Rhonda and I met at a potluck lunch last summer hosted by the farm I get most of my summer and fall vegetables from. I attended with my mom, she with her son. We all enjoyed meeting each other.

I invited her and her son to sample my famous no-packaging vegetable stew, sharing with her how many people who try it tell me I don’t understand the plight of a single mother in a food desert. They accepted my invitation, as you’ll hear in our conversations.

You’ll also hear how much she enjoyed the food, which led her to invite me to the Bronx, where she lives, to cook for her community to learn how to do it. You can see a few minutes of that cooking demonstration in my post, My Bronx cooking demonstration video, including a brief glimpse of her setting the table up.

We’ve become friends, cooking and eating together now a few times. You can hear the friendship developing in our conversations.