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Liz Susman Karp is a freelance writer with a focus on culinary history, foodways, food systems, and the intersection of food and culture.

Feel free to take a look at my work. I welcome the opportunity to connect about writing or story ideas.

Featured Articles

Explore a featured selection of my writing work below.
FoodPrint •

Can nutritious and sustainable hickory oil compete in a crowded cooking oils market?

The yellowbud hickory tree “changed my perception of the entire world, of history and of knowledge itself,” says renowned forager Sam Thayer.
Few people know about the yellowbud or the mild, buttery oil its nuts produce. That’s despite archeological and historical accounts documenting fairly widespread Native American production of hickory oil when the Europeans arrived in North America.
“We have this tree that was used for thousands of years as perhaps the single most important plant food on th...
Times Union •

From maple tapping to garden clubs, Schenectady’s Farm to School program grows hands-on learning

Henricksen, the farm-to-school project manager and garden educator for the Schenectady school district, had just helped the class install a tap in one of the trees. Each child took a turn hammering it three times while chanting, “Tap, tap, tap for the sap, sap, sap.” Henriksen will turn the collected sap into maple syrup to be served at pancake breakfasts.

Henricksen, the farm-to-school project manager and garden educator for the Schenectady school district, had just helped the class install a...
Times Union •

In the Hudson Valley, a museum where every plate tells a story

Walk into The International Museum of Dinnerware Design in Kingston’s arts district and your eye is likely to be drawn to a thicket of deep green leaves and ruby red roses. Look more closely and you’ll find a visually arresting and ingeniously designed 73-piece set of sculptural dinnerware called Rose Garden: 12 place settings, including plates shaped like leaves, cups resembling stems, bowls that look like roses, and salt and pepper shakers that double as rose buds, all fit together and set on...
Ambrook •

Farm-to-Prison Cuisine - Offrange

Last summer, Marshal P., a prisoner and cook at the Marble Valley Regional Correctional Facility (MVRCF) in Rutland, Vermont, prepared tomato sauce from scratch, using 300 pounds of tomatoes grown at a farm nearby. “It’s actually cool to make it all fresh,” he said.Marshal, who patronized farmstands prior to being incarcerated, was pleased by the positive response from fellow prisoners to his homemade meals. “Guys will come by and say, ‘Hey, dinner was great!’” he reported.Using nutritious, loca...
Azure Road •

Organic Rice Farming in Japan Preserves Tradition

I sat on a blanket in the serene stillness of the Japanese countryside, surrounded by rice paddies. From such a vantage, it was easy to envision farmers of old, tending their rectangular plots to painstakingly produce the country’s hallowed staple of diet and culture: rice.
It’s a scene that 34-year-old Shinichiro Hatta, owner of Ofukywaku Farm in Nanto, five hours northwest of Tokyo, is seeking to save. As older farmers age out of farming, land lies abandoned. Hatta has picked up the plow in ho...
Times Union •

In a Columbia County orchard, heirloom apples tell stories of the past

“I started this as a backyard project that got out of control,” Gidon Coll said on a recent tour of the Hudson Valley Apple Project, his two-acre heritage apple orchard where he grows rare, unique and historically significant cultivars. Neat rows of leafy trees heavy with apples speak to Coll’s fascination with the fruit’s incredible genetic diversity — the range of flavor, shapes, textures, skin and flesh colors — and the stories behind them.

“I started this as a backyard project that got out...
Civil Eats •

How Libraries Are Creating Community Through Food

For the last five years, Michelle Coleman has attended cooking and culinary education classes in a light-filled teaching kitchen at her local library in Boston. The kitchen, designed for hands-on cooking and demonstrations with four gas cooktops and a 17-foot-long counter, was included in the building’s redesign in 2020 in response to community feedback.Here Coleman learned how to compost and repurpose leftovers, thereby reducing her food waste, a bonus to learning about new foods and flavor pro...
Times Union •

Breaking bread, building bridges at The Reher Center for Immigrant Culture and History

Peer into the arched, oversized, butter-yellow windows of the brick building on the corner of Broadway and Spring Street at the top of Kingston’s historic Rondout neighborhood and you’ll see a scene frozen in time: the storefront of what was a bustling bakery set in 1959.

Peer into the arched, oversized, butter-yellow windows of the brick building on the corner of Broadway and Spring Street at the top of Kingston’s historic Rondout neighborhood and you’ll see a scene frozen in time: the storefr...
FoodPrint •

Returning seeds to their ancestors: Revitalizing biodiversity and foodways through plant rematriation

Courtney Streett first heard about the Nanticoke squash in 2021. As president and executive director of the then-recently formed Native Roots Farm Foundation (NRFF), which reunites the Nanticoke people of the larger Delaware region with aspects of their heritage and shares that knowledge with the wider world, she was intrigued and made a mental note to research the fruit further.
Streett, who is a member of the Nanticoke Tribe, was not surprised that she or few other tribal members were aware of...
Modern Farmer •

On the Ground with Organizations Uplifting BIPOC Farmers - Modern Farmer

Leslie Woodward was in a real pickle. She’d temporarily closed Edenesque, her nearly decade-old self manufactured plant-based dairy company, to transition to a co-manufactured enterprise with a production partner, and urgently needed capital to scale up. 

A Black woman and Le Cordon Bleu grad who cooked in prestigious restaurants, Woodward watched as peers in the industry obtained funding because they had a network to tap into. Individual investors dismissed her as not being ambitious or confid...
FoodPrint •

Can sail freight tackle the large carbon footprint of food transport?

Then Schooner Apollonia resumed her 12-day round trip journey from Hudson, New York, to Highlands, New Jersey, via New York City. With essentially emissions-free travels, the vessel is a prime example of low-carbon transport.
Shipping by sail, known within the industry as “sail freight,” is an emerging niche method aimed at revolutionizing the conventional shipping industry. The boats are powered by wind, tides and sails — rather than the fossil fuels that power commercial cargo boats — leading...
Modern Farmer •

This Immersive Farm Apprenticeship is Training the Next Generation of Farmers - Modern Farmer

Most July mornings, Charlotte Maffie rises with the alarm at 5:30 a.m., sleepily dons her “stinky, stinky chore clothes” and heads to the red barn to begin the daily morning tasks of greeting and caring for the 60 cows and 40 chickens at Catskill Waygu at Hilltop Farm in upstate New York.
In the 90-minute ritual, she distributes buckets of grain and hay for the cows’ breakfast, scrapes away animal feces, fills the water trough bucket by bucket, milks the dairy cows, feeds the barnyard cats and n...
Modern Farmer •

Spotlight On a Network Aiming to Make Everyone a Food Changemaker - Modern Farmer

Ali Ghiorse wants to transform our food system. A formidable goal, to be sure, but the former Bay Area chef is inspired by the years she spent immersed in Northern California’s food culture, where locally and sustainably produced food and drink is standard.
Ghiorse had stopped cooking professionally by the time she had moved back to her hometown of Greenwich in 2014; years of cooking at scale had been physically demanding and stressful, and she was ready to expand her knowledge and skills. But s...
Modern Farmer •

Spotlight On a Network Aiming to Make Everyone a Food Changemaker - Modern Farmer

Ali Ghiorse wants to transform our food system. A formidable goal, to be sure, but the former Bay Area chef is inspired by the years she spent immersed in Northern California’s food culture, where locally and sustainably produced food and drink is standard.
Ghiorse had stopped cooking professionally by the time she had moved back to her hometown of Greenwich in 2014; years of cooking at scale had been physically demanding and stressful, and she was ready to expand her knowledge and skills. But s...
Times Union •

The restaurant redefining ‘farm-to-table’

Most area restaurants do not have their own livestock farm (Michelin-starred Blue Hill at Stone Barns in Westchester County is the only other one nearby). But raising Berkshire pigs and Dorper sheep is a natural expression of the couple’s sustainable ethos and locally driven, best products ideology.

Most area restaurants do not have their own livestock farm (Michelin-starred Blue Hill at Stone Barns in Westchester County is the only other one nearby). But raising Berkshire pigs and Dorper sheep...
Ambrook •

Making the Case for Sorghum | Research

Proud, majestic stalks, showcasing plump seed heads, stood proudly outside the kitchen door of the acclaimed restaurant Blue Hill at Stone Barns in Upstate New York last summer. When I mistook the 15 plus-foot high plants for corn, Jason Grauer, Stone Barns’ director of farm innovation, gently corrected me. “That’s actually sorghum,” he said.

It’s a question people in a host of disciplines from haute cuisine to art are asking. This ancient grain from Africa, one of the top five grain crops worl
Modern Farmer •

Sequestering Carbon Is Not Just A Science But An Art, Too

Brooke Singer may laugh when she calls herself “a self-taught soil nerd,” but she is quite serious. When Singer looks at soil, she sees something beyond just the microbes, minerals and organic matter that comprise the earth’s most biodiverse ecosystem. She sees something incredible, “teeming with life and diversity,” she says.

Singer’s respect for soil inspired her to found Carbon Sponge, an interdisciplinary platform that honors this threatened resource by cultivating healthy soil to foster ca
Times Union •

Can an ancient grain promote soil health in upstate New York?

When Brooke Singer, an artist whose practice intersects with technology and social change, was exploring soil and humans’ relationship to it, she wondered: What does soil need from us and how can we provide it?

To find out, Singer founded Carbon Sponge, which encompasses her art practice, a farmers’ network, scientific research, a cultural exhibit, a how-to guide and a sampling kit. The goal is to spread awareness of humans’ complex relationship to soil and to teach gardeners, farmers and other
Ambrook •

The Black Farmers Growing Rice | Research

In 1926, Konda Mason’s grandfather fled his prosperous Alabama farm in the dark of night, wife and infant son in tow, to escape being lynched by the Klu Klux Klan. He lost everything he had worked for. His story is all too typical of Black farming’s legacy in America, punctuated with painful stories of lost land and livelihoods.

In 2019, Mason, a serial entrepreneur and economic and social activist, founded Jubilee Justice, an organization that uses regenerative agriculture to foster racial hea
Alcohol Professor •

Kings County Distillery is Redefining American Whiskey

“My approach was I’ll just do it. And I’ll figure it out,” says Colin Spoelman, co-founder and distiller of Kings County Distillery in New York City’s Brooklyn Navy Yard. “By excluding the commercial side of the business, and focusing on ‘do it by sense, do it by taste’, I ended up with a very different approach and product.” And figure it out he did. Kings County Distillery, which crafts 10 artisan whiskeys including bourbon, a peated bourbon, an Empire Rye, and a coffee whiskey, has been twice
FoodPrint •

A rye renaissance is coming

Flourishing in the poor soil, rye fed people in colonial America, replenished land denigrated by tobacco growing and provided straw for animal bedding and for the manufacture of paper. But as the United States expanded west, wheat became king. It grew well and people liked the taste — and the advances of the Industrial Revolution, including the mechanization of agriculture and the introduction of the railroad, propelled it to the fore. Gone, too, was the once-ubiquitous rye whiskey, as Prohibiti
The Vinegar Professor •

Shrub: Drinking Vinegar, from Colonial Times to Current Day | The Vinegar Professor

A process and a product, Michael Dietsch, author of Shrubs: An Old-Fashioned Drink for Modern Times, says, “it’s a way of combining ingredients to make a drink that is a unique culinary experience. I'm not sure anybody's done the research in what's going on with the chemistry when you make a shrub because it's almost like an ecosystem. The vinegar and sugar mellow out, and the character of the fruit flavor starts to change. You have something that's not just a combination of flavors, it's a new
The Vinegar Professor •

At Sideyard, Sarah Bourke Refreshes Small Farms Through Fruit-Infused Vinegars | The Vinegar Professor

Bourke was hooked. She had been making kombucha at home and began making shrubs. It was early in the pandemic, and as she walked her neighborhood, she started taking note of the fruit trees in her neighbors’ side yards and foraging for fruit to use. Initially a hobby, the results of which were shared with family and friends, Sideyard Shrubs, now Sideyard, was born. “I love making, drinking, cooking, and sharing them with people,” she says of the locally sourced, fruit-infused vinegars she crafts
Times Union •

Farm program pushes small grains as next big thing

COLD SPRING — The Hudson Valley was once the breadbasket of the U.S. But poor farming practices, the building of the Erie Canal and cheaper long-range transportation brought grains to the Midwest, where they became a crop mainstay. Over time, food growing and processing operations consolidated into what has become a more industrialized food system.

So in 2021, the Glynwood Center for Regional Food and Farming, a Cold Spring-based nonprofit whose mission is to make the Hudson Valley a place wher
Hudson Valley Magazine •

Dassai Blue Sake Brewery Makes Its Grand Debut in Hyde Park

The popularity of Japanese culture is booming, and it’s not just sushi, anime, and pop music. Interest in sake is on the rise, which is why premium sake brewer Asahi Shuzo decided to open Dassai Blue Sake Brewery (its first brewery outside of Japan) in Hyde Park in September. Just down the road from the Culinary Institute of America (CIA), it’s the largest artisanal sake brewery in the U.S.

The proximity is deliberate. The CIA approached Asahi Shuzo to work together “to raise awareness and educ
FoodPrint •

Is rice the ‘climate-change crop’ the Northeast needs?

Rice growing in the U.S. is today mostly associated with Arkansas or California, and historically, the Lowcountry and Mississippi Delta. But this summer, Cornell Cooperative Extension launched what it hopes will be a long-term project to develop a regional rice growing system in the Northeast. “We wanted to identify possible flood-tolerant crops for our farmers,” said Cornell professor Jenny Kao-Kniffin, who is overseeing the project. Over the past decade, intense precipitation events have cause
Ambrook •

Maslins, a Method of Planting Grains You’ve Probably Never Heard of | Research

Picture a small field of dry, rocky soil, dotted with workers. They’re busy hand-scattering a mixture of seeds throughout, without regard for the neat rows of single grains that are emblematic of modern agriculture. The farmworkers’ movements look casual, almost haphazard, but in fact are quite deliberate. At a time in agriculture when envisioning the future may mean looking to the past, a forgotten method of farming may provide some solutions to climate change’s many challenges.

Maslins are bo
Modern Farmer •

Prospective Farmers Face Big Barriers to Entry. This Apprentice Program Wants to Set a New Standard

Sam Rose is worried about the future of farming. The farmer with Four Corners Community Farm in Red Hook, NY points to the rate of aging farmers and the number of farms decreasing due to consolidation. “At some point, I think if we do not get another generation of farmers, we will have difficulty feeding ourselves,” he says.

It’s one of the reasons he signed on to be a mentor farm in the Glynwood Center for Regional Food and Farming’s newly expanded farm apprentice program.

Across the country,
Atlas Obscura •

This Website Reimagines Cities as Foraging Utopias

When Ethan Welty began brewing cider as a young graduate student at CU Boulder, he was faced with a challenge: finding apples.

It was a unique obstacle for the lifelong forager. As a young child living in France, Welty had foraged for chestnuts and mushrooms in the countryside and he continued the practice as an adolescent after moving back to the United States. But Welty wasn’t used to viewing a city as a source of food.

“You need to flip a switch in your mind to see the space around you diff
Westchester Magazine •

Ten Homakase Does At-Home Sushi Experiences in Westchester

Take your date night or dinner party to the next level with an at-home, expandable nigiri dinner crafted by an expert sushi chef.

Growing up in a Ukrainian immigrant family with its own food traditions, Max Weiss wanted to understand those of other cultures. That’s why he was intrigued by restaurants, where he could explore entire cultures within four walls.

Weiss was particularly enchanted by sushi counters and the omakase experience. A failed attempt through his sushi-chef network to find on
Alcohol Professor •

10 Exquisite Elderflower Cocktails to Enjoy Now

When elderflower liqueur burst onto the bar scene in 2007, courtesy of St-Germain (pronounced Sahn-jer-MAHN), this new kind of liqueur with a delicate floral and fruity flavor quickly gained a following. Originally featured in light spring and summer drinks, mixologists and drinkers alike have since discovered the botanical goes well with a variety of liquors and spirits and herbs and spices. This versatility has earned elderflower liqueur a permanent berth on cocktail menus year-round. Here are
The Cheese Professor •

How Kate Arding Became a Farmhouse Cheese Pioneer

“Of course, I love cheese,” says Kate Arding, cheese monger extraordinaire and one of the foremost authorities on farmhouse cheese. But her simple declaration belies a deeper, more nuanced meaning. “I love what it stands for,” she says. “I love the people who work with it,” says the owner and Director of Operations of specialty food shop Talbott & Arding in bucolic Hudson, New York, her words coming fast. “I love the producers. I love the fact that it's a very collaborative world. I love that it
Westchester Magazine •

Alan Rosen on Junior's Cheesecake & Life in Westchester

Purchase’s Alan Rosen, the man behind the treasured Junior’s cheesecake empire, dishes on loving the restaurant business.

Alan Rosen opens the door with a warm smile and ushers a visitor into his white center-hall Colonial, set in a leafy Purchase cul-de-sac. Before settling into his spacious office to chat, he offers the visitor a bottle of water and a glass, pointing out the tempting cheese platter he had assembled.

Clearly for Rosen — who runs Junior’s, the iconic cheesecake-and-restaurant
The Cheese Professor •

Cheese Shops We Love: Cold Spring Cheese Shop

“It's not just so much {that} I love cheese,” says Timothy Haskell, explaining why he decided to open Cold Spring Cheese Shop. “I just love the culture of cheese shops, specifically all the things that are interspersed, gourmet things and things that go with cheese, fun charcuterie platters, the meats, jams, honeys. It usually has the best chips, crackers, and all of those.” An immersive and traditional theater director and events producer who created haunted houses and was one of the founding p
Plate •

Dan Kluger's Hopes, Challenges, and Restaurant Predictions for the Year Ahead

I’m not sure what the answer is for restaurants. So many different factors have affected this industry over the past year and a half, and all have been somewhat out of our control. Probably most of us would say we’ve just been trying to survive. Then everybody said, “Congratulations, you survived!” But it feels like we’re just back to the same.

I’ve been wrong about a lot, but the biggest challenge is probably dealing...
Resy | Right This Way •

Five Upstate New York Restaurants Worth the Trip —

Food and art coalesce at this one-of-a-kind former diner in Hudson, open since 2015. The space, filled with art, light, color, and music, exudes playfulness, as does the vibrant food with Latin American and South Asian origins. Chef-owner Carla Kaya Perez-Gallardo describes the menu and the hospitality at Lil’ Deb’s Oasis as “tropical comfort food.”

The art influence here comes directly from Perez-Gallardo, a three-time James Beard Award nominee, who arrived at cooking by way of making art. Her
VinePair •

How Investment and Starting Capital Influence Women-Owned Spirits Brands

“We started to look for money,” says Mhairi Voelsgen, recalling her initial attempt to raise capital for a whiskey distillery a decade ago. But when she was told during a pitch session that no one was going to give $3 million to a woman, she knew she would not be able to fund her dream.

The experience was disheartening, says Voelsgen, now founder and CEO of organic botanical distillery BroVo Spirits. A veteran marketing strategist descended from a long line of strong women, Voelsgen says they w
Plate •

These Owners Made Their NYC Restaurant a B-Corp to Balance Profit and Purpose

When customers tell Michael and Vivian Forte, owners of the New York City trattoria Pisticci, that “there’s such a great feeling” when entering their restaurant, the Fortes immediately deflect the compliment to the people who deserve it. “It's the staff,” Michael says. “To be honest with you, Viv and I are not there at night. If we’re there, we have dinner; we don't manage.”

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InsideHook •

Is Farm-to-Table the Future of Craft Brewing?

When you settle onto your counter stool by the window at Sing Sing Kill Brewery (SSKB), your foot may kick one of the large sacks of locally grown grains the cozy craft brewery in Ossining, New York, stores underneath.

Decorated with logos of area malthouses, these sacks demonstrate the goals of owners Eric Gearity and Matt Curtin: to brew beer that reflects New York State’s terroir — using high-quality ingredients, sourced as locally as possible.

The pair opened their brewery, named for the s
Modern Farmer •

Why Apple Detectives Are Tracking Down Lost Varieties

The phrase “lost and found” is being imbued with fresh meaning thanks to the Lost Apple Project.

Since 2014, the nonprofit organization has found 23 lost or nearly extinct apple varieties. At least 17,000 named varieties were once grown here after early colonists brought apples to America; today, there are just 5,000. The group seeks to identify and preserve heritage apple trees planted before 1920 in the Pacific Northwest.

“The history these old apple trees have is just incredible,” says Dave
Times Union •

Dirty Dog Farm forges a new path in cattle farming

GERMANTOWN — “We’re partners (with the land),” said Jesse Warner, explaining the philosophy behind Dirty Dog Farm, the cattle farm he runs with Josh Schwab in this Columbia County town. “I’m using the animals to help me adapt to the land to what I need it to be profitable, to be nutritious for the animals and for us.”

Walking the peaceful, abundantly grassy pastures on a brilliantly sunny June day, the men, in their early 30s, are more than happy to expound on how their modern approach — which

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