Cooking Up a Story Contributors List

David E. Gumpert reports and writes about health and food issues. He is the author of The Raw Milk Revolution: Behind America’s Emerging Battle Over Food Rights, which includes a preface by Joel Salatin. His popular blog, The Complete Patient, has over the last five years been instrumental in launching a national discussion about government-imposed restrictions on the availability of nutrient-dense food and in highlighting an emerging debate over food rights.

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Heather Jones is a wife, mother, freelance food writer and graduate of the Institute of Culinary Education in New York City. She has worked for Gourmet Magazine, TV Personality Katie Brown, and the New York based Indian-fusion restaurant Tabla. Heather resides in New Jersey with her husband and two daughters. She is a strong supporter of the Sustainable Food Movement and believes that education is the key to making a difference.

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Mark Keating has worked in the organic, sustainable and local food movements since 1982. His work experience includes commercial food service, farm labor, retail sales and marketing, state and federal civil service, non-profit advocacy, academia, journalism and conducting organic inspections. While working for the USDA National Organic Program between 1999 and 2002 Mark helped draft the national organic standards for crop and livestock production. He spent two more years with the USDA Marketing Services Branch working to develop and promote farmers markets. Mark also worked for the NOP in 2010. An inveterate believer that organically raised and locally distributed food offers the surest path to human health and planetary survival, Mark, his wife and their daughter live alongside the Pequest River in New Jersey, the Garden State.

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Joe Miller has worked in U.S. patent law since 1994, and has been a law professor since 2001. He teaches at Lewis & Clark Law School in Portland, OR, where he has lived since 2002. He loves enjoying delicious food and great wine with friends, so Portland is a wonderful place to live!

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Joya Parsons Joya Parsons is the owner and principal operator of Quite Contrary Gardens Homestead in Sussex County, Delaware. A former IT professional and US Navy veteran, she has spent the last ten years learning the art of organic growing and sustainable living. She is working within her own community to make a local, sustainable food system a reality through education, outreach and example. If she’s not outside getting her hands in the dirt or tending her chickens, she can normally be found with her nose in the latest issue of Mother Earth News.

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With family roots in the black gold of the fertile Red River Valley, Lynn Torrance Redlin has been inspired and challenged by the diversity of opinion and characters found on the Cooking Up A Story shows. An avid gardener and home cook, Redlin is also a voracious reader, and enjoys exploring new information and ideas about our food system.

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In 2009, Ash Terry and his new bride traveled around the globe for 5 months, and filmed their experiences within the WWOOF! organizations of France, Japan, Italy, and India. Together, they are working on a feature film documenting this journey. “WWOOF! The Movie” is about a collective of organizations that go by the acronym WWOOF: World-Wide Opportunities on Organic Farms. Ash graduated from the University of Montana in 2004 with a degree in Broadcast Journalism and a minor in Media Arts. Since then, he has worked in broadcast news, commercial and television production houses, radio, and internet broadcasting.

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Rebecca Thistlethwaite is the author of the forthcoming book Farms with a Future: Creating and Growing a Sustainable Farm Business. She runs a farm and food business consulting firm called Sustain Consulting and is starting a small homestead in Washington with her family. Rebecca also serves on the board of the Sustainable Food Trade Association and writes her own blog Honest Meat. Her other recent pursuits include training oxen, trail running, and learning how to make fermented foods.

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TwoJunes are two women with diverse backgrounds in the food industry, and have figured out how to balance their professional lives, with their home life, preparing, fresh wholesome meals, much of it from their own food garden. Lisa Bell has been a pastry chef, recipe developer, food stylist, and a food scientist, and now works as a freelance producer, writer and editor. Nicole Rees is a food writer, and cookbook author (Baking UnPlugged), and currently works as a baking scientist.

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Jan Weber’s career in television and film production spans some 35 years. Over that time she has produced, directed, and written commercials, corporate programs, network pilots, and co-produced two feature films. Her 2005 documentary, As We Sow documents the vanishing family farms in Iowa, and paints a personal picture of the devastation large (mega) corporate farming inflicts upon the small farmer, and their local communities.

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Nathan Winters Nathan Winters rode a bicycle across America to discover first-hand why our food system had grown to be unsustainable, and to find alternative solutions. He traveled into the homes and communities of organic, conventional, urban and Amish farmers and community organizers. This ongoing series—to be posted every other Wednesday— represents select material from The Unconventional Harvest, a work in progress, by Nathan A. Winters.