HELLO!

This is us at the table. We are, from left to right: Liz, Anna, Bobbie, Elspeth. We are having lunch at a restaurant in Richmond, Virginia, on Cary Street—the street named for our family. Bobbie is Mrs. Hunsdon Cary, of Richmond, and although she doesn't write here, her notebook and recipes are where many of the dishes on the site come from. Liz is her daughter. Anna and Elspeth are Bobbie's granddaughters, Liz's girls. Now we'll let the introductions start, one by one. 

ELSPETH HAY

I founded this site in 2008 as a way to track my budding interest in local food. I had just graduated from college and was working at Blackfish, in Truro, helping manage the front of house. I knew I needed something to keep me busy once the restaurant closed for the winter, and I started writing a weekly column on cooking from scratch with local food for my hometown newspaper in Brunswick, Maine. I fell in love with the process, and the medium. Soon after, I started writing shorter essays here.

Since beginning this blog, I've gone on to start writing a monthly column called In Season for Cape Cod Life magazine, a weekly column for the Provincetown Banner called Cape Tables, and to create a radio show with the Cape & Islands NPR station called the Local Food Report. My Thursday posts are now linked to the radio show; each week, I explore a different local food issue, character, or place both here and on the air.

These days, I live in Wellfleet with my husband Alex and our daughters Sally and Nora. To get in touch, you can email me at elspeth.hay@gmail.com.

ANNA PIERSON

I live in Portland, Maine with my boyfriend Andy and our black lab Thunder.  I'm currently in my final year of a three-year nurse practitioner program, and I'll graduate in May of 2014.  When I'm not studying or seeing patients, I love to explore the Portland food scene, which includes more restaurants than I can count, a year-round farmers' market, and a handful of small, well-curated markets that specialize in local food.  I also love to cook and gather inspiration from my favorite food blogs and magazines.  

I started contributing to Diary of a Locavore in the spring of 2013, and I love the creative outlet it allows me.  Sharing recipes back and forth has always been something our family has done, so it feels like a natural step to extend that conversation to a new setting.

LIZ PIERSON

I work as a freelance editor and live in Brunswick, Maine, with my husband, Jan (that’s with a soft J).

We are lucky that Brunswick has an amazing local food scene. From May 1 through Thanksgiving, we have three—three!—farmers’ markets a week. And from Thanksgiving through the end of April we have a fabulous indoor market. We also have a big garden and belong to a local CSA. I spend a lot of the summer and fall making jams and filling our freezer with frozen veggies and homemade soups and casseroles.

I grew up with a mother who cooked three meals a day for our family. (That’s Bobbie with us in the picture up there.) She didn’t make everything from scratch, but she made most things that way. The food wasn’t complicated or particularly gourmet, but it was always delicious. My mom loved to use recipes from her mother and grandmother, and she was always happy to let me help. I remember that even as a little girl, I thought it was so special to make my grandmother’s custard or my great-grandmother’s walnut cake. I never knew my great-grandmother, and my grandmother died when I was five, but I feel such a connection to these women through the recipes my mom has passed down to me—and that I’ve now passed down to Elspeth and Anna. Like my mom, I tend to keep my cooking simple—simple, but healthy and delicious. I’m so happy to be sharing recipes here, and to be doing it with my girls.