Our relationship with food in North America is such a deeply fascinating, contrasting, nuanced and complicated one. There's so much to consider – both in the sheer population size and geographic scale of our food systems, but also in how we make sense of the foods we do and do not have access to. My guest this week, andrea bennett, tackles these big questions in latest new book, and is here to discuss some of the central ideas around it.

Andrea is a National Magazine Award-winning writer and senior editor at the Tyee, and has recently released a collection of essays called Hearty: On Cooking, Eating, and Growing Food for Pleasure and Subsistence through ECW Press. The essays in Hearty offer a snapshot of the North American cultural relationship to food and eating, deep diving into specific foods and tracing them through time, such as chutney, carrots, and ice cream, but also explores appetite and desire in food media, the art of substitution, seed saving and the triumphs and trials of being a home gardener, how the food system works (and doesn't), and complex societal narratives around health and pleasure.

In today's discussion, we look at the relationship between vegetables, imagination, and food media, trace the labour that goes into food through different North American geographies, and how poverty, scarcity, and restaurant work informed their art of substitutions in recipes that translated into a nourishing sense of local community through time.

Learn More From andrea:

• Buy Hearty

• Instagram: @andreakbennett