Hi. My name is Elspeth Hay. I live in Wellfleet, on Cape Cod, with my husband Alex, our baby daughter Sally, and our black Lab, Fisher. My dad took this photo at my best friend's wedding, and I like to think it sums up the way I feel about life.
I started writing this blog in 2008, just after I graduated from college. I was working at Blackfish, in Truro, helping manage the front of house, and I knew I needed to find something to keep me busy once the restaurant closed for the winter. I started writing a weekly column for my hometown newspaper, the Times Record in Brunswick, Maine on cooking from scratch with local food, and I fell in love with the process, and the medium. Soon after, I started writing shorter essays here. I was looking for a space to continue exploring the connection between sense of place and local food—and as a sort of wonderful bonus, I also started getting to know all of you.
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 through both here and on the air. On Mondays, I write about whatever feels important: an unexplored cut of meat, an unusual vegetable, a story about food and its connection to place. I usually include a recipe and several photographs. (All WERE taken with either a Minolta Instant Pro, a Polaroid sx-70, or a Pentax K1000, all of which use film. I still love film best, but it's now hard to find Spectra film, and I've switched over to a Canon rebel, which I also love. It's digital, and I got a fixed 1:4 lens for it.)
In my wildest dreams, I will one day live in a Wellfleet that has a daily, year-round farmers' market complete with artisanal baked goods and beers and pastas and fresh seafood stands and a butcher and of course all sorts of produce. That day might be a long ways away, but I hope that by writing and posting recipes and sharing what I discover in my radio reporting about local food here, more and more of you will be inspired to want and work for the same thing.
To get in touch, you can email me at elspeth.hay@gmail.com.
In my wildest dreams, I will one day live in a Wellfleet that has a daily, year-round farmers' market complete with artisanal baked goods and beers and pastas and fresh seafood stands and a butcher and of course all sorts of produce. That day might be a long ways away, but I hope that by writing and posting recipes and sharing what I discover in my radio reporting about local food here, more and more of you will be inspired to want and work for the same thing.
To get in touch, you can email me at elspeth.hay@gmail.com.
