We’re so done with you, COVID-19. We’re ready for local businesses to thrive again and for exhausted healthcare workers to be relieved. We’re ready to reclaim our jobs and see our children safely in school. We want to fly, dine out, shop and hug without fear.
Let’s go back to the way it was, but let’s also take this opportunity to reset the things that need changing. The pandemic, with all its sorrows, has revealed certain flaws in our national food system. A recent paper by the Rockefeller Foundation contends that now is the time to make our food system more efficient, equitable, resilient and healthy. That includes making sure that our local food channels are vigorous, and that everyone in our community has access to wholesome, affordable food from sustainable growers. Healthy people and a healthy planet. These are the tenets this magazine has espoused for over a decade, but there is a new urgency these days as many struggle to pay bills and provide nutritious meals for their families. Our system should serve us well in both good times and bad.
In North Texas, we have seen a compassionate response to the crisis that comes as no surprise. In our story, “Navigating Through the Pandemic,” eleven members of the North Texas food community reflect on how they and those around them have managed to keep moving forward during these months of uncertainty. Each tells a tale of grit and gratitude.
The story continues to be written, but hopefully we are on the homestretch to better days. Until then, we’ll continue to wear our masks, scrub our hands and lift each other up as we wait for answers, knowing that until everyone is safe, no one is safe. If the pandemic has taught us one thing, it’s about the depth of our interconnectedness.
On a final note, we’d like to pay tribute to our mom, Gloria Yvonne Tyler Taylor, who passed away on July 4. No one was prouder or a bigger supporter of this magazine and of her daughters. Among her many attributes was the enviable quality of finding joy in the simplest of things—an autumn leaf, a bird’s chirp, the scrawny patch of bluebonnets in her front yard. We loved watching her and our dad marvel at the night sky together. The sound of her sweet laugh still resonates and comforts us.
Nanci Taylor, Publisher and Terri Taylor, Contributor
As a kid, TERRI TAYLOR refused to eat her vegetables. Her veggie-phobia was cured in 1977 when she spent eight months working on farms in Norway and France. She studied journalism at UT-Austin and received a master’s degree in liberal arts from SMU. Her short story “Virginia” can be found in Solamente en San Miguel, an anthology celebrating the magical Mexican town of San Miguel de Allende. She has written for Edible DFW since its inaugural issue in 2009. She became the magazine’s editor in 2010 and is the editor of Edible Dallas & Fort Worth: The Cookbook.
