Tagan Engel
Producer/contributorTagan Engel is a guest co-host of Seasoned. She brings more than 25 years of experience in food systems and justice work. After a decade as a chef, baker and caterer in NYC, Boston, and through travels to Brazil, Nigeria, and Israel/Palestine, she returned to New Haven, her hometown, to merge her passions for food and social justice. She became deeply involved in community organizing on local food justice efforts, partnering with community members, businesses, organizations, and the city to create solutions to school food, equitable access to nourishing food, culturally connected cooking education, community and school gardens, food workers rights, sustainable supply chains, and supports for BIPOC food entrepreneurs. She led efforts to pass the first community driven city food policy plan, establish the Food System Policy Director position for the City of New Haven, and founded the Kitchen at CitySeed.
Tagan currently hosts The Table Underground podcast/website where she records inspiring stories of food and creative social justice, and consults on related work. She is a Resident Fellow at the Yale Center for Business and the Environment and the Yale Center for Environmental Justice where she advises on community driven liberation practices, regenerative agriculture and food systems, and racial, economic and social equity. Tagan is a founding Board Member of Soul Fire Farm and a Mentor and Advisory Board Member with CitySeed Incubates. She was a co-creator of the 2020 New Haven Cultural Equity Plan and a 2018 Graustein Memorial Fund Inspiring Equity Story Fellow. Tagan is a wife and mother of two teenagers in a family that she loves with abandon. She is an Ashkenazi Jew, the granddaughter of Holocaust survivors - whose legacy of story and liberation she carries on - and an Iyanifa in the Yoruba orisa tradition.
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Horticulturist Renée Giroux talks about her approach to farming and the role small family farms play in offsetting climate change. And, author Susan Spungen gets you excited about spring cooking. Plus, Karyn Bigelow is building a community for Black beekeepers.
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Meet the co-owners of the coffee shop at the Hartford Public Library. Pair books with wine, and learn about the Durham Public Library's Cookbook Club and Teen Test Kitchen. Plus, surprising things cooks might find in the Library of Things.
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Science teacher Xander Lowry is our guide as we tap trees, gather sap, split wood and make syrup with local students. Plus, Jeremy Whipple, of the Mashantucket Pequot Tribal Nation, talks about the prized syrup made at the Mashantucket Sugar Shack.
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We're talking with local creators in the food space: Kat Ashmore, the chef behind @katcancook, and David Milton, aka @thedamgram and @thedamtok. Plus, we drink traditional chai with siblings who turned the Muslims of the World (MOTW) Instagram community into a local café.
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Master chocolatier Benoit Racquet describes what makes Belgian chocolate special and Ramin Ganeshram explains the (dark) history of chocolate. Plus, ethically sourced chocolate bars you can feel good about buying.
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Are you a proud solo-diner? This week on Seasoned, we talk about the joys—and anxieties—around taking yourself out to dinner.
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What makes an olive oil extra-virgin? This week on Seasoned, a conversation with an olive oil somm. Plus, a local org uses Palestinian olive oil to fund education and we learn about the importance of olive trees and oil in Palestinian cuisine. Plus, chef JJ Johnson’s ‘The Simple Art of Rice.’
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This week on Seasoned, listen back to conversations we had with local guests in 2023. We celebrate restaurants that have stood the test of time, and chefs like Reneé Touponce, Sherry Pocknett and Damon "Daye" Sawyer.
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People share the stories behind their holiday cookies, and Roya Shariat and her mother Gita Sadeh talk about their cookbook, 'Maman and Me: Recipes from Our Iranian American Family.'
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This week on Seasoned, Juna Gjata and Dr. Eddie Phillips, authors of 'Food, We Need to Talk,' join us to unpack ideas about diet culture, weight loss and what it means to be healthy.