photo by Andrew Plotsky

Lisa Gottlieb spent her childhood in Flint, Michigan, raised in a family that gathered round the dinner table each night to share lively conversations and delicious meals made from fresh, simple ingredients. This continues to inform her approach to food, and her love of sharing meals with family and friends.  Lisa was influenced by her mother, who was an artist and wonderful cook, and her dad, who taught her that equality and social justice are always worth a good fight.  With a passion for making art work, thinking creatively to problem solve, and continually looking for ways to  build and support affiliation and connection, Lisa is deeply invested in joining people together in projects that teach them new skills,  are valuable to our community, and  are opportunities for inclusion, fun, and lots of joy.

In addition to facilitating Selma Cafe’s weekly breakfast salon, Lisa is the school social worker for the Washtenaw County Juvenile Jail.  Her interest in supporting local food, farm and garden initiatives motivated her to start a vegetable garden in one of the facility courtyards.  The youth in the program help plant, tend and harvest the vegetables, and the produce is used regularly in meals prepared for all to eat.  Lisa is also working directly with County administration to create a healthier model for food purchase and preparation in the Juvenile Jail while reducing the overall carbon footprint.

RP & F is a perfect way for Lisa to combine her love of cooking, and her desire to bring people together, with nurturing our regions transformation to a self-sufficient food ecosystem by building hoop houses, supporting small farms, and encouraging our community members to source our food locally.

Photo by Myra Klarman

Jeff McCabe grew up in Seattle with raspberry patches, rose gardens, wild mushrooms, rhododendrons and his fathers foot-deep garden beds of heavily composted soil.

With a background in engineering and construction, Jeff seems to always be oriented toward figuring it out and doing it himself rather than relying on some impersonal corporation or other plodding bureaucracy to provide. After losing a long-held garden in the Zion Church – Project Grow site to development, Jeff has launched into a new wave of gardening, hoop-house building, meat curing, chicken raising, bread baking, cheese making, fund raising and general rabble rousing around all issues related to food sourcing and community building.

Jeff sits on the board of the People’s Food Cooperative in Ann Arbor, as well as the steering committees for HomeGrown Festival and the Local Food Summit. He is currently working to further establish the 10% campaign for Washtenaw County and does a bit of farming with his friend Steve Thiry on Tessmer Farm.

Jeff seeks nothing short of the transformation of our region into a world-class food tourism destination, with all the benefits this implies for the denizens of this fertile landscape.