Oral historian and food journalist Sara B. Franklin examines food and agriculture and their ties to popular culture, media, performance of gender, care, and identity. The Kingston resident holds a PhD in food studies from NYU and teaches courses on food culture, writing, and oral history at the university and its Prison Education Initiative at Wallkill Correctional Facility.
Franklin edited the acclaimed Edna Lewis: At the Table With an American Original and co-authored The Phoenicia Diner Cookbook: Dishes and Dispatches from the Catskill Mountains, which was an International Association of Culinary Professionals (IACP) award finalist for best American cookbook. Currently, she’s working on a biography of the legendary cookbook editor Judith Jones, who edited Julia Child’s beloved titles. Franklin shares a few of her Hudson Valley favorites: “The Meat Wagon’s (Kingston) butcher is a gem. Stefano Diaz is interested in being an old-fashioned butcher. He wants to talk to you. It’s incredibly rare to have that quality of meat and that relationship in this day and age anywhere outside of a big city.”
“I’m a total ice cream fanatic, and I’m particularly partial to Boice Brothers Ice Cream in Kingston, a longtime family dairy. It always feels like a crossroads of [history] to get ice cream at their window, an old-fashioned pleasure that has really remained here.”
“I feel very excited about the hard cider revival, especially with Bad Seed Cider out of Wilklow Orchards. My family loves going to pick apples there. They make killer hard cider that is distributed all over the state.”
The Kingston YMCA Farm Project is a social justice and youth employment project that teaches kids all kinds of things by growing food. It harkens back to my previous involvement in youth development and equity work around food. They have a farm stand year-round that is probably my favorite place to buy produce in the Hudson Valley.”
“Northwind Farms makes the best hotdogs I’ve ever had. They’re pasture-raised pork, made at the farm. Anyone who’s got kids who eat meat is going to feed them hot dogs at some point. And these are second to none.”
