The award-winning writer and journalist andrea bennett discusses their new book Hearty: On Cooking, Eating, and Growing Food for Pleasure and Subsistence (ECW Press, 2024), with Joseph Planta.

Hearty: On Cooking, Eating, and Growing Food for Pleasure and Subsistence by andrea bennett (ECW Press, 2024). Click to buy this book from Amazon.ca: Hearty

Text of the introduction by Joseph Planta:

I am Planta: On the Line, in Vancouver, British Columbia, at TheCommentary.ca.

andrea bennett joins me now. They’ve just published a terrific book, Hearty: On Cooking, Eating, and Growing Food for Pleasure and Subsistence. andrea’s essays are not just on food, but they’re also marvelous entry points to other areas of investigation, whether it’s the people who harvest and keep seeds, or who grow sustainably in our communities, the food media we consume on television and now online, as well as andrea’s own life, their family and their history. For example, andrea looks at food that they’ve grown up with and wonders how it came to be, like their grandmother’s chutney. It’s fascinating to see andrea figure out how it might have come to the palates of either their grandmother or even earlier. There’s a lot of food for thought in the book, like how our habits are shaped by structural effects around us, how much waste there is, as well as what we might be able to grow wherever we live. I’ll ask andrea about cooking too. andrea bennett is a National Magazine Award-winning writer, and a senior editor at The Tyee. Their writing has been published by The Walrus, Chatelaine, The Atlantic, and the Globe and Mail, among other outlets. Their first book of essays Like a Boy but Not a Boy was one of CBC Books’s 2020 picks for the top Canadian nonfiction of the year. Originally from Hamilton, Ontario, andrea lives in Powell River, BC, where they joined me from last week. This new book is published by ECW Press. Please welcome to the Planta: On the Line program, andrea bennett; andrea, good morning.

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