folded into pies, it’s hidden in the guise of muffins and sweetbreads.
When Laura Geiges was a little girl, her mom used to bring home something special from New York City’s China Town. It was quail eggs.
I have a friend in Barnstable who’s always telling me about unusual edible plants, particularly perennials. Recently, he told me he’s planting something new called a Cornelian Cherry.
I have a friend in Barnstable who’s always telling me about unusual edible plants, particularly perennials. Recently, he told me he’s planting something new called a Cornelian Cherry.
When Brewster farmer Ron Backer first read about honeynut squash, he knew he wanted to grow it.
When Brewster farmer Ron Backer first read about honeynut squash, he knew he wanted to grow it.
What if I told you I’ve been making grape pie? Would you believe me? Or, like my mother, would you need me to cut you a slice, to prove it?
What if I told you I’ve been making grape pie? Would you believe me? Or, like my mother, would you need me to cut you a slice, to prove it?
Sara and Dean Moran of Wellfleet are sitting half in Cape Cod bay, half out, taking a break from fishing on a pile of rocks.Dean has a fish in his hand. It’s a tautog. Also known as tow-tog or blackfish. It’s actually a really good eating fish.
I found an amazing source for dried figs and olive at our local farmers market. Maria Lemanis grew up on Cape Cod. But her extended family is from Greece, and once she finished school she moved back to the old country to work on her family’s farm.
You've probably heard of chervil, lemon basil, and lemon verbena. But have you ever cooked with them?
In this episode of The Local Food Report, horticulturist Laura Swain demonstrates how to turn daylily flowers into a potluck showstopper.
Stephanie Morningstar is coordinator for the Northeast Farmers of Color Land Trust. The group started in 2017 as an informal alliance between farmers of color at Soul Fire Farm and Wildseed Farm in New York and Global Village in Grafton, Massachusetts.
Recently I made a visit to the Sandwich fish hatchery. That’s where the state raises trout for stocking in local ponds and rivers and I spoke with Mike Clark who helps breed four different trout varieties.
When we think of bees, most of us think of fields, farms, and honey. But many of our native bee species don’t make honey and the plants they pollinate live not just in fields or on farms but also in swamps and forests.
Almost twenty years ago, Juli Vanderhoop started cooking with fire."Someone said you bake every day, you gotta build this. Build this oven! And I just said, ‘You’re crazy,’ and I went to an oven build, and I fell in love with this."
Beau Valtz is standing in his Wellfleet kitchen in front of a giant pile of fresh garlic.He's wrapping heads of garlic tightly in tin foil.
The other day, my girls and I visited our friend Stephen Spear at his pick-your-own blueberry farm in Dennis. He walked us out to the woods alongside the fields, where a box of bumblebees had just arrived from Michigan.
This week marks the start of Passover. The first celebratory meal, known as the Seder, involves reading a sacred text called the Haggadah.
Round the Bend Farm is spread over 115 acres in Dartmouth on Buzzards Bay. And it is a working farm but it’s also an educational non-profit.
Brent Hemeon has five acres in Harwich and everywhere you look, there are apple trees. He has around 175 of them and started his garden in 1990, but then it got big. "Too big,” he says.
Benjamin Rapoza tends one of a hundred and forty-five plots at Dartmouth’s Helfand Community Garden.
One fall, I lead a foraging walk with visiting fellows from the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown. I pointed out Prickly Pear Cactus — a plant that I’ve heard you can eat, but that we’re not allowed to harvest in Massachusetts, because here it’s considered an endangered species.
Around this time every year, Elspeth talks with a local farmer or gardener about what they’re planning for the upcoming growing season. This week, she sits down with a Wellfleet gardener and restauranteur.
When Charlie Moeder first got involved with the Chatham Harwich Newcomers Club Men’s Cooking group, he volunteered to run the sign-up booth at the Newcomers general meeting.
The other night I had dinner with a friend who’s expecting a baby. The conversation turned to seafood — what’s safe to eat and why it’s important during pregnancy.
This time of year, I miss my grandmother. When I was a kid Biee always came to visit for Christmas and she spent most of her time in the kitchen.
The other day I finally put my garden to bed. While I ripped out the skeletons of tomatoes and tucked away eggplant cages for another season, I noticed some of my plants had gone to seed.
Walter Goldstein became interested in corn in the 1980s. “I started working with all sorts of corn breeders, I started learning from them, teaching myself how to breed the corn.
For years now, Danielle Hill has felt corn reaching out. The plant has visited her in her dreams, and helped her through pregnancy and post-partum care. And for a while, corn was simply offering gifts. But this year, something changed. Danielle had an opportunity to reciprocate.
When Laura Geiges was a little girl, her mom used to bring home something special from New York City’s China Town. It was quail eggs.
Sara and Dean Moran of Wellfleet are sitting half in Cape Cod bay, half out, taking a break from fishing on a pile of rocks.Dean has a fish in his hand. It’s a tautog. Also known as tow-tog or blackfish. It’s actually a really good eating fish.
I found an amazing source for dried figs and olive at our local farmers market. Maria Lemanis grew up on Cape Cod. But her extended family is from Greece, and once she finished school she moved back to the old country to work on her family’s farm.
To plant a fig tree in our climate is an act of faith. Most figs are native to the tropics—and in the heat and sweat of this world they do amazing things. They’ve co-evolved with a wasp that crawls into the fruit and pollinates it from the inside out.
The other afternoon I took my girls to walk the bayside beach. They snacked on sea beans and beach plums and I filled my t-shirt with the fruits of rosa rugosa. The hips are big this time of year and while some have gone soft and mushy, there are plenty of firm ones.
This week on the Local Food Report, Elspeth drives the back roads of the Outer Cape with a forager looking for elderberry flowers.
This week on The Local Food Report, Elspeth learns about building drought-resistant raised beds.
I first tasted milkweed a few years ago. I was at Ceraldi in Wellfleet—a restaurant known for its focus on hyper-local ingredients— and I tried the plants’ shoots. They were bright and snappy and so gloriously green-tasting that I wanted to learn more.