Bios
Favorite food movie:
Flavor of Happiness
Favorite food book:
Esperanza Rising
Favorite foods:
anything breakfast
Philip Lee was founding partner and editor-in-chief of Lee & Low Books, an award-winning publisher of multicultural children’s literature. He started his career in publishing by working at the university bookstore while attending UC Berkeley. A native of Hong Kong and a long time New Yorker, he only learned about farms and life outside the concrete jungle when he moved to the Puget Sound area. For the last two years, he has been a host and producer on food and education issues for community radio KBCS 91.3 FM in Bellevue, Washington.
“Eating fresh was simply part of the culture in Hong Kong, where I grew up. Before major holidays or family celebrations, we would buy live chickens and keep them in the back stairways until it was time to slaughter them. There would be fresh fish swimming in the kitchen sink until they were set into the pots to boil. Most vivid in my mind is when my grandparents came to stay with us on holidays and there would be a three foot eel swimming in our tub in preparation for their favorite meal.”
Favorite food movie:
Tampopo
Favorite food book:
Like Water for Chocolate
Favorite foods:
ramen and cheeseburger
June Jo Lee works as a research consultant to the food industry. Her first job out of college was in the produce department at the original Whole Foods Market in Austin Texas. She went on to study medical history and food anthropology at the graduate level. The more she studied healers and patients, the more she realized that health and wellness begins with the foods people eat, and what and how people eat are usually determined by one’s culture. She is now learning how to grow food in both front and backyards (and accepting that garden treasures are to be shared with bugs, squirrels, birds and neighborhood toddlers).
“I was born in Korea, and first came to America when I was three and a half. I remember my mom making red radish and broccoli kimchi when she couldn’t find napa cabbage in Houston. I’ve mostly lived between America and Korea my whole life, never quite belonging anywhere and longing for where I was not. So for me, studying anthropology was my way of trying to understand my cultures and myself. I wrote my Master’s thesis on Food and Fantasy at a Dinner Party in South Korea, which was about food and identity in post modern Korea.”