Hi, I’m Katy.
I’m a London-based freelance writer of food, wine and farming with an emphasis on social and environmental justice issues in food.
Recent Work:
I was lucky enough to be named a finalist for the 2024 London Independent Story Prize for my short story, ‘Dear Julia (London Fields)’. READ MORE >>
‘SWITZERLAND’S HEROIC TERROIR: THE VITICULTURAL SUPERHEROES OF THE VALAIS’ [SLOP ISSUE 3, JAN 2024]
The Valais is one oft he highest winemaking regions in the world; its vineyards reach altitudes of1,000 metres or more and they’re planted on extremely steep and treacherous slopes. It’s one of few regions, in fact, to earn the designation of ‘heroic terror:’a place so difficult to grow grapes, it’s considered literally heroic to do so. READ MORE >>
SLOP ISSUE 2: THE COAST [NOV 2024]
I’ve never been to Santorini. But tasting its wine makes me feel like I have. Santorini Assyrtiko—a crisp white wine made from the island’s native grape—has the saltiness of seaweed and ocean breeze, the minerality of licking a rock. It tastes like an island ought to, and it’s not hard to picture drinking copious amounts of it while feasting on grilled fish and fava mash in the heat of the Aegean sun. But what excites me so much about Santorini wine, way beyond its flavour, is its pure implausibility. READ MORE >>
Who picks the grapes? Like who really picks the grapes? I’ve been drinking wine for at least fifteen years now and I never asked that question until recently. By the time the wine makes it into our glass, it’s so far removed from the source — by months, years, states, countries — that it’s easy to forget about all the hands that pruned the vines, weeded the rows, picked and smashed the fruit. But among those in our industry who place so much emphasis on terroir, shouldn’t we be concerned with the livelihood of terroir’s principal stewards? Those who spend the most time with the fruit? READ MORE >>
I’m keenly aware, now, of being that ‘stupid American’ — too loud, too excitable, too ornery — and try to hide it as much as possible in public. When American friends and family visit, I’m always terrified we’ll stick out like sore thumbs; I shuffle us to the left side of the walkway, keep our voices down, stay quiet and out of the way. But I still say ‘tomato’ like an American — and I always will. READ MORE >>
REVEL MEAT CO: COPYWRITING FOR WEBSITE + BROCHURE
The term “regenerative agriculture” is seemingly everywhere, appearing across the news media, on food labels, in docuseries and documentaries. But what is it, exactly? And why is it so important? By adopting farming techniques that mimic natural cycles, regenerative agriculture can build healthy soil, restore biodiversity and sequester carbon from the atmosphere—all while producing nutritious food. READ MORE >>
In the hopes of learning a different way of relating to food, we spoke to a number of Indigenous people who farm, hunt, and gather about Indigenous wisdom, lifeways, and agricultural practices in use today. Sewn through the ideas of everyone we spoke to was a worldview that informs a reciprocal approach to agriculture and nature as a whole, one that values intergenerational knowledge and work, reverence and respect. READ MORE >>
Midcoast Maine is a popular tourist destination for a reason.
Come here in summer and the lobster shacks might lure you into eating a butter-basted lobster roll twice in one day. Stick around for fall foliage — when the oaks and birches and maples turn electric red, hot pink and golden yellow against the deep green of balsam firs — and you’ll witness a symphony so beautiful it might make you weep. READ MORE >>
I’ll be the first to admit that drinking natural wine makes me feel cool. I’m fully engulfed in the trendy, gotta-catch-em-all game of this world. I have an entire album of screenshotted bottles on my phone. I’m guilty of choosing wines based on beautiful labels or rumored funk. But I also know that natural wine carries a torch much brighter than its trendiness. READ MORE >>
Many experts say that the war on meat is missing the point. There’s an extensive body of research suggesting that livestock should not shoulder blame for the climate crisis. In fact, these experts would argue that grazing animals are a crucial part of the solution. READ MORE >>
“Farms don’t go on furlough.”
As COVID-19 shuttered bars and restaurants across the country last month, there were compounding effects on all who exist within the supply chain. Among the most affected? Small-scale farmers, many of whom rely on restaurant business to stay afloat.
The farmers market gets a lot of attention in summer, when sun-ripened tomatoes, peaches and peppers are the stars of the show. But a winter market can be equally exciting if you know what to look for and what to do with your finds. Hearty vegetables like butternut squash, beets, celery root and turnips are often grown year-round. Not to mention the earthy, versatile queen of leafy greens: kale. READ MORE >>
HERE’S 11 regenerative farming practices to pay attention to—and how they benefit both people and planet. READ MORE >>
Winemakers across the country are making some of the most interesting and delicious wine out there — and they’re adopting the kinds of farming and business practices that rope wine into a much larger conversation about agriculture, climate change, inequity and inclusion. So why aren’t we drinking more American wine?
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I hadn’t planned to be on a corner in South Philadelphia with a cheesesteak in each hand. But there I was, standing between Philly’s two most famous cheesesteak rivals — Pat’s King of Steaks and Geno’s — with Cheez Whiz and onion grease dripping down my chin.
Ask David about Adelsheim’s unlikely and impressive outcome, and he’ll be quick to tell you: it took a village. The collaborative spirit in those early days is exactly what primed the Willamette Valley for success. And that ethos is still sewn through the fabric of Adelsheim today. So as they celebrate their 50th anniversary, they’re celebrating their community at large. READ MORE >>
Grass-fed beef and dairy are seemingly more popular than ever — though it’s less of a trend than a revival of traditional farming practices, including those of Indigenous populations around the world who’ve long understood the benefits of grazing animals. And there are a number of reasons, from climate change to animal welfare to flavor to make the switch from buying products from conventionally raised cows if you can afford to. But is there a difference when it comes to nutrition? Is grass-fed beef and dairy really that much healthier for us than grain-fed? READ MORE >>
Before they were ranchers, Tristan and Aubyn Banwell were vegans. Then, an experience homesteading led them to appreciate the importance of livestock in small-scale farming: while converting an overgrown lot into cropland, they enlisted pigs to uproot shrubs and trees, ducks to control the slugs, and chickens to recycle plant material into the soil as manure…Tristan sees their transition from vegans to livestock farmers as a natural result of uncovering the complexities of the food system… READ MORE >>
“SUMMER PEOPLE”
They’d call me a “summer person” - though I don’t feel like one. Not a member of the Hamptons elite or one of the New York families that stroll Main Street on August afternoons. I’m not a “weekend warrior” or a tourist, but I’m not part of the community either. I came to East Hampton accidentally - as a personal chef in one of those massive beachfront estates you may hear the locals complaining about. Each July, I’m part of a swarm of some 60,000 summer residents who’ve steadily transformed this place from a tight-knit agrarian economy into a full-blown celebrity beach resort. East Hampton was once a small farming town, and not even that long ago. Spend enough time here and you’ll start to feel the remnants of its roots: salt-washed wood houses, old-school fish markets, dilapidated full-service gas pumps plopped next to stores with $6,000 earrings in their windows.
You’ve just eaten 10 Taco Bell tacos and a frozen Mountain Dew and you feel... suspiciously still hungry. You’ve consumed about 1,880 calories, but your body isn’t satisfied. What’s happening? Studies show that satiety, the mechanism that stops us from eating more than what we need, has less to do with caloric intake than it does with the intake of certain macronutrients ― types of protein, carbohydrates and fat ― and the physical volume of food. READ MORE >>
CHERRY BOMBE MAGAZINE
I’m guessing I’m not the only woman whose reaction to all the recent sexual harassment allegations was a resounding “duh.” This isn’t news to me. This isn’t news to us.
This is a guilt I share with many women, and it is two-fold: we feel guilty for throwing our bosses, our mentors, our friends under the bus — and we feel guilty for not doing so sooner. READ MORE >>
SO WHAT WHO CARES: STORIES ABOUT FOOD & DRINK
A self-published quarterly magazine of immersive stories on the intersection of food and community. The namesake comes from a desire to do something just for the joy of it — outside the constructs of traditional publications.
OUTSTANDING IN THE FIELD: website copy + social media
You’ve probably noticed an upswing of ramps, nettles and wild mushrooms on menus all over the country. But Tom takes it a step further, using obscure ingredients with short, near-impossible-to-catch seasonality: feral summer squash, wild Szechuan peppercorns and pineapple weed, to name a few. Recently, we caught up with Tom to chat about his upcoming pop-ups, how he learned to forage and why cooking with wild ingredients inspires him to be more creative as a chef. READ MORE >>
By this point you’ve likely heard of natural wine, the latest trend that’s sweeping the wine world one pét-nat at a time. But despite its reputation as a buzzword, natural wine is not a new phenomenon. If anything, it’s the wine of yesteryear, before the invention of chemical herbicides and additives used in modern-day conventional winemaking. READ MORE >>
THREE DAYS IN THE DESERT
We were in the part of California that no one talks about - miles from the ocean, far from picturesque - when our ignition blew. The sound was like a pop beneath our feet, loud like a blown tire. We’d been driving through massive fields of CAFO feedlots and Driscoll’s strawberries. It smelled like cow dung for miles, and on the dark horizon we could see the shadows of cows standing still in close quarters.
Gluten is the most misunderstood substance of the new millennium, so demonized that even coffee, yogurt and body wash are labeled “gluten-free” as a selling point. But we’ve been eating grains for some 100,000 years, so what accounts for the sudden, massive increase in gluten intolerance? Marketing accounts for most of it: 86% of Americans who think they’re gluten-intolerant aren’t. But it also has to do with the way we’re baking bread. READ MORE >>
What It’s Like to Eat Raw Chicken Sashimi in Tokyo
Like most Americans, I grew up deeply terrified of salmonella, to the point that it became a personified monster. As a chef, I learned that undercooked chicken is a cardinal sin. But in Japan, a country with a palate for rawness, it seemed fair to give it a try. READ MORE >>
MATADOR NETWORK
There's nothing I can say that hasn't been said, and yet I feel compelled to add my voice to the chorus of people crying out tonight. I'm shaken; the sun set over Colorado tonight in that beautiful, memorial kind of way - making silhouettes out of the mountains, yellowing the plains, reminding me in some subtle way that there is life left to live. READ MORE >>
I was sitting on a mattress on the floor of a hostel in Pāhoa, a small town on the Big Island of Hawaii, when I remembered I’m a woman. The air was thick and wet and wrapped around me like cellophane; the sheets were damp and smelled like patchouli; there were oil stains on the pillowcases and cockroaches in the corner, and none of that bothered me. I was traveling alone with very little money and I didn’t care about the consequences of that. But I forgot about one thing: I was a woman, traveling alone. READ MORE>>
BOXY MAG // SO THIS IS IT?
THE TRAVEL 100 Best Sandwiches on the Planet: Any at Caseficio Borderi
At the Saturday market in Syracuse, Italy, there’s one stall with a consistently long line: Caseificio Borderi, where a charming Sicilian man makes stunning, massive sandwiches to order. I stood in line for 45 minutes, salivating as I watched him wrap prosciutto around baked ricotta and fresh-pulled mozzarella, squeeze Sicilian oranges over roughly chopped fennel, and occasionally swipe a little anchovy paste or quince jam onto the bread. Every sandwich is different depending on his mood. You can order from the menu, but don’t bother. My advice: Let him do his thing. It’s worth the wait and then some. READ MORE >>
Tokyo will seduce you - consume you - with its bright lights and electricity, its careful chaos, its cramped and crowded alleys, its wealth of small six-seat restaurants, all of which take themselves seriously. It’s intimidating at first but quickly becomes familiar. It's much easier to navigate than you expect it to be. You'll start to love it. It takes care of you. It invites you to sit at the bar, pours you a cup of tea, tries to understand you, is patient with your shitty Japanese. READ MORE >>
I think I still have a childish expectation that my summers will be like summer vacation: long lazy days, ice cream cones, wet bathing suits that stay wet in the humidity until well after dark. Being an adult who works during the summer is still a bit jarring, even though it's been like fifteen years now. This summer in particular has felt a bit... dizzying. If there was a recipe that encapsulated the barreling pace of this summer, it'd be this: sloppy zucchini. It's a mess. It's hurried. It's easy. And it's delicious as f—k. READ MORE >>