City Limits Weekly Archives

In Harlem’s Test Kitchen: A Taste of Local Recipes

December 16, 2023January 28, 2008

City Limits Weekly • Jan. 28, 2008

Flushing— The Go Green East Harlem Cookbook, edited by Scott Stringer, Jones Books, $17.95 in stores, free at community events.

It’s difficult to take critical aim at a community cookbook. Rarely intended as just a repository of cooking advice, the recipe collections of neighborhood associations, houses of worship, immigrant clubs and tenants’ groups are often aimed more at raising funds and morale than actually generating whole, good meals. Any true culinary skill gleaned from them is a result of luck as much as intention.

Putting the Cart Before the Market

December 16, 2023December 24, 2007

City Limits Weekly • Dec. 24, 2007

Bushwick – > City officials last week announced that they would be boosting the number of street food permits by 1,500, with a healthy catch: The new food carts will have to sell fruits and vegetables in neighborhoods where residents consume them at low rates.

Going by the name “Green Carts,” the project is being backed by the city’s Food Policy Task Force, Mayor Bloomberg and City Council Speaker Christine Quinn. Permits will be good year-round, and could be available as early as summer 2008, with 500 going to the Bronx and Brooklyn each, and the remainder divvied up between the other boroughs. Carts would be required to sell only unprocessed fruits and vegetables, or pre-packaged fresh produce that is already peeled or cut.

State Labor Chief Pledges Help for Domestic Workers

December 16, 2023November 12, 2007

City Limits Weekly • Nov. 12, 2007

New York State Labor Commissioner Patricia Smith came out in support of the proposed Domestic Worker Rights Bill now making its way through the state legislature at a forum last week on unregulated work in New York City.

The current incarnation of the bill, first introduced in 2004, requires private employers of domestic help such as nannies and housekeepers to pay wages starting at $14 an hour; provide health insurance; offer paid vacation, overtime and sick days; and provide severance packages.

More Markets, Better Health?

December 16, 2023April 16, 2007

City Limits Weekly • April 16, 2007

Harlem— New York City is eyeing a new target for promoting health among Gotham’s poor: supermarkets.

On Friday, the city’s food policy coordinator, Benjamin Thomases, sat in on a briefing about the nuts and bolts of bringing supermarkets into low-income neighborhoods. “We’re definitely looking at the issues of access to healthy food,” said Thomases, who said the city has been meeting with local food industry players, from biggies like Pathmark – whose extremely successful store on 125th Street in Harlem is generally considered a model project – down to the Washington Heights-based National Association of Bodega Owners, to discuss possible strategies.