Lisa Harris

Lisa Harris

Writer, Free Range Chef, Visionary Entrepreneur | Local Food Systems, Sustainability, Healthy Wild Habitats & Ecosystems | Inspiring Stories. Making Connections. | My work reflects the fertile ground that exists between the edges - a place of meeting, creating, bridging, translating, collaborating.
Flavor574 •

Edible Alchemy explores local food and the people who produce it

Food is a beautiful thing. It has always held a special place in my heart. Even when I was small and growing up here in South Bend, I learned to appreciate all kinds of tastes and flavors found throughout the seasons. Alchemy: “a power or process of transforming something common into something special.” – Merriam-Webster In fact, the most vivid memories I have of my childhood — living here, traveling around the country, attending events — are anchored in the foods associated with each experien
Shambhala Times Community News Magazine •

Getting Back to Roots

Planning a root cellar is a big project. It’s a sign of a strong commitment to working with local produce, and taking a big step toward food security. Dorje Denma Ling recently constructed a root cellar in Tatamagouche, Nova Scotia. That, to me, is an exciting venture – so I spoke with Taylor Smith, their new Kitchen Manager, to find out more about it. Lisa: How long have you worked at DDL, and when did you become the kitchen manager? Taylor: I volunteered here 2 1/2 months last summer, then m
Shambhala Times •

A Year of Sharing Meals | Shambhala Times Community News Magazine

Investigating some of the many places where we share meals, and the different connections we find at each table. Outside This summer I took a long road trip with a friend and her four young children. I caught up with them in North Central Indiana to accompany them on their return journey, as they traveled by car all the way back home to Oregon. It was great to have a few of our meals in one of my favorite settings – outdoors on a picnic table, in a campsite, at the edge of the woods. No tele
Shambhala Times •

Fearless in the Kitchen | Shambhala Times Community News Magazine

Kitchens are wonderful places where we come together and share ideas. Offering food from one’s own culture opens the door to different perspectives of how and where we live in the world. It also shows us how we are so much alike, as we share the human experience. “…We put on a hat and gloves to shield ourselves, fearing that we might get burned. The colourfulness of relationships, household chores, business enterprises and our general livelihood are too irritating. We are constantly looking for
Shambhala Times •

Fearless in the Kitchen | Shambhala Times Community News Magazine

Kitchens are wonderful places where we come together and share ideas. Offering food from one’s own culture opens the door to different perspectives of how and where we live in the world. It also shows us how we are so much alike, as we share the human experience. “…We put on a hat and gloves to shield ourselves, fearing that we might get burned. The colourfulness of relationships, household chores, business enterprises and our general livelihood are too irritating. We are constantly looking for
YES! Magazine •

A Chef's Perspective on Revering Life—Even When It’s Raised to Be Slaughtered

I stand at the kitchen counter with a boning knife in one hand, the other resting gently on a small, gutted and skinned kid goat lying on a large wooden cutting board. It is still slightly warm to the touch, and a few hairs are stuck to its flesh. The meat is destined for my friend’s freezer, and I offered to butcher the goat for her. I wrestle with the slippery carcass, holding it carefully so I don’t cut myself in the process. If I do, I might fail to notice the blood is mine, not the goat’s.
Edible Michiana •

Nourishing Tradition | Edible Michiana

Last year some very special white corn and four varieties of bean seeds traveled from Kansas to Dowagiac, Michigan. They were hand delivered by Eddie Joe Mitchell, a member of the Kansas-based Prairie Band of Potawatomi, to Michiana’s Pokagon Band of Potawatomi. As local tribal Cultural Specialist Andy Jackson explains, they were “Grandmother Seeds that left this area and were carried in the pockets of the Grandmothers to Kansas,” when over 800 Potawatomi people were forcefully removed from Indi
Edible Michiana •

Prairie Winds Nature Farm | Edible Michiana

Charlotte Wolfe owns and operates Prairie Winds Nature Farm, a working educational and demonstration farm in Lakeville, Indiana. She and her husband purchased their 85 acres in 1992 from a corn and soybean farmer who claimed that the wet fields “were giving him trouble.” What one farmer considered a burden, another saw as a diamond in the rough. “We ended up with a prairie and restored a wetland with a small portion of woods, so there are different biomes,” she said. (Biomes are geographic area
Vermont's Local Banquet •

The World in a Glass of Milk - Vermont's Local Banquet

My first memory of drinking milk was walking through the lunch line in my grade-school cafeteria, picking up a red-and-white half pint carton of low-fat milk from an ice-filled service container, and placing it on my plastic tray. After sitting down at a table, everyone would pick up their wet carton and shake it vigorously to blend the frozen crystals with the unfrozen milk. It tasted cold and refreshing, like an unsweetened ice milk slushy, and was a perfect match for a sticky-sweet peanut but
Vermont's Local Banquet •

Wood Smoke, a Touch of the Earth - Vermont's Local Banquet

I spent two years with my head in an oven. Not just any oven, but a wood-fired oven. Built of French clay and steel and copper, it sat on an iron plate atop a wooden platform. And it had wheels. This 3,500-lb. oven was built to travel the roads of Vermont. It was hauled over mountains, across mowed farmers’ fields, and into the parking lots of cities and towns. Built for the Northeast Organic Farmers’ Association of Vermont, it was created to introduce Vermonters to the wonderful fresh foods th
Times Argus •

Eating weeds : Times Argus Online

I finally did it. For years I have been cursing the weeds, wasting my time and energy glaring out the window at the lush green and golden flower patch affectionately called "the vegetable garden." Weeds are a burden and a chore, and a barrier to the enjoyment of getting out there with my hands in the dirt, sowing neat rows of tiny seeds just barely beneath the surface, and nestling some soft green seedlings into the brown, fertile earth. They seem so fragile, those little plants and "plants t
Vermont's Local Banquet •

Beyond Ben & Jerry’s - Vermont's Local Banquet

Let’s face it. We’re spoiled by many artisan food producers in Vermont. Bread bakers Randy George and Liza Cain of Red Hen Bakery in Middlesex. Cheesemakers Willow Smart and David Phinney of Willow Hill Farm in Milton. Bob and Martha Pollak, makers of Snowflake Chocolates in Jericho. The list goes on. Vermont is a foodie’s paradise. So why not expect the same diversity with Vermont’s ice cream? Ben & Jerry’s may be our most famous export, but there are other ice cream makers around the state fr