A public project commissioned by Paths to Pier 42 (Lower Manhattan Cultural Council and community partners) that was distributed at the Paths to Pier 42 Fall Celebration in 2015.

Through recipe exchanges, workshops and other activities, we solicited recipes, stories, illustrations from people living and working in the Lower East Side, NYC. For this project I designed a 56 page spiral-bound community cookbook (edition of 1000), flyers in three languages, a mail-in postcard for soliciting recipes, a button, and a WordPress website hosting recipes and showcasing our process. The designs are meant to be accessible, low-tech and for low-cost distribution.

The project is inspired by spiral bound community cookbooks like those produced by Grange chapters and other local organizations. Through recipe exchanges, workshops and other activities, we solicited recipes, stories, illustrations and other to the cookbook in order to highlight relationships to local and faraway waters, local food systems and economies. Fish Stories Community Cookbook celebrates diasporic cultural histories tied to New York City’s dynamic harbor and collectively envisions a sustainable future.

We held workshops, tabled or otherwise showed up at the Hamilton-Madison House Senior Center, the fishing clinic at the Lower East Side Ecology Center, the P.S. 184 Shuang Wen School Summer Carnival Fundraiser, the Loisaida Festival, the after school program 2 Bridges Kids! at Two Bridges Neighborhood Council, Family Day at the Vladeck Houses, Weinberg Center for Balanced Living at the Manny Cantor Center, a performance at Pier 42 by Arm of the Sea Theater and a seafood recipe exchange at the Mulberry Street Branch of the New York Public Library.