FFJ Wrapped x FFJ Recommends
Looking back while looking ahead
Give the gift of FFJ
A reminder that premium FFJ subscriptions are 20% off (just US$24, or $2 per month) for the holiday season! Most of this newsletter is for premium subscribers only, so whether you’re looking to gift FFJ to a friend, or simply to upgrade yourself, now is an excellent time.
Until the end of the year, all premium subscriptions come with a personalized holiday card and illustration that we’ll send by email. A premium subscription also gets you access to audio versions of many stories (here’s a taster) as well as BTS content and membership to our Feminist Food Club, a series of online meet-ups launching in 2025.
Isabela here from FFJ! It’s time for our biannual resource round-up. But first, one last attempt at a sales pitch (sorry):
The crux of this newsletter, a resource round-up from our recent pool of writers, is for premium subscribers only. If you’ve been paying attention so far (and no hard feelings if you have not — my eyeballs are personally fried for the year), you’ll have seen the plug at the top advertising the fact that premium FFJ subscriptions are just US$2 a month/US$24 a year and we really need your support to keep going and yes, every single newsletter is saying this and we know nobody has much money including us but we’re trying anyway ok I’ll stop.
In more chill news (if you know me in real life, you’ll have a good cluck at this, because I haven’t been chill since the day I came shooting into this world), we wanted to look back on 2024 over here at FFQ HQ.1 And because we’re extremely creative but somewhat slow, we’re doing it in the form of Spotify Wrapped, which everyone was sharing over two weeks ago. Surprise!
2024 FFJ WRAPPED
2 new magazine issues released
23 newsletters published
6 audio stories recorded for premium subscribers
365 pitches received
5 journalism training sessions and fever dream trip to Manila delivered
936 new free subscriptions
4 more premium subscriptions
5 collaborations with other organizations and newsletters (Famerama, TABLE, Beurrage, AnthroDish, ORFC 2025, and shelf offering) published
13 original illustrations drawn
Most liked story: Bottomless by Shena Cavallo
Longest piece: The Labour of Lunch, an interview on school food politics with Jennifer E. Gaddis and Sarah A. Robert
Shortest piece(s): poetry by Taylor Hunsberger, A.J. Parker, and Natasha Matsaert
268 combined hours of editing
564 emails opening with “we hope this email finds you well”
3 joyful months spent together at home in Vancouver
5 chaotic weeks spent together in Berlin
23 hours of voice notes sent to each other on WhatsApp when apart (13 hours of which is us apologizing for having sent such long voice notes)
What FFJ stories stood out to you from this year? What do you want to see more or less of? We’d love to hear from you in the comments or by email (hello@feministfoodjournal.com).
Numbers aside, it truly was a great year for us at FFJ
Our premium subscriber count may barely have moved, but like
has said, metrics aren’t it. We finished last year having just launched our merch store, which offered our first-ever print magazine edition; we remain so proud of these products and the fact that we’ve built a back catalogue worthy of capturing on paper. And we’re beyond honoured to have nearly 3,100 of you subscribed.This year, we finished SEA, published MEAT, and started BODY. We had the chance to be interviewed by one of our favourite food systems podcasts (hopefully coming out soon) and again by one of our favourite food writers. We published so many stories that made our hearts beat faster and learned a lot about new topics on the way.
We joined Big Feelings, a community of other food writers on Substack led by
and that immediately felt like home. We were contracted by Wedu Global to lead journalism training and the creation of a magazine focused on gender and rice with a cohort of food security leaders from Southeast Asia, and had the chance to travel to Manila to meet these incredible women in person.Luck had it that we were both in Vancouver while we worked on the Wedu project, which meant that although we had to give webinars from 3-5 am PST, we also got to work together in-person and get fed by our benevolent parents while doing so. Not to get too sappy here, but our relationship as founders is a huge driver of our dedication to FFJ, particularly in those moments when we’re wondering if our work has enough impact to merit the sweat and time we put in. I learn so much from working with Zoë and I’m proud of we’ve evolved as editors, writers, illustrators (in Z’s case, most definitely not mine), and business owners (although you wouldn’t have known it from how badly I freaked out during tax season).
FFJ will be turning three soon, and we’re still having the time of our lives. Now it’s time to rest and recuperate over the holiday season, so we can hit the ground running in the new year (attending ORFC 2025 and launching our new Feminist Food Club!). We’ll also be back in January with new BODY essays that we can’t wait to share.
FFJ Recommends: books, podcast, movies and more
Here are FFJ’s recommendations for vegging out on the sofa, whether you’re in the mood to pick up a book, your AirPods, or the remote. We’ve done something a bit different for this edition of FFJ Recommends: crowdsourcing recommendations from writers who have written for us in the last year or so.
We have suggestions from Annie Dabb, Megumi Kowai of
, Mwinji Nakamba Siame, Clare Michaud of , Taylor Hunsberger, Shena Cavallo, Amelia Cookson, and Zoya Naaz Rehman. They have curated diverse and fascinating recommendations: feminist Japanese poetry, Zambian fiction, “slutty chef” content, activist cookbooks, climate essays, and much more.Reminder: our recommendations as co-founders are available to everyone, but if you’d like to check out the rest of the list, premium FFJ subscriptions are currently 20% off.
Zoë Johnson, FFJ co-founder
Slow Noodles: A Cambodian Memoir of Love, Loss, and Family Recipes by Chantha Nguon — I stumbled across this book when looking for inspiration for our RICE zine project and was completly entranced by the beautiful way recipes are used in telling this heartbreaking story.
Can I microdose veganism? from
— I think I reccomend something from this podcast almost every time we put together one of these lists (sorry I’m so predictable) but this episode came out shorlty after we sent our Letter from the Editors for our MEAT issue so the topic was very top of mind when I first listened. As a vegetarian and wanna-be-vegan, I was particularly intrigued by Atlantic staff writer Annie Lowrey’s argument that if you care about animals, “you're better off eating beef than you are eating eggs and dairy”. Warning: the first part of the podcast about throwing turkeys out of planes is pretty hard to listen to.Ridiculously Easy Focaccia: This recipe was shared with me by a family friend last December and it’s been the recipe of 2024. It really is ridiculously easy and I’ve yet to have a batch not turn out delicious. I’ve made it for big crowds (for both a 30th and a 60th birthday party), as a housewarming gift (does anyone else love giving bread and salt?), and for countless less remarkable breakfasts, lunches, and dinners at home. If I have it, I throw in a bit of sourdough starter and reduce the amount of yeast and usually skip the butter, opting to grease the pans with olive oil instead.
Isabela Bonnevera, FFJ co-founder
Bad Gays: A Homosexual History by Huw Lemmey and Ben Miller — an August birthday gift that I’m just diving into now. Already obsessed with the chronology of evil twinks and tops across history, as well as a historical analysis of how we developed sexuality into identities that defines us.
The Edible Woman by Margaret Atwood — read as inspo for our BODY issue and even more prescient given the recent US election results and regression of women’s bodily autonomy in some parts of the world.
Whale Politics and Offal Conundrums — shamelessly promoting my own work! But I’m really proud of these two podcasts, which I recorded for FFJ in 2024.