Ry Toast

I study farmers markets and how to make them more social — not just places to shop for healthy food, but places where people actually come together. One of the most overlooked aspects of market design is music placement. Too often, music gets tucked into a corner or squeezed into an aisle, where people are trying to shop, walk, push strollers, wait in vendor lines, and move through. But music attracts people. That’s the point. If you put music in the aisle, gathering becomes congestion. If you put music in the right public space, it can anchor a scene. The simple principle: Let the aisles sell. Let the gathering space sing. Markets are complicated operations. Staff are juggling vendors, permits, setup, sales, staffing, city rules, and weekly logistics. This is not a criticism of market managers — they are already doing a hard job. But small layout shifts can change the whole experience. A market can be more than a place to buy food. It can become the weekly heartbeat of a town. #FarmersMarket #PublicSpace #LocalFood #Placemaking #FoodSystems

I fainted today. One minute I was bopping around, the next, I felt my arm hurt (because I had crumpled on it) and someone repeating my name over me, terrified. It took a moment to reconstruct what had happened. I thought I’d been knocked over by a speeding truck before popping back up like Christ the Redeemer. While the actual cause of my collapse was pretty mundane, the glimpse of disappearing (and luckily reappearing) was profound. While I’m in no danger, it left a taste of death on my tongue: how quickly we’re here, and then a moment later, we’re gone. And it’s somewhat out of our hands when and how. I’m glad I came back (this time) for more adventures and that I was gifted a reminder to appreciate our waking moments, the people around us and the little joys of life!

🌽✨Maíz of Mexico Ancestral Art Show @ Long Beach County Fair 9,000 years in a single grain. Corn isn’t just food — it’s culture, ceremony, survival. Artist & organizer Toña Luisa Osher brings decades of work alongside indigenous & campesino farmers in Mexico to Long Beach — honoring native maize and resisting its corporate takeover 🌎✊🏽 Presented by Long Beach Fresh, this exhibition asks: Who tends the land? Who do we feed? What gets lost when profit replaces stewardship? 🌿 Featuring: • Masa demos • Salsa tasting w/ El Salsero 🌶️ • Flower crowns + plant sale by Sowing Seeds of Change 🌸 • Círculo de Cantos 🎶 • Bee products, herbs 🍯 • Urban Growers Blue Ribbon Competition (bring your homegrown goods!) 📍 EXPO Arts Building — Katie Phillips Gallery 🗓️ April 3 | 6–8:30 PM Come for the art, stay for the story. Let the corn goddess watch you from the walls 🌽🔥

Find me at Foodways The first week of April, I’ll be cooking with a small group at a beautiful Rose Park home during the Long Beach Fresh Foodways Summit. We’ll explore the foods we love, how we shop, our food memories, and the goals we carry around cooking, eating, and sharing life with others. It’s part of a project I’ve been building over the last six months to help people reconnect to joy, health, and the bounty of both their environment and social world. I’ll also be presenting an idea I’ve been developing for Long Beach: garden pavilions as community gathering spaces celebrating the meals, materials, and medicines of cultures participating in the LA28 Olympics. I’ll also be presenting the work of my dear friend Toña Osher, who has spent half her life helping organize Indigenous farmers in central Mexico to protect their thousands-year tradition of corn cultivation from corporate incursion. Lastly, I’ll be exploring the relationship between Long Beach fishermen on the Belmont Pier and their global counterparts in Istanbul through World of Waterfronts, an ongoing symposium I’ve been hosting to help the people of Long Beach celebrate and activate their waterfront. Join me for a week of gardens, makers, food sharing, and fun. More info at: foodwayssummit.org #longbeach #localfood @lb.fresh

Mexico, you schooled us. Gracias forever. @herbivora.oaxaca @chima.cacao @senor.salud in Puerto Escondido @textileriaamoresoaxaca @caracolpurpura.cafe @lasazondelsol @vegan.dra in San Luis Potosí @villa_verde_zaallil #vegan #vegano

My vegan friend @thedownstay winters in Oaxaca like a migratory monk of ripeness on a vegetable pilgrimage. I trail him like Plato behind Socrates, scribbling notes while he presses a thumb into a mango and rejects it for lacking destiny. The man can smell sugar. He lifts papayas like newborns. On our first morning he went feral at the market — tomatoes, bananas, guanábanas, cucumbers thick as forearms, cruciferous towers of broccoli and cauliflower. Fifty kilos deep. His kitchen table looked less like a pantry run and more like a fertility altar. He doesn’t grocery shop. He forages socially. He hears whispers about pop-up organic farm stands the way bankers hear about insider trades. We follow rumors down side streets until suddenly we’re standing in front of a folding table piled with produce so vibrant it feels erotic. By afternoon, you can find us sleuthing the vegan taquerías. Six stools. Steam on the glass. Salsa that still bites even as snowbirds dilute taste throughout town. I will say this without irony: the best tacos of my long, taco-literate life are mushroom barbacoa from a vegan hole in the wall. Smoky. Juicy. Carnal without the cow. Oaxacan vegans don’t need permission to redefine pleasure. My guide’s ambition is simpler than most men’s. He’s not chasing titles or applause. He’s watching a guanábana soften on the counter, turning it each morning, waiting for the exact second it yields. Finally, he tears it open and we devour it slowly as the sun moves across the hills. #Oaxaca #OaxacaFood #VeganOaxaca #VeganTacos #PlantBasedTravel

The other day, I caved on my calorie goals and ordered a Neapolitan pizza. The restaurant had no viable salad or veggie side dish to defuse the impending glycemic spike, but I had my farmers market haul with me—so I went to work: I retrieved a purple escarole from my bag, sliced it up and dressed it with olive oil, salt, pepper and a lemon wedge from the restaurant. I was a little worried I’d be caught in the act, fingered as a renegade, scolded and maybe kicked out, but I got away Scott free and ate my pizza guilt-free. I love the idea of upgrading restaurant dishes with a little guerrilla tableside cooking. What do you think, scandalous??? #foodie #restauranthack

Walking through this garden in Aotearoa and the signs are doing half the work, baby. Hand-painted wayfinding is like seasoning a neighborhood—you sprinkle a little guidance, and suddenly the whole place opens up. More rhythm. More invitations. More “hey, try this.” Start with a sign, build a whole feast of engagement. #Placemaking #Wayfinding #CommunityGardens #PublicSpace #UrbanNature #NeighborhoodDesign #TacticalUrbanism #HandPaintedSigns #RoadtoResilience #AotearoaNZ #SustainableLiving #DIY #LetsCookMessy

A simple roadside farmstand works as a local food interface—broccoli and turnips tucked into a chill box, cash slipped into an honesty slot, neighbors stopping to catch up as they choose what the land offered that morning. It’s a rural micro-hub that creates engagement, delivers the freshest food possible, and sends income straight back to the farmers who grew it. A tiny piece of infrastructure with outsized community flavor. #LocalFood #FarmToTable #NewZealand #RoadToResilience #Foodways #DirectFromFarm #FoodSystems #CommunityFood #HonestyBox #FreshProduce #PlaceBased #EatLocal @eat.newzealand

What an enriching experience! 🌏✨ Today, @PlacemakingUS teamed up with @placemaking_pakistan for a guest lecture at @nedcitycampus about Food Placemaking and Tactical Urbanism with students working on socially engaged community development projects in Karachi. 🇵🇰🏙️ These young architects and planners were hungry for placemaking knowledge — and left inspired, realizing how their own culture and communities hold the keys to a homegrown urbanism. With just a bit of prompting and some playful tools from budding technical experts like themselves, a spark can light a fire. 🔥 A favorite moment came after class when a walkability group asked for help. Together, we discussed transect analysis of how the public realm is allocated among different modes of transportation — then used nearby potted plants to create a dedicated walking path! 🚶‍♀️🌿 In a city where sidewalks are rare or often encroached upon, this simple gesture became a joyful symbol of change — especially when the young women leading the project celebrated by catwalking down their freshly claimed pedestrian lane. 💃✨ What an honor to be in Pakistan, connecting with the next generation of placemakers and linking the global movement for livable, inclusive cities. 🌍🤝 #Placemaking #Pakistan #Karachi #Urbanism #Walkability #PublicSpace #GenderEquity #RoadToResilience #PlacemakingUS #PlacemakingPakistan @placemakingx @letscookmessy

The Karachi Farmers Market on Sundays is a shining example of markets of resistance, where the possibilities are palatable. Each week, the makers gather as a beacon of hope for a local food system rooted in ecological restoration, improving children’s health, and connecting people through great food and care. It was deeply enjoyable to enmesh with this incredible gathering of accomplished humans — each blending Pakistani identity with global experience. ✨ A journalist who’s been to 90 countries, now baking gluten-free treats to give kids vital protein. 🍳 Michelin-trained chefs returning home with breakfast tacos and confit pesto. 🧴 Mums making healing salves and sauces. 🧀 A cheesemaker spinning buffalo milk into mozzarella. 🌭 A sausage maker fixing broken links in the local meat chain — no refrigeration, no aging, slaughtering too soon. 🍨 A gelato maker swirling rare mango varietals like gulab khas, tasting of roses. 🥂 A kombucha clan brewing bold flavors — Tom Yum, butterfly pea, nimbo pani lemonade. 🌿 A seasonal plant sale grounding visitors in the moment and magic of herbs, pollinator flowers, and air-cleaning plants. 🎶 Zero-emission musicians biking in with ukuleles, adding a soundtrack of joy and simplicity. These makers aren’t just selling sundries — they’re reconnecting culture and landscape, demanding good food as the foundation of a healthy people and planet. At this market, one can imagine another Pakistan — one that honors its love of food, family, joy, and this incredible patch of nature, long strained by colonial theft, political complexities, competing priorities, and dietary dereliction. #Karachi #LocalFood #FarmersMarket #RoadToResilience

It took me a hot minute to find my taste for Pakistan. I was jarred on arrival by the foul air—ripe with diesel, burning trash, and cooking fuel igniting across a 20-million-soul metropolis. Here, modernity meets rubble piles where donkeys clop through the streets and water buffalo wade through gutters, as whole families weave by on motorbikes and commuters dangle from the roofs of bejeweled buses. The internet is spotty, my phone flashes no service, and I’m told never to go anywhere alone—an iPhone burning in my front pocket like a beacon to rob me. Then I stumbled on a street-food café glowing with fire and cozy rugs for seating. Stepping out of the city’s smoke and into the kitchen’s flames, the battery acid in my throat gave way to the spice of chilis and the sting of fresh ginger. Chicken karahi cracked and sizzled before me. I felt like I was making everyone famous just by showing up from afar, camera in hand—documenting the dance of flame, cleaver, and laughter. Pakistan hasn’t offered the easy embrace I felt in India—thanks to the warm guidance of @shettyvineeta and @prathimamanohar and compatriots @ekentnyc and @aleykaley —but these food-stall friends gave me the chef’s kiss. Grateful they opened the door. 🔥🍛 #pakistan #karachi #roadtoresilience #streetfood #chickenkarahi