Ujima Press Unveils: Plenty

Boston, MA — We at The Boston Ujima Project are excited to share Plenty, a cookbook zine featuring contributions from Ujima staff, members, and food businesses.

We wrote and told stories towards satiation; thought long and hard about fulfillment and family; and reflected on difficulty and gratitude, with recipes and  culture and economic development narratives that arise from food as business and as connector of people.

Plenty started as a germ of an idea, emerging from a small book project we put out two years ago called Channel 1: Bliss: a few staff at the Boston Ujima Project thought it might be worthwhile to take a moment to slow down, step out of the feigned-urgency we often feel in non-profit workplaces, and ask one another—where do you find bliss? What makes you happy, on a day-to-day basis? Almost everyone we asked mentioned food.

Food of course can bring delight and joy, even durational and longer lasting feelings of fulfillment; but it is also a means by which we literally fill ourselves back up, and sustain our output—more to the point, cooking and/or eating are daily practices for everyone, practices enacted by many small businesses in our community and more than a few home cooks who provide for them and theirs.

So, we decided to open the scope, following our inquiry further and asking specific questions about how we relate to sustenance to workers and owners in Ujima’s Good Business Alliance; and to everyday members who we love and who sustain our work.  Inside this cook-book-adjacent zine, you’ll find stories, recipes, and images that center necessities and frivolities in cuisine, alongside culture and economic development narratives that arise from food as business and as connector of people.

Plenty features essays by Nubian Market’s Ismail Samad and Ujima Restaurant Fellow Biplaw Rai; interviews with Fresh Food Generation’s Maria Garcia and former Dorchester Food Co-op General Manager John Santos; poetry and text by Comfort Kitchen’s Liam Woodworth-Cook; reflections from members Joanne Petit-Frere and Michael Thomas; and images that center necessities and frivolities in cuisine. Edited by Alula Hunsen, with interviews by Bex Oluwatoyin Thompson and Jard Lerebours.

We hope that you cook these recipes with us, visit our restaurants and grocers to partake in our local food economies and ecosystems, and share this zine with your loved ones.

Read the book here!

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