Root is for curious eaters who want the stories behind their food, by author, fermenter, culinary educator, creativity coach, and food historian Dr. Julia Skinner.
Expect recipes, historical deep dives, fun food-adjacent essays, and the occasional surprise.
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Folger Artistic Research Fellowship Month
Starting tomorrow, and through all of September, I’ll be deep in research as a Folger Artistic Research Fellow (alongside some really incredible artists and practitioners, including Michael Twitty, one of my favorite voices in the world of food and an incredible person as well). My proposed project is on fermentation: And specifically, how people in…
Keep readingResources: Culinary and community resilience
Our culinary lives and futures happen in community, whether or not we’re aware of that community or its many layers. Think of how many hands went into harvesting each vegetable in your crisper right now. Who planted it, watered it, harvested it, boxed it up, drove it to the store, rung it up at the…
Keep readingBook tour reflections: Cork on a Fork, the East Coast, and beyond
I’m recently off my book tour, or this round of it at least, for Essential Food Preserving(I plan to continue doing events through the next year or so: Reach out if you’d like to host one!) I love book tours because they’re a chance to meet readers in person, a rare treat in a profession…
Keep readingRecent forays into creative writing: When frantic bedtime phone notes turn into a medley of half-essays and anxiously recalled dreams
I’m working, on and off, at the edges of a new book. You don’t know about it yet because the new book isn’t yet under contract, and so I can’t share it publicly (…yet). But I feel a deep and urgent need to begin pushing parts of it out into the world. If this were…
Keep readingNYC book tour date added!
I’m excited to share that I’ll be doing a workshop plus ferment swap in NYC later this month alongside my friends at Field Meridians. Save your spot here (donation-based). Here are the details: 📍1136 President Street, Brooklyn ⏰ 11 AM – 1 PM EST I’ll be leading a place-based fermentation workshop and demo, where I’ll talk…
Keep readingMorning routines
Plus, take 40% off all my Roots + Branches and Culinary Curiosity School classes with the code SOLSTICE through July 5. I’m also offering discounts on 1:1 book proposal outline and coaching sessions and routine building sessions (among others), which will likely be the last time I’ll put these on sale this year. Routines are an overlooked, unglamorous part of living. We both…
Keep readingJune recipes: food meets craft
I’ve been doing (at least) one new-to-me craft or other creative, novel thing a month for the last 2 years. One month, I took a dance class. Another month, I brushed my teeth with my non-dominant hand. During another, I tried (with varying success) to get back into poetry. Some of my summer craft goals…
Keep readingI’m going on book tour (ATL, Boston, DC, Cork, and beyond)
To celebrate Essential Food Preserving, I’ll be on tour this summer, heading to some favorite cities and my home bases. I’d love to see you in person, hear your questions and your current preserving projects, and just get to spend some time connecting. Here’s where you can find me (click the links for tickets and…
Keep readingOn finding a foot while walking home from a grocery run
Here in Ireland, I don’t have a car, so groceries are gathered by dutifully wandering down the hill to the market, wheeled cart in tow. Or wandering further, into city center, to go to the Really Good Market (the English Market) for niche vegetables, fluffy bread, and very nice seafood. On one recent grocery excursion…
Keep readingConversations in the Margins (Part 2): Communicating across time and space with MFK Fisher and Catherine Plagemann
On the flyleaf of MFK Fisher’s annotated edition of Catherine Plagemann I wrote “I’m really excited about annotating this copy: Like being in conversation across space and time with both authors.” I jumped into the book, then, with some high expectations. I find few things as thrilling as a robust conversation in the margin notes…
Keep readingMy new book comes out tomorrow (and it’s your last chance to get a free preorder thank you gift)
It’s your last chance to preorder Essential Food Preserving before it starts shipping out TOMORROW. So exciting! I have been busy in book promotion mode, including media interviews and handling incoming emails for preorder bonus gifts. There’s a certain flavor of controlled chaos that comes with a book launch, and it’s one of the aspects…
Keep readingMargin Notes: MFK Fisher’s Annotated Edition of Catherine Plagemann
I love when serendipity brings a new book into my life. While digging around online for home repair stuff, I somehow, completely by chance, came across a copy of MFK Fisher’s reprint of Catherine Plagemann’s Fine Preserving. Published in 1986 by Aris Books (Berkeley, CA), this particular volume is interesting because it comes to you,…
Keep readingPreorder Essential Food Preserving, get a free online class (paid subscribers get 2 free classes!)
Plus, join me for a free virtual book launch event May 20th A short newsletter with a couple exciting pieces of news from my author world today: I’m releasing a new class, What Cans and Doesn’t Can, later this spring, and everyone who preorders Essential Food Preserving gets free access. This class does what it…
Keep readingBook preorder giveaway: Ohio Stoneware crock, Le Parfait, and other preserving goodies (plus other book news)
Essential Food Preserving comes out in less than a month (in the US, in about 6 weeks elsewhere), and as part of the lead up to the book’s release Storey publishing, along with some of my favorite preserving folks, are running a contest on Instagram for a bunch of free preserving goodies, along with a…
Keep readingStocking up without freaking out: Your April recipe round up includes simple food to make when you need some calm during chaos, plus ideas for feeding self and community this month
I’m deep in edits for The Little Book of Lemons (Storey, 2027), and preparing to launch Essential Food Preserving (releases next month!), while also running my own businesses. While my own life is chaotic in a good way, this is such a chaotic moment generally that it feels hard for us to catch our breath,…
Keep readingMy culinary connection to the NASA shuttle program
My grandpaw Julian worked on the shuttle program, and specifically on the guidance systems, as a Honeywell employee who was contracted out to NASA in central Florida. He, alongside hundreds of others, is a part of the program’s history and one of the people who paved the way to the current Artemis II launch, and…
Keep readingMaybe it’s time for our food systems to break up with fear and purity culture
If we want our relationship to food, overall, to heal or shift in some way, why not start with the relationship we as individuals have to the food in our kitchens?
Keep readingPeep(s) Show
I’m reviving a hidden talent Every year around this time, I reconnect with a not-so-secret favorite hobby. What started as a lockdown boredom-induced play on words has since spiraled into its own thing: the Pepys Peeps diorama. One of my best friends and I have been making Peeps dioramas for about 20 years (she once…
Keep readingMugwort: Magical and Mundane
I love building lifelong connections with plants, in part because they offer me a pathway to experience joy and connection in unexpected places. Mugwort (artemisia vulgaris) is used in Asia and Europe for both practical and magical purposes, and one thing that brings me a lot of joy about it is that I’m always learning…
Keep readingWhen the Excess is the Point: On Food Waste
In my article in the most recent issue of Eaten, on feasts, I talk about repurposing food waste in Early Modern English households. Repurposing waste was something done as a matter of course (and in many households and many places still is), utilizing simple techniques like making stock out of scraps. But there were other…
Keep readingCreative Ferments: Your March Recipe Round Up includes early access to recipes from Essential Food Preserving plus Chili-lime sauerkraut, fermenting with flowers, and more
I’m fresh off the plane from Ireland, landing back in my other home in Atlanta for 6 weeks. It’s a relief to get to give my cats a big squeeze and to see the sunshine for more than a few hours (I love you Cork, but this winter was extra gloomy even by our drizzly…
Keep readingThe privilege of stillness
Behind the scenes of my life, I’ve been working in fits and starts on little snippets of memoir, poetry, and other forms that push me outside my comfort zone. I’ve talked in the past about how meditating sitting still is a privilege (a concept I was introduced to by chef Jenny Dorsey years ago), and…
Keep readingReading list: Small wonders and falling back in love with writing
Joy and ease are the order of the day for me this month. It flies in the face of everything around us to proactively seek ways to feel either, but I feel we can’t get past the helplessness and stalemate of the moment without them. Joy, and ease, invite in possibilities we might otherwise miss.…
Keep readingWant to take my new food preserving class? Open this newsletter for access
The newsletter has moved over to WordPress. There are still stumbling blocks but, we are here! If you were a paid subscriber in Substack, your payments there have been paused, and you’ll need to upgrade your subscription by clicking below to access paywalled content here. It’s $3/month: Which is $2/month cheaper than Substack or Patreon…
Keep readingI wrote not one but TWO new books (plus a recipe I’ve been making since undergrad)
Hello friends, This week I’m sharing a simple recipe I started making in my early 20s, and wrote in the first of many homemade recipe books I gave to family each holiday: Printing them out on the library printer and binding them with whatever ribbon I had handy. But first a few things that are…
Keep readingWhat food preservation technology to use, when
The first-ever newsletter issue from my self-hosted newsletter platform! If you were a paid subscriber on Substack, head below to resubscribe and access paid content again (as promised, it starts at $3/month): Choosing a food preservation technique based on your kitchen equipment I recently designed and released a new course called Resilience and Community Care through…
Keep readingHistoric food as a path to the future
The messiness, and interconnectedness, of tradition and memory This is a (heavily adapted) talk from a women’s herbalism retreat I gave a handful of years ago. As we move into the new year, I’m revisiting this work and thinking about how it continues to shape me. I’d love to hear your thoughts in the comments!…
Keep readingIt’s time to unclench your jaw
Your January recipe round up includes a favorite nervine tea, plus things to do with all those cranberries you bought I feel like December was a whirlwind. Beyond the usual holiday reasons, there was an air of tension, of shedding those last bits of old selves off to leave behind in the old year. Of…
Keep readingQuick poll
Cheaper subscriptions, or not having to hit buttons? Hi all! For ages now, I’ve been planning to move to a different platform for myriad reasons. In the next month-ish, I’m making the leap and need your feedback about what would better serve you: [[[[[jetpack/paywall]]]]] Option 1: I move to another dedicated newsletter service (Buttondown), move…
Keep readingHomemade lemon cologne
Plus, the launch of my new book-themed unisex perfume We’re beginning the year with scent, and in particular with the ways I work with scent using one of my favorite kitchen staples (by the way, would you like me to do a full newsletter issue devoted to making scent with aromatic, edible ingredients? Let me…
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