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Winner, 2005 Harry Chapin Media Award
Finalist, 2005 James Beard Journalism Award
City Limits • July/August 2004
“It has a butt crack!”
Vanessa Santiago, 18 years old, giggles as she peers at the object of her glee: a garbanzo bean.
Tight jeans, a bomber jacket and a pink sweatband-Santiago doesn’t look like the type of girl to contemplate the aesthetics of legumes. But on this cold Saturday morning, she has come from Bushwick to lower Manhattan to inspect a can of beans. Standing in the middle of a commercial kitchen, Santiago and a half-dozen other teenagers cluster around a steel table, a ragtag bunch of critics.
