🌱 How to live off of your Pittsburgh land

Your Friday food news edition!

Leona’s Scoop Shop Coming Soon

It’s not just ice cream sandwiches anymore! Leona’s is opening a scoop shop at Lawrence Hall on Butler Street in Spring 2024. Help them buy equipment by contributing to their crowdfunding campaign. You can get fun perks like an ice cream making class!

• Until then, check out holiday flavors like peppermint bark or double chocolate chunk cookies. Order Leona’s winter holiday 8-pack by Tuesday for pick up in Wilkinsburg.

Jak’s Bakery Enters Bloomfield

You can now find delicious Bulgarian breads and pastries at Jak’s Bakery on Main Street, Tuesday through Sunday. City Cast Pittsburgh Sophia Lo was blown away by the fresh-out-of-the-oven apple walnut banitsa.

Maggie’s Farm Broadens to the ‘Burbs

Strip District-based Maggie’s Farm Rum, a nationally-acclaimed distillery, is expanding to a warehouse in Upper St. Clair with a full-service restaurant and bar, opening December 20. [Pittsburgh Magazine]

Mrs. T’s Meets Eat’n Park

Mrs. T's Pierogies and Eat’n Park are bringing their rich Pennsylvania histories together to launch Mrs T's new cheddar bacon ranch flavor. [KDKA-TV]

Seven Fishes & Holiday Cookies

Pittsburgh’s Italian heritage is ready to order with DiAnoia’s Eatery’s Feast of the Seven Fishes meal kit at Pane é Pronto. Look for a festive array of holiday cookies like pignoli and biscotti.

During this season, Jordan Tony and Silvan Goddin’s Pittsburgh home is adorned with pumpkins, different varieties of corn, nuts, and dozens canned and dried goods.

“We really like this time of year because the abundance comes inside from our garden to decorate our house, and then we get to cook with it all winter,” Goddin says.

Through their Instagram and TikTok @homegrown_handgathered, the couple teaches their hundreds of thousands of followers low-cost methods of producing foods in an urban and suburban environment. Plus, they share their quest to live off the land and avoid shopping at the grocery store (three months was their longest stretch!).

City Cast Pittsburgh sat down at Jordan and Silvan’s bountiful table to learn about their favorite spaces to grow, forage, and hunt in Pittsburgh — plus tips for beginners.

Start With a Low-Maintenance Crop

“It’s not all or nothing… any food that you can produce for yourself is important,” Jordan says. Pumpkins are a great crop to start with, because they are easy to grow in Pittsburgh (the couple has vines along the steep hillside in their front yard), and they cure themselves.

Forage for Fruit and Nuts

There’s a lot to forage in Pittsburgh, if you keep your eyes peeled! The pair keep baskets in their car and pick apples from the tree near their neighborhood coffee shop and berries and wild cherries in Frick and Boyce parks. Plus, they crack open those green, tennis-ball looking husks you can find in woods all over town to get the delicious Black Walnuts inside.

Practice the ‘Honorable Harvest’

Showing gratitude to the land is a long tradition for Indigenous people, and they encourage growers and foragers to carry on that practice — never take everything, and give a little bit of harvest back to the ground for every bit you take.

This could be “spreading the seeds, removing invasive species, or helping to create a habitat for animals and plants to survive in the areas around us. And in that way, they then support us,” Jordan says.

It’s all about “knowing what you’re harvesting and its role in the ecosystem,” Silvan says.

A City Cast Meetup, Boring Buccos Games & PA's Pricey Groceries

Groceries are so much more expensive than they used to be, and new data shows Pennsylvanians in particular are paying more than the rest of the country. Pens and Pirates games have a new TV home, and we’re honoring a remarkable local who gave her life to public service. Plus, stick around for all the details on City Cast’s next meet and greet on Friday, Dec. 22.