Social media spats and California wildfires. The difficulties of freelance writing careers. But most of all food — growing it, foraging for it, cooking it, eating it.
On Wednesday night, these were some of the contents of the latest episode of Co Create, a conversation series hosted by Nadine Nelson, head of Global Local Gourmet, interdisciplinary artist, and creative in residence at the New Haven Free Public Library.
In the series, Nelson and a different guest artist each week gather over Zoom to work on a creative project while talking about their processes as creative people. “You are invited to be a voyeur on both artists’ processes and also ask questions about your artistic and creative ventures. Creative engagement is an interactive and relational activity that creates community together.” Co Create is held in partnership with MakeHaven.
Previous guests in March were art therapist Briah Luckey; playwright, writer and organizer Ife Michelle Gardin; and cooking instructor Juju Harris. This week carried on the food theme with Esther Tseng, a freelance food writer whose work has appeared in the LA Times, Food & Wine, Eater, Civil Eats, LAist, VICE, Time Out, and Los Angeleno, among many other publications.
As Nelson began cutting out pieces of paper to make mandalas, she explained that she connected with the Los Angeles-based Tseng through social media. Perhaps more specifically, they had a social-media-style disagreement about how food writers present recipes. “She got upset and I got upset,” Nelson said, with a smile. Upon further consideration, however, Nelson realized that “I like passionate people and I thought, ‘she’ll be interesting to talk to.’” So Nelson reached out to Tseng and invited her to Co Create.
“Thank you so much for inviting me into your space,” Tseng said. “Before the pandemic,” she said, freelance food writing “was about trends and chef profiles. During The pandemic it pivoted toward food justice and inequalities in the food system.” That meant writing about how eggs were thrown out and vegetables ploughed under in fields even as lines for food banks grew, and writing about Covid-19 outbreaks in poultry processing plants.
Tseng is originally from the “93 percent White” western suburbs of Milwaukee. “It’s one of the most segregated cities in the country,” she said. In going to Los Angeles for college (at UCLA), “I was definitely running away from stuff. Though LA has its own problems,” she said. She now lives in East Hollywood. “I’m in the center of all this gentrifying going on around me, but I still love my neighborhood. It’s very Latino, and there’s still some great history here, thankfully.”
Her food writing began in 2007 “with a food blog — before influencers, there were food bloggers,” she said. She started off by writing about happy hour specials — $5 appetizers and cocktails. By 2015 she was getting pieces placed in publications and has been doing it ever since.
“Where is food writing going?” Nelson asked.
“Media in general, it looks really bleak,” Tseng said, noting that Medium was changing its model for publication and magazines were continuing to lay people off. She herself has a day job assisting brokers in a trading firm. “They’re all commission-based and I have a salary,” she said. “I don’t live off my writing.”
Nelson was an entirely understanding ear. As she continued to clip away at her mandala, she talked about how people always asked her why she never published a cookbook. “People don’t make money from cookbooks!” Nelson said. “I have a child!”
They then began talking about food — about the superiority of New Haven apizza, with Nelson wondering why New Yorkers got so bent out of shape when told they didn’t have the best pizza. “New York has everything else, so I don’t know what it is,” she said. But Nelson also revealed herself as someone who sometimes enjoyed stirring the pot of a conversation. “I’m Jamaican. I also said that Jamaican black cake wasn’t as good as Trinidadian. I’ll tell the truth,” she said, before explaining why she preferred the Trinidadian version of the rum-soaked fruit cake over her home island’s. “It’s like a pudding. It’s so rich. It’s divine,” she said. She explained that she has gone far and wide to find people who can make black cake to her liking. From there I got sea moss. That’s good old-fashioned Jamaican hospitality for you.” Sea moss, she explained, is a seaweed. “It looks kind of bushy, and it’s gelatinous when it’s dry. It’s kind of a superfood,” she said. People made it an ingredient in a smoothie, which Nelson had thoughts about. Sometimes, she said, “they convince themselves that it’s healthy but it has a ton of sugar and alcohol.” Nelson took her seaweed dissolved in tea.
“So it’s like a supplement,” Tseng said.
“Yes,” Nelson said. “You put a tablespoon in there. It’s good for your hair.”
After a brief foray into the differences between East Coast and West Coast working environments, and walking versus driving towns, they returned to the subject of writing.
“Do you still blog?” Nelson asked.
“I don’t,” Tseng said. “I only write for money. I don’t have time to not write for money.” Before, Tseng had said that bloggers were perhaps an early form of influencer, but the term influencer now meant something different. “By numbers, I am a micro-influencer,” she said. “I don’t get paid to influence, I get paid to write. If you’re an influencer, it’s not your opinion” that the people paying an influencer want. All it is, is “that some company liked your numbers and wanted to reach your audience.” This meant influencers taking money from companies had to then express their support for whatever the company’s products were. Tseng was perfectly okay, in that sense, not being an influencer. “I’d rather say what I want,” she said.
Nelson asked what Tseng was currently working on. One piece she was working on tackling the enormous question of the future of food. It involved interviews with several high-profile people in the food world — José Andrés, chef and founder of the nonprofit World Central Kitchen, which provides meals to people in disaster-stricken areas; urban farm pioneer Karen Washington; Sean Sherman, a.k.a. the Sioux Chef, reclaiming native North American cuisine.
The two got on the idea of mapping out the future of food by looking into its past, and attending to parts of food culture that oppression in the United States had tried to erase.“There’s that history of Black connection to the land,” Nelson said. She talked about a trip to Oakland and Berkeley, where she saw where the Black Panthers had bakeries, supermarket, farm sites. “A lot of people don’t realize all the good services the Black Panthers had,” she said.
Tseng saw parallels in Sherman’s work. “He’s all about indigenous cooking, going back to the roots of North American indigenous ingredients and bringing that back into our food system,” she said, noting that “25 percent of Mexican food is indigenous” while virtually no U.S. food is. It’s “colonialist food.”
Nelson asked how Los Angeles was faring during the pandemic. “We were doing well in the beginning, and then we were doing not well at all,” Tseng said. “Our sprawl made us complacent, and not as vigilant after a while, but it hit hardest in low-income families, who might have multiple families in one dwelling place, or they worked in the hospitality or the garment industry.” They were front line workers essentially, without the protections.
Tseng talked about how she had been able to take charge of a small plot of land on her block that she could use to grow a garden. “I’m growing beets in my little plot right now. Do you know how to tell when to harvest them?”
“You’re going to eat them? And the greens too?” Nelson said. “Americans don’t eat sweet potato greens, but Africans eat them and they’re very nutritious.” Right about then she revealed that the mandala she was making was essentially a collage of images of food.
“I love the greens of root vegetables,” Tseng said.
“Are you a good cook?” Nelson asked.
“I’m better during the pandemic,” Tseng said with a laugh, explaining that before the pandemic, as a food writer, she was “eating everyone else’s food.”
“Do you forage?” Nelson asked.
“I don’t. I would love to learn, though,” Tseng said. “Thanks for putting that on my to-do list.”
“Foraging, especially in the pandemic — we can do it for two hours,” Nelson said, explaining that she foraged with her kid. “I’ve been getting into herbalism, learning all these different things in New England, and realizing you can make tinctures, and how good they are for you.”
Their talk of what they were doing on opposite coasts led them to talk about cancelled travel plans. Tseng had put off a trip to Oaxaca. Nelson talked about not being able to visit Jamaica. Tseng talked about how she usually made a trip every year to visit friends on the East Coast.
“I miss the trees, a lot. All the trees just shrivel up here,” Tseng said. The water comes from farther north, “and they don’t let us forget it. Otherwise we just pray for rain.” Los Angeles, she said, used to get more rain, but it was getting drier every year, which meant the wildfires “just keep getting worse.”
Picking up on the theme of environmental degradation, Nelson asked, “as a food writer, what do you think are solutions?”
“The problem is Big Ag. We’re subsidizing the wrong things, mono-crops, and the soil is getting worse and worse,” Tseng said. “We need more biodiversity.” But when the agriculture and logging industries have focused on just a few species of plants for eating (e.g., corn, soybeans) and logging, “how are you going to tell these farmers and loggers that they have to change their approach?”
For herself, Tseng wanted to move into writing more personal essays, but it was “scary” The theme of anti-Asian violence is unfortunately timely, she said, but “it’s something I’ve experienced my entire life, so I have a lot to say about it.” And “I’ve been totally on this plant thing” — of gardening and having plants in her apartment, she said. “I’ve been going crazy with them,” arranging them and potting and repotting them. “I’ve felt the change in aura in my living space and I’ve been enjoying them.”
As their time together was drawing to an end, Nelson asked Tseng if she would like Nelson to read her tarot-like cards, using goddess cards and a deck Nelson had made. Tseng agreed. For Tseng, Nelson pulled a card for sage, denoting wishes, protection, wisdom and long life.
For Tseng, it checked out. “I have grandparents who lived to their 90s,” she said. “I’ve had a lot of protection. I flipped my car and survived that…. Getting out of the house when I did and moving to college was definitely protection, and a way to find myself…. Wisdom has definitely been the collection of my life’s experiences. I’m trying to make the most of the lessons that have been taught me. I think I’ve always had wishes that showed me that, when I got them, it’s not actually the best way — or I’ve had ways to amend my wishes in ways that have been more beneficial, and with an expanded worldview, have made better wishes.”
For Tseng’s goddess card, Nelson pulled one denoting eternal love.
“I try to have eternal love for everything. Not temporary. Not conditional,” Tseng said.
“You’re on a high vibration if you don’t have conditions to your love,” Nelson.
That made Tseng laugh. “Maybe it’s more of an aspiration than the truth,” she said.
To find information on the next Co Create and other offerings from the New Haven Free Public Library, visit the calendar on the library’s website.