Food for Thought Revisited

In 2010, Keira Amstutz offered me a dream job — an opportunity to travel Indiana, talking to and collecting the stories in their own words of people involved in our state’s food scene as part of Indiana Humanities’ two-year Food for Thought initiative.

Indiana’s agricultural heritage extends back to pre-settlement, when indigenous people here cultivated the Three Sisters: corn, squash and beans. Since then, Indiana has provided the ground for a broad spectrum of food-related enterprise, including (but not limited to) industrial-scale agribusiness, artisanal farming, a burgeoning farm-to-table restaurant scene as well as a host of community-oriented programs aimed at raising awareness and shortening the distances between individuals, what they eat and the people who produce it for them.

Over a decade has passed since Indiana Humanities published the stories collected in Food for Thought: An Indiana Harvest. The intervening years have, of course, brought inevitable changes, not the least of which was a life-altering pandemic. It seemed like a good time to revisit a couple of the subjects who shared their experiences with us the first time around — and to catch up with another story we missed.

What comes through loud and clear is that Indiana’s food scene continues to evolve and grow and that the people making it happen are among the most creative, determined and productive folks you’ll find anywhere.

—David Hoppe