Matt Hershberger is Living La Vida Jersey Fresh

Amuse-Bouche

When Matt Hershberger moved from Cincinnati to New Jersey, he felt a little out of place. Withdrawn from the local community in his new home he started experiencing depression with a whole cavalcade of symptoms that were only exasperated by growing anxieties around climate change and the uncertainty of our planet’s future.

Over time, Matt found that making simple things whether it was perfecting his tomato sauce, making bread, or whipping up some fresh pesto with his children, helped to alleviate his depression. But food became this point of connection to a lot of areas of Matt's life. Exploring New Jersey's local foodways gave him a meaningful way to interact with his new home state, focusing on local foods gave him actionable ways to help lower his own carbon footprint, cooking has been an enjoyable activity he shares with his family, and starting up a seed library at his local library is helping him spread the word of climate change and food sovereignty.

In this episode, Matt and Kae Lani discuss the many ways that food connects us to the land and each other. Plus, they dig into awesome topics like how Guerilla Gardening can help rebuild local habitats, what small things we can do in our everyday lives to live more sustainably, and how Jersey Fresh blueberries deserve to be a Protected Geographical Indication.

You can follow Matt Hershberger at @MattHershberger on Twitter and Instagram. You can read more of his work on www.matthershberger.com.

Follow Amuse-Bouche at @AmuseBouchePod on Twitter and Instagram. For more food stories and recipes, subscribe to the Amuse-Bouche newsletter at amusebouche.substack.com. And to see what our host Kae Lani Palmisano is doing check her out on Twitter and Instagram at @KaeLaniSays.