Sarah Lohman, American Jewish Historical Society Journalist Profile

Articles

Inside the Japanese-American Farm Preserving Endangered Fruit

Dec 18, 2024 | atlasobscura.com | Sarah Lohman

Masumoto Family Farm is a fourth-generation Japanese-American farm outside of Fresno, California, run by David “Mas” Masumoto and his daughter, Nikiko. The family focuses on growing heirloom stone fruits and grapes, steered by their belief that, above all else, fruit should taste amazing. That seems like an obvious goal, but in the modern market, durability and appearance have long trumped flavor in the produce aisles.
Make Your Thanksgiving Pie With the Long Island Cheese Pumpkin

Nov 22, 2024 | atlasobscura.com | Sarah Lohman

I just wrapped up my first year of gardening in the Mojave Desert, specifically in the Las Vegas Valley. I watched as plants sizzled in the sun after one missed watering, and most of my vegetables simply gave up on life as temperatures topped 115 degrees in May. But one plant I put into the ground, as a curious experiment, was a surprising success: the Long Island cheese pumpkin.
5 Stories for Native American Heritage Month

Nov 8, 2024 | atlasobscura.com | Roxanne Hoorn |Sarah Lohman |Fred Pearce

Team Kwe's 2024 sculpture “Wenabozho and Dadibaajimad Journey on the River of Souls,” illustrating a traditional Ojibwe story of two figures—Wenabozho and his brother Dadibaajimad—on an otherworldly journey. Atlas Obscura is ringing in Native American Heritage Month with stories from across the country, from California to Wisconsin to Oklahoma. These Indigenous innovators are bringing back spirit horses, sculpting stories in snow, and finding other new ways to carry on old traditions.
How Cherokee Trail of Tears Beans Connect a Community to Its Roots

Aug 29, 2024 | atlasobscura.com | Sarah Lohman

When I grow pole beans, it’s rare they even make it to the kitchen. I wander by the planting box, in the morning to get the mail or at night coming back from a bar, and pause to pull green beans off the vine. I crunch them between my teeth, the snap and the juice, a true pleasure of summer, second only to plucking ripe cherry tomatoes straight from the vine and into my mouth.
The Indigenous Communities Preserving the Ancient Art of Roasting Agave

Aug 1, 2024 | atlasobscura.com | Sarah Lohman

Just as the Earth is waking up from winter, mature agave send flower stalks toward the sky. It signals the moment when the plant is at its most calorically dense. While many might associate agave with distilling, it is also a seasonal food, one of the earliest fresh foods that was available to the Indigenous people of the Mojave Desert. The Cahuilla of Southern California have been gathering and roasting agave hearts for at least 3,000 years, if not since time immemorial.
Turn Your Garden Into an ‘Ark of Taste’ For Nearly Lost Plants

Apr 23, 2024 | newsbreak.com | Sarah Lohman

Welcome to NewsBreak, an open platform where diverse perspectives converge. Most of our content comes from established publications and journalists, as well as from our extensive network of tens of thousands of creators who contribute to our platform. We empower individuals to share insightful viewpoints through short posts and comments.
Turn Your Garden Into an 'Ark of Taste' For Nearly Lost Plants

Apr 23, 2024 | atlasobscura.com | Sarah Lohman

Slow Food’s Plant a Seed Kit is an initiative that seeks to get Ark of Taste seeds—rare, endangered, diverse and distinctive foods—into home gardens. And every purchased kit pays for a free kit for a schoolhouse garden. For 2024, the kit includes four grains to grow at a garden scale: Cocke’s Prolific Corn, Coral Sudanese Sorghum, Purple Karma Barley, and Red Fife Wheat. I spoke to Mara Welton, director of programs at Slow Food USA.
Saving the Scio Kolache

Apr 12, 2024 | atlasobscura.com | Sarah Lohman

Scio—pronounced “sigh-o”—is a village in Oregon about 70 miles south of Portland. Formerly home to a large immigrant community from Czechoslovakia, Scio’s historical culture practices are now half-remembered ghosts. The culinary impact of the Czech community is becoming equally forgotten, a fate local food advocate Linda Ziedrich battles by continuing to bake Scio kolaches. A treat with roots across Eastern Europe, a kolache can take many forms.
Seeds and sovereignty: 8 books on biodiversity in the food system

Feb 23, 2024 | foodprint.org | Alexandre Antonelli |Jennifer A. Jewell |Sarah Lohman |Gary Paul Nabhan

In the introduction to his 2022 book “Eating to Extinction,” Dan Saladino presents readers with a list of startling facts: “Half of all the world’s cheeses are produced with bacteria or enzymes manufactured by a single company; one in four beers drunk around the world is the product of one brewer; from the USA to China, most global pork production is based around the genetics of a single breed of pig.” Whether it’s farm animals or the invisible world of microorganisms, genetic uniformity in...
Seeds and sovereignty: 8 books on biodiversity in the food system

Feb 23, 2024 | foodprint.org | Alexandre Antonelli |Jennifer A. Jewell |Sarah Lohman |Gary Paul Nabhan

In the introduction to his 2022 book “Eating to Extinction,” Dan Saladino presents readers with a list of startling facts: “Half of all the world’s cheeses are produced with bacteria or enzymes manufactured by a single company; one in four beers drunk around the world is the product of one brewer; from the USA to China, most global pork production is based around the genetics of a single breed of pig.” Whether it’s farm animals or the invisible world of microorganisms, genetic uniformity in...